CLC LECTURE The Future Beckons – Food, Science & Technology 31 January 2018
The 2017 Global Food Security Index by The Economist ranked Singapore as the 4th most food secure nation in the world. Having only 10% of the population’s food needs produced locally, what does Singapore’s food future look like? What is the role of science and technology in enhancing Singapore’s food resilience?
In this panel discussion, Ms Tan Poh Hong, former CEO of Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA) shares AVA’s efforts in strengthening Singapore’s food security through partnerships with the industry and other stakeholders. Beyond governance, this lecture will showcase the importance of science and technology in advancing the future of food production in Singapore, such as the use of controlled-environment agriculture and biotechnology innovations.
Lecture Segment
Thinesh Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to today’s CLC [Centre for Liveable 00:00:13 Cities] lecture series. I’m Thinesh, and I’m from the Centre for Liveable
Cities.
00:00:39 Today’s lecture is titled, The Future Beckons: Food, Science and Technology. The 2017 Global Food Security Index by The Economist ranked Singapore as the 4th most food secure nation in the world. Having only 10% of our population’s food needs produced locally, how did Singapore achieve this level of food security. Looking into the future, what will Singapore’s food futures look like? And what is the role of science and technology in enhancing Singapore’s food resilience?
Let me introduce our first speaker. Ms. Tan Poh Hong, current Fellow at the Centre for Liveable Cities and former Chief Executive Officer of AVA [Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority]. She’s been instrumental in transforming and enabling AVA to face the new challenges ahead in the past decade. And before her time in AVA, she was the Deputy CEO in the Housing & Development Board [HDB] and led the Estates and Corporate Groups to plan, develop and manage HDB properties.
Without much further ado, can we put our hands together to welcome
Ms. Tan to start her presentation.
Ms Tan Poh Hong Is there trouble in the Food Paradise? 00:01:40 Is there food? Is there trouble in the food paradise? So if you look at
what the FAO [Food and Agriculture Organization] is saying, you know,
via the UN [United Nations] Sustainable Development Goal [SDG] is that,
you know, we need to end hunger. We need to achieve food security
and improve nutrition, and also promote sustainable agriculture.
And the statistics do actually say that perhaps, there are problems.
There is trouble, because the number of undernourished people has
actually increased to 815 [million] from 777 [million], just two years ago.
So maybe it signals that there might be problems in the production of
food. And therefore food security has actually emerged as a very key
concern in various organisational…organisations whether it is regional
or whether it’s global.
00:02:42 Okay, so that sets the stage, we are here. Is there trouble in the food
paradise? So if there indeed were, then how do we feed the world in
2050? I think we all know these statistics, that there will be 9.1 billion
people, up from about 7 billion now, in 2050. And in order to feed these
people, we need to increase production, food production by 70%. That’s
a lot, right? From now we have got to produce 70% more food.
At the same time, there are a lot of global pressures, both from the
supply side as well as demand side. So, for example, climate change. But
I think in reality, everybody knows that climate change has a lot of
impact, and even adverse effects. Then at the same time, we talk about
population growth—just now we said it will grow to 9 billion. Big
numbers. And with population growth, we also see rising affluence.
People are more educated, people demand different kinds of food. So
that will put additional pressure on the demand side.
On the supply side at the same time, we also have demand for land to
be used for bio-fuels. So instead of growing for food, now land is being
diverted for production of bio-fuels, because that’s where the money is.
So therefore, it means we have less land for the production of food. At
the same time, because of urbanisation and so on, we also have
dwindling resources. As more and more land gets used up, as more and
more land gets cleared, there will be less fertile land. If there’s less fertile
land, how are you, how are we going to grow the food that we all need?
So these are pressures, both from the demand side and from the supply
side coming onto us and it will effect tremendously the food production.
Singapore’s Situation
00:04:46 Come to Singapore, we call ourselves, Singapore, a food paradise. So these are statistics that you all know, very familiar with. But in case you
don’t, we import 90% of the food that we eat. We are dependent on free trade and if you noticed, we don’t have—at least in Singapore—we
do not do any price control on our food as opposed to many countries.
