Urban Agriculture's capacity to increase a city's Food Security: A case study of Singapore vegetable production
Creators: name: Song, Andrea Yu Min
Publisher: name: The Australian National University
Year: 2020

description: Cities have developed ways of maintaining a secure food supply year-round by tapping into food grown in distant landscapes through trade and globalization processes. However, this security has been threatened as most agricultural yields around the world are predicted to decline under the impacts of global environmental change. This makes cities vulnerable to disruptions and shocks in the global food supply chain, prompting an interest in increasing local food production through urban agriculture. These urban agriculture systems are often a variation of indoor high-tech growing systems, with one of the more popular methods for growing vegetables being vertical hydroponics. This is a soil-less growing system where the roots of crops are suspended in a nutrient solution that is circulated throughout the system. Layers can be stacked on top of each other, resulting in it being called a “vertical” growing system. One city that has been taking the threat of food security very seriously is Singapore. Being a city-state with a small land area and few natural resources, the city imports over 90% of its food. With increasing concerns over the resilience of its food system, the government has set a goal of producing up to 30% of its nutritional needs through local agriculture by the year 2030 – dubbed the “30 by 30” vision. In light of this, in this thesis I aim to critically assess the feasibility of using urban agriculture to contribute significantly to a city’s food security. From the results, it is estimated that Singapore would have to produce between 42,000,000kg to 125,000,000kg of vegetables locally to meet the target. Additionally, the focus on increasing volumes of food produced locally overlooked the opportunity to incorporate more sustainable solutions from the beginning. One of these solutions include designing a more circular system where nutrients can be recovered and recycled. The shifting social-cultural dimensions of urban agriculture in cities and the educational role it can play in raising awareness for the well-being of farmers and their farmlands was also explored. Thus, I argue that although urban agriculture can supplement imported produce to boost food security of cities, it would probably be unable to make a significant contribution towards the overall nutritional needs of city residents as its current form only targets a minor percentage of the vegetable component of a nutritionally adequate diet. The costs of increasing urban agriculture activities are also not very clear at the moment given the wide range of results gathered. However, as urban agriculture continues to play an increasingly important role in the food system developments of cities, it makes it even more important that we better understand how it affects different components within a city’s system. This can help to lessen unexpected problems from emerging in the future while increasing sustainability aspects, contributing to sustainable development of cities and their food systems.