A new agriculture paradigm
Bjorn Low is leading an urban agriculture movement in SIngapore and spoke at the NZILA Firth Conference late last year about so called “food deserts” in cities and how he is working to reverse the trend.
Bjorn is spearheading a grow-your-own-food movement aimed at changing the Singaporean mindset around farming. In 2012 he co-founded Edible Garden City, with the hope of building urban farms to help Singapore tackle its food security challenges.
Bjorn Low speaking at the NZILA Firth conference in Christchurch late last year.
Bjorn told his audience in Christchurch that the repeated messages in the media about the harm farming is doing to the environment in terms of CO2 emissions is forcing thought leaders to take a look at the future of agriculture and food production.
He says in his home city-state of Singapore there are five point six million people living on the small island and while Singapore was producing an excess of food in the mid 1970s, with increasing industrialisation and a growing population, today just one percent of Singapore’s landmass is cultivated for food production and 90 per cent of the state’s food is imported.
He says for Singapore food security is an ecological challenge and showed examples of environmental “devastation” from neighbouring Malaysia where hills are carved out to create terraced food growing shelters to produce a high percentage of Singapore’s leafy green vegetables.
Bjorn says that sort of ecological damage needs to be counted in the cost of providing food for places such as Singapore.
Bjorn Low says Singapore recognises it is in a precarious situation in terms of food security.
He says the small nation is working on urban development policies such as its Landscape Replacement Area (LRA) which is helping both with the greening of Singapore as well as food production as urban and rooftop farming is now considered a LRA.
He says a cross agency task force has now been set up to help Singapore meet a target of growing 30 per cent of its own food by 2030.
You can see Bjorn’s entire conference presentation in the video below.