00:05:13 Sometimes they use price control as a way to make sure that the food
can reach the population. In countries like India, they do do that.
And even though we buy a lot from outside, we are a small market. We
always think that we buy a lot therefore, we are a big market. Actually,
no. We are very, very small. And I remember when I went to visit Brazil
years ago, as a CEO with AVA, I thought we are a big player and I go. You
know? Okay, a big buyer. Then they show the statistics, the bar charts,
the pie chart. Drrr..rrr…rrr (onomatopoeic). They show China, Middle
East, United States… I said, “Where is Singapore?” “Oh, Singapore is
under the others.” Because… that’s why it’s small. Although we buy 70%
of our frozen chicken from Brazil, but that is a very small in comparison.
And so we are a small market. And because we are small market, usually
it means we can ask just the price, but we’ve got very low bargaining
power. And also we are vulnerable to the global food situation,
dependent a lot on the world. Okay, so that’s setting the stage for
Singapore.
Food Security: What is it?
00:06:20 Now I move on to just a quick definition of what food security is. Maybe most people may just think, “Well, food security would mean, if there is
food, that’s fine.” And in Singapore, many of us take food for granted because there is always food. You go to the supermarket, you go to the
mini-markets and so on, you see food. And a huge variety of food. In fact, if you have friends from overseas, you always tell them, “Whoa!
You know, I can find food from Europe, America, South America and even from Africa, right?” But food security is more than just having food
at your doorsteps.
Three key areas: The three A’s. First, about availability. Is food readily available for you all, for us, to consume? Then second, even if it is
available, that means you could produce it yourself, or even could buy it, is it accessible? Is it there when you want it? So, accessibility is also
very important. And thirdly, is it affordable? In many countries, 00:07:31 especially the developing countries, we find that although the food may
be there, but it is not affordable because people cannot afford to buy it.
So affordability is also a very important aspect of food security.
And the fourth factor: is it safe, is it nutritious? There is no point having
all the food there, but it is not safe. Or having a lot of just one type of
food and it is not nutritious enough for the consumers, for the
population. Looking at all these factors, the Economic Intelligence Unit
has ranked Singapore as the fourth.
And where are our strengths? Okay, they have indicated that our
strengths are in food safety, and the availability of safety net
programmes where food is concerned. That means even if you have
people who are very poor, there is a safety net for them to make sure
they have food. I think you know of those grants and community giving
out vouchers to go and buy food from NTUC and so on.
And also other areas like nutrition standards—we are also very good. In
terms of food consumption, as a show of household expenditure, it’s
also our strength, Singapore is doing well. But in the area of challenges,
where else can we do better? There is one which they talk about, and
that is expenditure on agriculture and R&D [research and development].
Based on that measure, Singapore is not doing very well because they
said you haven’t spent enough on agriculture R&D. And that probably
makes sense because we don’t have a lot of agriculture, and therefore
as expenditure goes there is not much focus on it.
And the area which we are not doing that well [in] is called diet-
diversification. Do we have a plan to make sure that our people have a
diversified diet? Or are we just eating meats and proteins and so on and
so forth? Or maybe we are doing okay, but there is no specific national
diet diversification plan. And as a result of that, we got marked down a
little and that’s where they feel we could do better.
00:09:31 However, despite being fourth most food secure, there’s a concern
which they pointed out. And that’s Singapore’s dependence of food
imports and its susceptibility to rising sea levels as well as extreme
weather events. It makes us even more vulnerable. In fact, if you put in
this factor of resources, natural resources and climate change
vulnerability, Singapore ranked very, very low—because we are just too
exposed.
Moving Forward
00:10:07 And so what are we supposed to do? I take the answer from SMS [Senior Minister of State], Dr. Koh Poh Koon [Ministry for Trade & Industry] who
said that, you know…who acknowledges the vulnerability factors like climate change, disease outbreaks and so on and so forth, and these are
things that can jeopardise our food supply. But he says, fortunately, modern technology is opening up new opportunities for us, for
Singapore, for small countries like us. And he gives an example, advances in indoor agro-technology has made it possible to produce
significant amounts of food without delegating huge amounts of land and labour. Is that going to be the answer? Is there more we can do to
improve our dependence on imports and reducing our vulnerability?
