Name: How Singapore is using tech to grow food without farmland
Uploaded: 2025-02-09T21:01:10.000Z
Duration: 8 min 45 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

This is your typical bowl of salad, but have you ever wondered where your fresh greens come from?

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Or how they even ended up on our shelves?

One partnership is bringing technology and modern farming together to advance agriculture and be the nation.

Artisan Green is an indoor hydroponics farm based in Singapore.

We are a commercial farm that supplies to not just the retail supermarkets, but also to the hotels, restaurants and cafes in Singapore.

If we are talking about a tech for sustainability, this was a very good example of what we can do.

Together, they are building a farm management system designed to transform modern farming with automation and digitalization.

So for the farm management system, we have different modules inside.

So we have modules whereby it manages the nutrients, lighting as well, and also the environmental parameters.

For this collaboration, what we are trying to do is increase the amount of yields that we have using lesser resources such as manpower.

We found Artisan Green as a partner because they are focusing on building up vertical farms to ensure the food security of Singapore.

And at the same moment, we would like to introduce our technology to see how we can support them.

And also, of course, generating healthy food for us.

Behind many thriving farms is a story of collaboration.

And this one began with a shared vision for sustainable food production.

Having a first contact with Ray and discussing what we want to do was exciting.

Siemens reached out to me through LinkedIn and asked about our digitalization plans.

It's actually our first collaboration with a tech company.

The interesting part of this partnership was really that we were able to work very close with plant scientists and learning their common language.

How we are translating their knowledge and our knowledge into a farm management system.

We're good at what we do, and that's farming.

Whereas Siemens, they're great at automation and digitalization.

So by utilizing the platform that we're building with Siemens, we're able to digitalize all the plant science and put it into a database.

Spanning 300 square meters, Artisan Greens farm is home to 20 grain racks, where up to 20 varieties of fresh produce are cultivated with care.

Using advanced hydroponics in a fully controlled indoor setting, these greens are grown pesticide-free, right in the heart of urban Singapore.

At this point of time, we are at an early stage with Artisan Greens.

We are starting with an automation platform.

So a system which is controlling relevant machines, processes in a vertical farm.

So the heart of it is the farm management system.

And inside this farm management actually is the recipe management.

This is our prototype for the precision nutrient injector that interfaces with the Siemens platform that we're building.

And what happens is that in that platform, we're able to store over 100 different types of recipes.

We're able to specify any nutrient profiles that we want.

And on demand, the machine will actually mix it up and then deliver it to any grow bids that we want.

The farm management system exactly controls how a crop is growing, how much fertilizer, how much water, what is required at which time of the growth process.

It is in the same moment giving remotely access to Artisan Greens at any point of time that they can see what is the status, what is the energy consumption, what is the water consumption.

Within the farm management system, automated lighting control plays a key role.

LED lighting within an indoor farm is the most critical component because plants need light to photosynthesize.

Like blue light activates the secondary metabolites of a plant, so you're able to produce more aromatic compounds.

It could even have different colors for different UV strengths.

We worked together to understand how much light is really required.

Is it really useful to have light for 24 hours or 12 hours?

The energy manager module from Siemens allows us to monitor the equipment.

With that, we're able to make sure that the equipment is running at its 100% efficacy and we're able to save energy.

Growing and harvesting the perfect crop is never a simple task.

Here at this humble farm, manpower is still at the core of its operations.

On average, Artisan Green packs over a ton of produce each month, with spinach reigning as its top seller.

Singapore currently imports over 90% of its food supply.

As a nation of foodies, this reliance comes with challenges, including the volatility of global food markets, climate shifts and disease outbreaks.

To make its food supply more resilient, the Singapore government has outlined an ambitious 30 by 30 vision, aiming to sustainably produce 30% of the nation's nutritional needs locally by 2030.

In order to meet Singapore's vision for food resilience, we have to be more productive.

Because in a place like Singapore where land is scarce, we are limited by the amount of space that we set aside for agricultural usage.

So with a partnership like Siemens and Artisan Green, we're able to grow more with less.

This is a contribution, a large contribution also, to sustainability.

In an uncontrolled environment, you can reduce the food wastage by better planning when you want to harvest, to grow.

Unlike traditional soil-based farming, hydroponic farms use 90% less water.

Our water bill is actually better than average household.

We're able to grow over one tonne of produce, so it is actually quite cheap.

We're looking to shift towards a more sustainable grow media, which is perlite.

It's a volcanic rock that's expanded, and this is a resource that's a lot cheaper.

As Singapore's population reaches a record high of over 6 million, the need for sustainable food sources will become even more crucial.

We were awarded a two-hectare plot of land by the Singapore Food Agency last year in 2024, and we plan to have the new farm built out by the end of 2025.

Our new indoor farm is slated to be 18 times larger than this current farm.

So from a 300-square-metre farm, we are expanding to a 5,500-square-metre farm.

In terms of production, we are scaling it up to 30 times more than what we're currently doing as well.

The team is developing the farming management systems that we'll be using within our farming operations.

They will also be providing the programmable logic controllers for us to automate the entire farming process.

The whole system is designed in such a way that we are scalable.

If you need more recipes, you're adding more computing power.

And with this, you can drive it from one farm to several farms.

At this point of time, it is very difficult to reach the limit of the possibilities here.

With every new farm that takes root, the nation steps closer to securing food for generations.

Singapore's foray into agriculture has been relatively nascent, so we lack that deep agricultural knowledge and expertise.

Instead of looking at other farms as being competitors, hopefully we grow the talent pool and have more people interested in this space.

Working with Artisan Green is a big learning for us, how we can translate plant science into the digital world.

The challenges which we have today require many companies working together to reach sustainability targets, decarbonisation targets.

And therefore, cross-sector collaborations are so important that you can really change the world.

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How Singapore is using tech to grow food without farmland

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