Singapore’s sky farms: how one city is rewriting the future of food - Lethal Heating Editor BDA

Key Points

Singapore targets producing 30% of its nutritional needs locally by 2030 through intensive urban farming.1 Rooftop, indoor and vertical farms already supply a significant share of eggs, vegetables and seafood in the city-state.2 Vertical farms can deliver many times the yield per square metre and cut water use by over 90% compared with conventional farming.3 Climate change is projected to reduce global yields of major crops such as wheat and maize without strong mitigation and adaptation.4 Australian broadacre crops face earlier flowering, shorter growing seasons and lower yields in many regions by mid-century.5 Urban farming policy must be integrated with land-use planning, water governance, infrastructure and insurance to protect communities.6

On a humid Singapore morning, trays of lettuce, basil and choy sum move slowly along a conveyor under LED lights, stacked in vertical columns above a multi-storey car park rather than a paddock.

In a city where less than one per cent of land is zoned for agriculture, Singapore has turned rooftops, warehouses and even car parks into a distributed network of high-tech farms designed to buffer its 5.9 million residents against increasingly fragile global food supply chains.¹

The city-state now positions urban farming not as a lifestyle trend but as critical infrastructure, backed by a national goal to meet 30 per cent of its nutritional needs locally by 2030, up from single-digit shares a decade ago.¹

Singapore’s hen shell egg farms already supply around one third of domestic egg consumption, while local vegetable and seafood farms contribute a smaller but strategically important share of fresh food, much of it grown in urban settings rather than rural hinterlands.²

As climate change disrupts rainfall, heats up growing seasons and raises irrigation demand for crops like wheat and canola, cities from Paris to Melbourne are testing their own models of rooftop gardens, community plots and commercial vertical farms.³

For Australia, where broadacre crops underpin export earnings yet face projected yield declines in hotter, drier regions by mid-century, Singapore’s experiment offers lessons in how urban land, policy and technology can be redeployed to protect food security.⁵

International climate assessments already project that, without stronger mitigation, global yields of wheat, maize and other staples could fall sharply by the end of the century, pushing food prices higher and amplifying rural distress and migration.⁴

Urban food systems researchers argue that cities need to be treated as active food-producing regions, not just consumers of rural harvests, with planning laws, water rules and infrastructure investment redesigned accordingly.⁷

Seen from Singapore’s rooftops, the story of urban farming is no longer about boutique herbs in recycled milk crates, it is about whether dense cities can shoulder more responsibility for feeding their populations in a harsher climate.

And as regional planners weigh where future wheat, barley, canola, cotton and horticulture production can viably sit, the rise of urban agriculture hints at a more distributed, resilient food system in which skylines, not just soil, do part of the heavy lifting.

Policy framework: Singapore’s “30 by 30” as food security strategy

Singapore’s government anchors its urban farming push in the “30 by 30” target, a commitment to build capacity to produce 30 per cent of the country’s nutritional needs locally by 2030, compared with about 10 per cent in 2019.¹

The Singapore Food Agency’s data show that by 2022 local farms supplied about 29 per cent of hen shell eggs, 8 per cent of seafood and 4 per cent of vegetables, with most of this production occurring in land-efficient urban or peri-urban systems rather than traditional broadacre farms.²

The government has backed these ambitions with an Agri-Food Cluster Transformation Fund of around AU$70 million and a separate AU$35x30 Express grant, designed to fast-track high-tech farms using vertical systems, hydroponics and automation to ramp up output within the city’s tight land envelope.⁸

Since 2020, authorities have tendered the rooftops of at least nine multi-storey public housing car parks for commercial food production, effectively rezoning infrastructure for agriculture and signalling that food security is now a core use of public urban space.¹¹

These policy levers dovetail with broader national strategies on climate resilience and import diversification, recognising that a city importing more than 90 per cent of its food is acutely exposed to trade disruptions, extreme weather and geopolitical shocks.¹

For planners in Australian capitals, the Singapore model underscores the importance of treating urban agriculture as a strategic asset to be enabled through grants, land access and long-term targets, rather than a peripheral green initiative.