Just to give you some ideas, this is what we need in terms of our Singapore statistics. What do we eat and what do we mostly eat? In
Singapore, our favourite meat—we are talking about meat, we eat a lot of meat—so our favourite meat is actually chicken. Right, we eat 35kg
of chicken and I think it is because everybody, regardless of the various races will eat chicken. So that’s 35kg. Compared to places like USA or
even Malaysia, they eat a little bit more, they eat about 40kg.
We eat a fairly huge amount of pork, 19kg. But USA eats more, so USA actually eats a lot of meat, if you can see, you have chicken, and pork,
they eat more than we do. China eats even more pork and that’s because, I think, mostly the Chinese do like pork, so they eat 31kg. Fish,
we are about middle. We couldn’t get the statistics because, I think, 00:12:07 some of these countries, a lot of them they just do their own catch, so
they don’t capture that much statistics. Rice, we eat 47kg. But in terms
of comparing to Asia, say Malaysia, 91kg. And I think if we put in
Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam as well, they eat much more—100 over.
Right, so we are okay. At one stage in fact we went down a bit, but in
the last couple of years, apparently, our rice consumption went up.
Maybe you all, when you go and eat your cai fan [菜饭Chinese for
vegetables and rice] you always “Jia fan, jia fan!” [加饭Chinese for,
“more rice, more rice”] huh? So maybe it has gone up.
Our vegetables, okay, we are alright, but we should we be eating more.
Because I think…again, no statistics here but I do know many countries eat more than 16kg of vegetables, so maybe that’s where our diet
diversification should be taking place. In terms of eggs, we need a lot of eggs. In Singapore, we eat like almost an egg everyday, except for
Sundays. Yeah, if you take 365 minus 52, you get 338, yeah? So, we eat a lot of eggs. So, we are very dependent on eggs because everybody
wants your Ya Kun Kaya, half boiled eggs and so on and so forth, right? And a lot of the food [that] we eat actually has eggs inside [them] even
though we might not be aware. Your buns, your cakes, your dessert, practically everything has this thing…Ah! Oyster, huh? I hear Benson, he
said oyster. Right? Your or jian [oyster omelette] you want more egg, huh? So we do eat a lot of eggs. So this is what we will need in terms
of…for our own consumption. So what do we do? We draw our own security food road map.
I remember when we started, I said, okay, can we check what other
people have for their security food road map. We find [that] we can’t copy from other people because we are different. We don’t produce.
Right? In other countries, their food security road map would be a lot on their production. Right, whether they should be growing this grain or
that grain and whether they should be having this livestock or the other.
00:14:15 We don’t have much choice. So therefore we have to draw our own food
security road map.
So we still fall back on our typical strategy, which is the core strategy to
diversify. Because we acknowledge that with only 720km2, we can’t be
putting all the land—even if you put all the land to agriculture, it will not
produce enough for us. Alright, say because if you want to do livestock,
you need lots of land. It will not be enough.
Just to give you an example, Singapore is trying to help China, Jilin Food
Zone. That one is 2,600 km2, right, just that Food Zone alone and that
wasn’t going to produce everything for us. So even if we do, we may not
have enough if we just use normal production methods. So, just to
mention, diversification will be our key link. We will need some local
production to offset the limits in diversification. And in terms of other
supporting strategies on the demand side, we need to do more on food
waste reduction.
So this is the road map that we have and which I think AVA and the
government is looking at it, you know, in the whole-of-government kind
of approach. Okay, so just some elaboration: pro-active food sourcing. I
see some of the food industry people here. I mean some of you are
involved in the sourcing for food and we do it strategically?
Then we also work with industries to continue to have new sources. That
is why AVA and IE [International Enterprise] Singapore, they often go to
some of the most strategic countries to get new sources. Alright,
because if you just depend on one or two, [and] something happens,
that is the end of that food supply.
So this is just to show, you know, we buy. Singapore buys from all over
the world. These are all the countries that we do buy from. If you look,
it’s like every continent we have food. But we do not just do it any old
how, suka-suka, [Malay for “as we please”] no. We do it strategically.
