Agriculture may be older than civilisation itself, but it is still largely an alien concept to Singaporeans.

However, it may be precisely because only 1 per cent of the island's 720 sq km is given over to growing food, and because 90 per cent of what it eats has to be imported, that Singapore has the ambition to become what Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat last month called "an agri-food node for Asia and the world".