Technological innovation: vertical farms, data and resource efficiency

Singapore’s dense urban form has pushed farmers towards vertical farming, where crops are stacked in tiers under controlled lighting, temperature and nutrients, with climate systems managed by sensors and algorithms rather than weather forecasts.⁸

Research on vertical farming indicates that such systems can produce many times the yield per unit of land compared with open-field farming, with some analyses suggesting water use reductions of up to about 90 per cent or more through recirculating hydroponics and closed irrigation loops.³

Scientific reviews of vertical farming report that precise control of light, carbon dioxide and nutrients allows year-round production, higher yields and better quality, while reducing pesticide use and avoiding seasonal shocks, making these systems attractive for climate adaptation in cities.³

In Singapore, firms like Sustenir use fully enclosed indoor farms to grow leafy greens under LED lights, illustrating how agritech companies are emerging as part of the city’s broader innovation and clean-tech ecosystem rather than as marginal primary producers.¹¹

From a climate risk perspective, these systems decouple yield from rainfall variability and heatwaves, but they are energy intensive, which means their long-term sustainability hinges on cheap, low-emissions electricity and careful integration with national decarbonisation plans.³

For Australian cities with rapidly expanding rooftop solar, pairing urban farms with on-site renewables and grid demand management could mitigate energy risks while delivering local food, jobs and new training pathways in controlled-environment agriculture.

Spatial strategy: turning rooftops and tunnels into farms

Singapore’s most distinctive move is its systematic repurposing of underused urban surfaces, from public housing car parks to industrial rooftops, as farming platforms negotiated through central planning rather than one-off pilots.¹¹

The government’s control over most apartment blocks allows it to allocate large contiguous rooftop areas for commercial farms like Comcrop and Citiponics, turning housing estates into mixed-use zones that host both residents and food production systems.¹¹

Paris has taken a different but complementary route with its Parisculteurs program, which aims to cover 100 hectares of rooftops, walls and urban spaces with vegetation, with roughly one third reserved for urban agriculture projects such as rooftop farms and social gardens.⁹

By 2020, Paris had more than 30 hectares of urban agriculture installed, supported by a “100 hectares charter” that binds public and private landowners into a partnership to open up roofs, walls and underground spaces to farming enterprises.¹⁰

Elsewhere, cities like London have converted disused underground tunnels into hydroponic farms, while other European centres are testing facade-grown systems, illustrating how built-form constraints can drive creative uses of basements, viaducts and industrial heritage sites.³

For state and local governments in Australia, integrating such spatial strategies into zoning codes, development approvals and infrastructure design standards is a practical step that can be taken now, rather than waiting for greenfield land to become available on the fringes.

Economic and social impact: prices, jobs and identity

Urban farming in Singapore is still a small share of total food supply by volume, yet it plays an outsized role in buffering price shocks, shortening supply chains and building public confidence that at least some essentials can be sourced domestically in a crisis.²

Local production of eggs, vegetables and seafood, even at modest percentages, can dampen exposure to sudden import restrictions, freight disruptions or extreme weather in supplying countries, which international food security experts warn are likely to intensify under climate change.⁴

Economically, Singapore’s move into high-tech agriculture has created new roles in agronomy, engineering, software and maintenance, recasting “farming” as an urban technology career rather than solely a rural, manual occupation.⁸

Socially, rooftop and community farms have been used as educational spaces, introducing school students and apartment residents to the realities of food production and making food systems more visible in daily city life.⁷

For regional Australia, where climate impacts threaten traditional jobs in rain-fed cropping, controlled-environment agriculture and urban farming could offer alternative employment in regional centres, including roles in managing greenhouses, packaging local produce and maintaining digital infrastructure.

However, the distributional impacts need careful management so that high-tech investment does not bypass smaller growers or low-income communities, which are often most exposed to food price rises and extreme weather.

Comparative context: four other paths to urban food

While Singapore leads on integrating national food security policy with dense, high-tech urban farming, other cities offer contrasting models that highlight different levers for success.