00:16:22 And the key is strategic to ensure that the source countries are spread
out. Different hemispheres, different climatic conditions. So that in case
[of] some climate changes, we are okay, we are not too badly affected.
So it is not as simple as go everywhere. Go there very, very strategically.
Diversification: Local Production
00:16:45 However, having said that, that we try to diversify as much as we can, we are still very dependent on the region. Let me just give you some
examples. You see many colours, it’s fine. When you see very few colours, that’s where we worry.
One of them will be our eggs. 75%, three-quarter of our eggs come from
Malaysia. So everyday you have all the trucks coming across our Second Link bringing the eggs to us, everyday. And only 25% is produced here
by our three farms. So locally produced eggs only 25% and only three egg farms in Singapore.
Leafy vegetables, again, we are dependent on Malaysia. 60%, two-
thirds. We buy from Malaysia our leafy vegetables. Leafy vegetables means your chye sim, your kang kong, your kai lan, all those. Mostly from
Malaysia, Cameron Highlands, JB [Johor Bahru] and so on. Our local production [is] 12%.
Fish. Not too bad. We are quite diversified, but still we could do more.
Ad that’s why in terms of local production, we are trying to up our thing because we don’t want just to keep buying from [the] region because
fish is also depleting. In terms of fish, especially those that are wild- caught, means you catch from the oceans.
Chicken. A little bit dependent but we have two big sources. Brazil, I was
telling you earlier, almost half of all our chicken. But 70%, if it is just frozen, from Brazil. And then Malaysia, about a third. Again everyday,
00:18:29 the chicken will go on the trucks and then come across our Second Link
and then go to our slaughter houses. Because the other day someone
said, “Oh, we have don’t have fresh chicken.” I said, no actually some of
our chickens are slaughtered locally. So it must be as fresh as it can be.
Although, more than half are frozen—mostly from Brazil.
Pork. Just also wanted to point out, again, 30%, one-third from Brazil,
17% from Indonesia and these are the live pigs. And these live pigs come
across on a barge every morning, landing at Jurong there. Every morning
they will take a barge, about 1,000 pigs coming to Singapore for
slaughtering. So we still have fresh pork in a way. Although it is in chilled
form, it is freshly slaughtered in Singapore.
Lately, I think, we have, Singapore has opened a new source—Sarawak.
Some of them have brought Sarawak pigs. So instead of taking a one-
day overnight barge trip, they have to take almost three days, taking the
boat across the sea to us from Sarawak. So why we don’t have pork on
Monday? Because Friday got no pigs coming in. Yeah, they also need to
rest, right? No, it was because I think historically we did not have pork
on Monday, so therefore Friday we don’t eat the pigs right. Because
when the pigs come in, we cannot slaughter them straight away, you
know? They will be very tense right, so there’s lactic acid. So you must
let them rest for one night, overnight, then on the next day you
slaughter them, then their meat is better. I don’t want to say so much. I
see so many meat people here, I think they know more than I do, like
what meat is good and so on. Okay? That’s so much for all these.
So local production, I talked about it. In Singapore we concentrate on
eggs, leafy veg and fish. Three areas. Over the past four, five years or so,
there has been a lot of efforts to raise local production through financial
grants to the productivity fund, we also…they have also helped through
capability building, technology transfer and so on. At the same time, also
through regulations and policies to help in the efficient usage of our
00:20:50 land. Also looking at R&D to help the local farmers to up their technology
and their skills.
AVA has also drawn up a Farm Transformation Map. These days,
everything you need transformation map, right? So you know, in terms
of farming there is also a transformation map in various areas: space,
capability building, manpower—not easy to find people. Also in
innovation, changing mindsets and so on. And also to have an
ecosystem. So it is not enough just to go and do your own land and so
on, you need a whole ecosystem, the whole infrastructure to support
agriculture production.
