It is critical to give local smaller-scale farmers and start-ups a fair chance without being priced out by larger foreign players who may have much more capital to bid for land parcels and construct infrastructure, and bring with them existing technologies.

To reflect this fundamental difference and to level the playing field between conglomerates and individual or family-run farms, the land bidding assessment criteria should be calibrated.

The bidding assessment should not only consider the farmer's past and existing efforts to innovate and boost his productivity, but also take into account existing constraints in his working capital.

For example, any comparison of farms on the basis of their extent of automation must be calibrated based on their differences in working capital.

Given Singapore's land constraints, going vertical should be the norm for many farms.

Perhaps the Singapore Food Agency could collaborate with JTC Corporation to launch vertical farming complexes equipped with drip irrigation, solar panels and utilities infrastructure, so that these farmers do not need to bid for whole land parcels but just for spaces within the complexes.

This would ease the burden on local farmers as they would not have to fork out additional capital to construct the complexes, irrigation and utility pipelines required for their operations. They can then focus on investing in equipment, machinery and research and development.

The authorities and the farmers' associations could also initiate more crowdfunding campaigns and organise more frequent islandwide farmers' markets to further support local farmers to make the transition to high-productivity farming.

The days may be numbered for small-scale farmers in their current locations in Lim Chu Kang, but their fighting spirit to bolster our nation's food security is still strong. I am sure many of them would press on if they are given a fair chance to survive. Right now, for quite a number of them, the odds are stacked against them.

Tio Boey