Plan in place to help local farms produce more, stay financially viable: SFA chief

SINGAPORE - High-tech agriculture is a nascent sector globally, and as Singapore ventures into this area, work is under way to address some of the challenges faced by local farms, said Mr Damian Chan, chief executive of the Singapore Food Agency (SFA), on May 29.

In his first interview since he took on the role as head of SFA in May 2024, Mr Chan said that he was aware of the pains faced by the sector, which has seen a spate of closures and reduced production levels for vegetables and seafood.

He also outlined an overarching strategy to help boost local production, which includes opening up new farm spaces, efforts to ensure a healthy supply of baby fish for farms to grow, and ensuring that every harvest is consistently sold to shore up farms’ revenue.

He was speaking to local media ahead of the release of the 2024 Singapore Food Statistics report on June 5, which found that the local production of vegetables and seafood had dipped, although egg farms continued to do well.

Singapore’s main strategy to safeguard food security is to diversify its food sources by importing from 187 countries and regions. But local production, which now makes up less than 10 per cent of the country’s total food consumption, is also considered a critical buffer to supply shocks.

There had initially been efforts to increase local production to 30 per cent of demand by 2030, but recent headwinds – such as reduced investor interest and higher electricity prices – have prompted a review of this goal.

Said Mr Chan, 52: “High productivity farming is still a nascent sector in Singapore and globally as well. So it needs more time to develop, mature and for our farms to evolve their business models to make it more economically viable for them.”

He added: “My focus then is on having more farms which are financially sustainable and productive. Priority is problem-solving, helping the farms, which are committed and capable.”

Mr Chan said that in general, the broad plan is to focus not on the number of farms in Singapore, but on ensuring that farms can be productive and financially viable.

The Government is helping farms to achieve this by, for example, extending funding support to help them adopt technologies such as advanced, automated farming equipment and infrastructure.

This is done through the $60 million Agri-food Cluster Transformation Fund, which had its scope recently expanded to cover marketing expenses and pre- and post-harvest facilities.

The Government will also open up more land and sea spaces for farms that can be financially viable, he said.

For example, SFA will soon be releasing new land tenders in Sungei Tengah and Lim Chu Kang that can be used for either aquaculture or vegetable farming, he added.

The agency also plans to open up more aquaculture spaces in the East Johor Strait from 2026, with a target of raising the production of seafood there to up to 6,700 tonnes annually – almost twice the 3,500 tonnes produced in Singapore in 2024.

Farm land currently makes up only about 1 per cent of the country’s land area.

At a broader level, plans for a 390ha high-tech agri-food hub in Lim Chu Kang were announced in 2020. It was reported in late 2024 that this Lim Chu Kang masterplan, as well as construction work for the neighbouring Agri-Food Innovation Park, was delayed.

Asked for updates on this, Mr Chan would only say this is a priority area for SFA, and it is looking into how best to implement the project.

Another pain point the Government has sought to address is the high rate of fish mortalities in local farms, caused by low-quality baby fish – or fingerlings – sourced from overseas.

Fingerlings from abroad may carry diseases and be of inconsistent quality, worsened by their long journey to Singapore. Mortalities here can reach 80 per cent due to the inconsistent quality of eggs and fingerlings.

To prevent such losses, several aquaculture players have long called for a local supply of young fish that are fast-growing and genetically superior.

In late 2024, SFA announced

the national broodstock centres for Asian seabass and marine tilapia,

where the young fishes will be bred. Certified hatcheries will then rear the newly hatched fish and sell the fingerlings to farms.

“Increasing their grow-out rate and reducing mortality will make significant differences to the competitiveness of our aquaculture farms,” said Mr Chan.

Finally, for farms to remain financially viable, they must also have buyers ready to purchase their produce. This is because local farms are competing against cheaper imports.

“It is definitely not as easy as ‘just grow and you can sell’,” said Mr Chan.

He advised farms to talk to large customers, such as supermarkets, restaurant chains and food manufacturers, to negotiate long-term partnerships.

He also stressed the need for farms to come together and sell their produce under a common brand to attract larger retailers. This will then help the farms achieve economies of scale and widen their market share.

“Many of the large (customers) I talked to – they tell SFA that most farms outside of the egg farms are not large enough to provide necessary quantities to them, and they cannot be talking to a multitude of small farms,” Mr Chan noted.

In one initiative, the Singapore Agro-Food Enterprises Federation started two brands to sell leafy greens and tilapia from a bloc of local farms. Chye sim, lettuce and xiao bai cai, for example, were selling at $1.78 for 200g.

As at February 2025, sales in FairPrice had increased about fivefold for xiao bai cai and twofold for tilapia since the start of the initiative in May 2024.

Ways to strengthen the four pillars – providing farms with funding support, ensuring sales of local produce, and increasing farming spaces and quality of baby fish – will be looked into during the review of the 30-by-30 goal, added Mr Chan.

He took over SFA after a decades-long career at the Economic Development Board (EDB). Before leaving EDB, he was its executive vice-president overseeing planning and policy in several areas including agri-food and environmental sustainability.

Asked how his years at EDB shaped his perception of the local farming sector, Mr Chan said the experience gave him a “problem-solving mindset” to uncover challenges faced by a sector and develop solutions for them.

At EDB, Mr Chan said he often took an industry-wide view of a sector. But at SFA, he often has to work with individual farms.

Mr Chan said: “EDB looks at industries that sell to the region, or globally. The agri-food sector is one which, at least today, is still primarily selling to the domestic Singapore market. And, of course, it’s one that is fragmented. You have many small players.

“So that’s where really understanding the problems of the farm at the industry level, and also at the farm-specific level, is critical. I’d like to assure them that we will look and continue to... provide them with more targeted support along the value chain.”