Food Wastage: A Problem
00:21:36 I just move on. A quick word on food wastage. That determines the
demand. If you waste a lot of food, that means you will demand more,
right? Because you are going to throw away 30% therefore, you will
need 30% also. Food wastage reduction is a big thing these days. In
Singapore, we [are] just only starting in the last couple of years. NEA
[National Envrionmental Agency] has taken the lead in this. They have
done quite a fair bit. But you look at it, 791,000 tonnes of food waste
produced but only 14% recycled. Which means the potential is
tremendous. If we could even reduce by half, that wastage, it means we
could reduce the demand by even more.
So some of the people have started doing it, including some of the
NGO’s, you know, volunteer organisations have come forward and for
the bread programme, Food from the Heart, they distribute 28,000kg of
bread every month. So you save that, instead of throwing it away.
Food Futures of Tomorrow
00:22:31 So what’s next? Having painted a picture globally and so on, well there’s a lot in terms of what we call food futures. And I think both, Azlinda,
even maybe Jack will talk to it later. So just a quick run-down. There’s
00:22:48 this thing called Urban Food Revolution, changing the way in which food
is being produced. And as a result of such a revolution, policies will also
have to change. Consumer attitudes will also have to change.
And then the other area everybody talks about, alternate food forms. I
will just go into it a little bit later. So question is, knowing that all these
are your food futures, will science and technology be an enabler. Will it
enable the way, pave the way for new food futures? So there’s many
studies, many countries, many people are doing it. Right? Using systems,
sustainability, urban…so these are the words that’s always being touted
when we talk about food futures.
So global trends. How has it been? Many countries have gone into, even
in Singapore, we have gone into vertical farming, use of aero-ponics, in
Netherlands, it’s robotic. Robotic farms—2 persons, they do the whole
farm. In Netherlands, this farm called Delicious and we have our own
Apollo, and these are all our local farms. In Norway, they have
automated offshore aquaculture. They are doing it in a big way. Because
they have the sea, they have a lot of space. So they do it that way.
In Barcelona, they have a solar powered floating farm. Our own
Edenworks, on rooftops, vertical aqua ponds. I put, “Question, question,
question” what will this be in the future? We really are not sure. Because
if you remember how the iPhone is being done—who would have
thought, the phone, the camera, the TV, everything now in one? One
day, will farming be so integrated to have everything in one place? We
don’t know. So those are possibilities. With science, with technology,
maybe some of these things can be done. Because in the old days, you
wouldn’t have thought that your camera and your TV can be the same
thing, right? But now it’s doable. It’s also a computer. So science,
technology, can you help us to improve our trends to change the way
food is being produced?
00:24:56 In Singapore just some examples, Sky Greens, which you are all familiar
with, Apollo for fish. Sustainability, I will leave it to Jack to tell you the
story, otherwise you got nothing to say, right?
Just to share a quick example [on] how Netherlands transformed its
agriculture industry. Right, it’s small, densely populated and if you are
aware, actually Netherlands, a lot of the land, is actually below sea level,
you know. How were they able to improve themselves so that they
become one of the largest exporter of food? The answer is they have
actually industrialised the agriculture sector. So it is no longer about
farming and tilling the soil. They actually industrialised the whole sector.
So much so [that], an example is that they are now the world leader in
tomato production and their vegetable production has also increased
tremendously.
So, Netherlands has done a lot. How did they do it? One of the areas
they have done is they have developed high-tech food clusters. So in the
Netherlands, Rotterdam, it’s called Rotterdam food cluster, they put the
whole ecosystem together. Right, so for example, in terms of
production, greenhouses and farming near the city, that’s what we
always like to call urban farming, they have floating farms because they
are near the coast. So they have floating farms and very modern
robotised greenhouses. And what is also important is education and
R&D. There’s a lot of them in the region. So for example, they have the
Wageningen University [and Research] and so on. They all help to
support that. Because without the technology, without the R&D, they
may not be able to have the technology.
And they have the marketplace already there. Agri-business parks,
wholesale markets and so on. So that’s what we have and these are just
some examples, very specific examples of those areas that I talked
about. This Wageningen University is known as Wageningen Food
Valley, where they do a lot of research in food.