Paris’s Parisculteurs places greater emphasis on integrating agriculture into heritage buildings and public spaces, often through design competitions and partnerships with community groups, which strengthens public engagement and biodiversity outcomes as much as food supply.⁹

In North America, cities such as Vancouver and Detroit have focused on community-led gardens, allotments and social enterprises, using vacant lots to address food deserts and create local employment, though these systems rarely match Singapore’s yields or technological intensity.⁷

Tokyo and Hong Kong, like Singapore, experiment with building-integrated agriculture on rooftops and commercial towers, but face different regulatory and land-ownership structures that make coordinated, city-wide strategies harder to implement.¹⁴

These diverse approaches show that there is no single “right” model, but they also underline the importance of clear policy mandates, long-term land access and investment in skills if urban agriculture is to move beyond symbolic projects.

Worldwide context: climate risk and the case for city farms

Global climate assessments now conclude with high confidence that climate change is already affecting food security through reduced yields, disrupted supply chains and more frequent extreme events, and that risks increase with every increment of warming.⁴

Meta-analyses of crop studies suggest that under a high-emissions scenario similar to SSP5–8.5, global yields could decline by around 14 per cent for wheat and more than 20 per cent for maize by late century compared with 2015, while lower-emissions pathways substantially reduce these losses.¹²

Australian research on broadacre crops indicates that shifts in rainfall and hotter growing seasons will advance flowering dates and shorten growing periods, which can reduce yields for wheat, barley, canola and pulses, particularly in lower-rainfall zones in Western and south-eastern Australia by 2060.⁵

Other studies find that irrigation water requirements for wheat and canola can increase markedly under warmer scenarios, underscoring the risk that traditional irrigation districts may struggle to meet demand if inflows decline and competing water uses grow.¹³

Against this backdrop, urban farming will not replace broadacre agriculture, but it can diversify supply, reduce transport emissions, cut food waste and create local buffers against global price spikes, especially for perishable, high-value horticulture.

In practice, this means cities will need to integrate food system considerations into climate adaptation plans alongside heat mitigation, flood management and housing, rather than treating food supply as something that happens elsewhere.

Climate risk by region and crop: high, medium and lower risk

Climate vulnerability assessments for Australian agriculture suggest that hotter, drier conditions will place the greatest pressure on broadacre cropping regions in Western Australia’s wheatbelt and parts of inland New South Wales and Queensland, where rainfall is already marginal and temperature increases amplify heat stress and evaporation.⁵

These areas are typically classed as high risk because small percentage drops in rainfall can translate to disproportionately large yield losses for rain-fed wheat, barley and canola, and can undermine the reliability of water available for irrigated cotton.

Medium-risk regions include higher-rainfall grain belts in south-eastern Australia and some irrigated valleys, where projected changes include shorter growing seasons and increased irrigation demand but where adaptation options, such as changing sowing dates, varieties and rotations, are more readily available.⁵

Lower-risk zones tend to be cooler, higher-rainfall areas and some southern coastal regions, where moderate warming may even improve potential yields for certain crops if water is sufficient, though this depends heavily on emissions pathways and local water management.⁴

Across all regions, scientists stress substantial uncertainty ranges due to differences between climate models and emissions scenarios, but the direction of change is clear enough to inform planning of new infrastructure, insurance products and support programs now.⁴

Major crops to mid-century: shifting yields and geographies

Modelling for Australian broadacre systems shows that wheat remains relatively resilient compared with more sensitive crops, but still faces median yield declines in drier locations and advancing flowering dates of up to several weeks by 2060, which increase the risk of heat and frost damage.⁵

Barley and canola share similar exposure to rainfall declines and heat stress, though some higher-rainfall regions may maintain or even increase yields if management practices change and new varieties are adopted.

Field pea and some other pulses appear more sensitive in existing studies, with ensemble projections in parts of Western and south-eastern Australia showing yield declines of 12 to 45 per cent depending on location, highlighting the vulnerability of certain rotations.⁵

Cotton, largely irrigated, is directly exposed to water availability, and international work on irrigation demand indicates that warmer conditions can substantially increase crop water requirements, making secure entitlements and efficient delivery systems critical for future viability.¹³

Horticulture, which often involves perennial crops and high-value vegetables, is highly sensitive to heatwaves, changed chill hours and water stress, but can also benefit from protected cropping and urban farming models that bring production closer to consumers.

For planners, this suggests that some production may shift geographically towards cooler or better-watered regions, while urban and peri-urban protected cropping and vertical farms pick up a greater share of fresh produce demand.