00:27:03 Alright, touch a little bit on alternate food forms, I leave it to Azlinda to
tell you more about those. But things coming up, beyond meat or lab-
based meat, are you going to eat meat that’s grown in a lab? Take the
cells— stem cells—and grow it. So if you want your chicken breast meat,
just take that part and grow it. Alright? You culture it. That’s what they
will call it in technical terms and hey, presto! You have your chicken
breast meat, or your leg of lamb or whatever. You can do it in the lab.
Or you have insects as protein. In fact, the FAO is trying to promote
edible insects as a protein source. Right? In some of the poorer
countries, they can’t afford to have the livestock because that is very
expensive. So can you have insects? Are we prepared to eat insects?
Because they give you very good protein.
Some of you who have gone to China, Vietnam or Thailand. You might
have seen, right? They have the…fried, deep fried, crickets and even
cockroaches and flies. So, good protein. So are we ready for those? Our
very own example, actually we also have one, novel one, our Temasek
rice, which is a hybrid, is it? I’ll leave it to Azlinda to talk about it. It’s
being sold in Singapore, right? But they grow it in Acheh, Indonesia.
Then they have what you call CRISPR [Clustered Regularly Interspaced
Short Palindromic Repeats] modified, they do the gene, it’s not GM
[genetically modified], it’s editing. So I don’t know what it really means.
Previously it was gene modified, now they have gone to gene editing.
They edit it.
Then you have GMO [genetically modified organism] salmon and so on.
Then you have this thing called 3D printed food. Are you ready to eat
them? If 3D you put the thing together and it will print out for you.
Right? Your steak. These are possibilities. These are things that people
are all looking at.
So beyond conventional food, there’s this thing called impossible foods.
Because, you know, what do cows eat? Cows eat plants. They don’t eat
anything. You give them anything else then they get mad cow disease,
00:29:09 right? So they only eat plants. So from the plants, they convert, convert
then you get their meat. So why do you need the cow? Why can’t you
take the plant food and convert it into something that looks like your
meat. Even with the dripping blood, looking thing. And that’s what
impossible foods is trying to do. You can Google impossible foods and
they will tell you what they do and so on and this protein called, hermia
or whatever and how they convert it.
Because essentially, what is happening is you feed your thing to the, you
know, your grass or whatever—pasture, right—to the cow, right, then
he converts it, and you get your meat. So why do you need the cow to
convert, why can’t you do it yourself and you can still get your burger
and that is called impossible burger.
And what is our answer for this? Again, I always quote Dr. Koh Poh Koon
because he is the champion for food and agriculture in Singapore, so I
must quote him. And he says, “we are studying the feasibility of co-
locating various food-related industries.” Something like, you know,
what I showed just now about Rotterdam. Clustering them, putting the
whole ecosystem there. So, he says we are studying the feasibility. And
if we are doing so, perhaps these are possibilities for Singapore.
Can we brand ourselves, have very high quality produce? Can we be a
world leader and a builder of vertical farms, whether indoors or
outdoors? Can we have R&D labs, more or you know…or Temasek can
take the lead and do more of this. Can we be the test bed, incubator for
our entrepreneurs and start-ups? Then we also need to have more
advanced skills for training. We can’t just say, I want this, right? It must
be backed up by education, by R&D, by the manpower availability.
Can we have more robotics, can we have automation packing and so on?
And can we have more farm factories for all the novel foods that we
talked about, growing the meat, or even the insects or the worms,
whatever. Or even the algae and seaweeds, because these are the new
foods that are coming up.
00:31:18 However, the question remains and the challenges will always be there.
Are we able to shape public’s perception? And are we able to garner their acceptance so that these foods will have a proper future and these foods can be sustainable. Therefore, the question is will people accept these new, novel forms of food? On that note, I leave you with that question. Thank you.
LECTURE INFORMATION
TITLE The Future Beckons – Food, Science & Technology
SPEAKER Ms Tan Poh Hong Fellow, Centre for Liveable Cities; Former Chief Executive Officer, Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore
DATE 31 January 2018
LOCATION CLC Seminar Room, Level 8, The URA Centre
DURATION 31 Minutes 54 Seconds
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