Policy gaps: land, water, infrastructure, insurance and transition

Despite growing evidence on climate risks, land-use planning in many jurisdictions still treats food production and urban development as competing, rather than complementary, priorities, with peri-urban farmland often fragmented by housing and industrial expansion.⁷

Singapore’s experience shows that clear policy direction and cross-agency collaboration can reframe rooftops and underused sites as agricultural assets, whereas many Australian cities lack explicit zoning or building codes that enable agriculture on roofs, car parks or facades.¹⁴

On water governance, climate projections of higher irrigation requirements for crops such as wheat and canola sit uneasily alongside existing competition between cities, industry and the environment, yet most urban planning frameworks do not explicitly consider the water needs of emerging urban farms.¹³

Infrastructure planning often overlooks local food logistics, such as cold storage, short-haul freight and market facilities, even though studies on urban food systems emphasise that improved infrastructure can cut losses, support informal and local markets and strengthen resilience for low-income communities.¹

Insurance products for farmers and regional businesses are still catching up with compounding risks from droughts, fires and floods, and there is little tailored coverage for controlled-environment agriculture or rooftop farms despite their different risk profiles.

Transition support for affected communities remains patchy, with some national programs addressing drought resilience and on-farm adaptation, but fewer tools designed to help workers and small businesses move into new roles in protected cropping, urban agriculture or climate services.

Actionable recommendations for governments

First, federal and state governments can embed food system resilience, including urban agriculture, into climate adaptation and disaster risk strategies, drawing on the same evidence base used in national climate assessments for other critical infrastructure.⁴

This means treating selected urban farms, distribution hubs and protected cropping clusters as essential assets, with clear support in planning, funding and emergency management arrangements.

Second, planning systems can be updated to allow and encourage agriculture on rooftops, podiums, car parks and industrial estates, with design standards that address structural loading, safety, access and water reuse, building on examples from Singapore and Paris.⁹

Local governments can identify priority zones near transport and markets where urban agriculture would deliver the greatest benefits for low-income communities, and can use development contributions or incentives to secure long-term access for food production rather than only short-term pop-ups.

Third, water governance reforms can recognise urban and peri-urban agriculture as a legitimate user of recycled water and stormwater, with clear allocation frameworks, quality standards and infrastructure funding that enable farms to use treated wastewater and capture roof runoff safely.¹³

At the same time, regional water planning can incorporate projected increases in crop water requirements and the potential for technology, such as drip irrigation and soil moisture monitoring, to reduce demand and maintain yields for key crops.

Fourth, governments can co-invest in controlled-environment agriculture training, research and demonstration sites in regional centres and city fringes, ensuring that farmers, workers and students can gain the skills needed to manage high-tech greenhouses and vertical farms.³

Targeted transition packages, including retraining and relocation support, will be essential for communities where traditional broadacre cropping becomes less viable due to water scarcity, heat stress or market shifts.

Economic and social implications for regions

Regional economies built around broadacre crops are exposed not only to yield changes but also to knock-on effects for employment in storage, transport, input supply and processing, which can be destabilised by more frequent climate shocks.⁵

As climate impacts accumulate, variability in yields and water availability can drive greater volatility in farm incomes and local spending, with consequences for small towns already grappling with population loss and service decline.

At the same time, new opportunities may emerge in value-added processing, protected cropping and regional logistics for urban and peri-urban food systems, particularly if policy and investment deliberately direct some urban farming and controlled-environment agriculture to regional hubs.¹

Where urban farms supply nearby city markets, there is potential for shorter supply chains to reduce transport emissions and food loss, and to stabilise prices for certain foods, though this will depend on how costs, including energy, are managed and who has access to the resulting produce.³

Community resilience will hinge on ensuring that climate adaptation and urban farming strategies are designed with local input, so that new investments do not bypass the most vulnerable regions or entrench inequalities between city cores and regional areas.

What global cities can learn from early adopters

Singapore’s approach shows that when urban farming is backed by clear national targets, funding, land-access reforms and a strong technology ecosystem, it can contribute meaningfully to food security even in a land-scarce city.¹

Paris, Tokyo and other cities demonstrate how heritage buildings, tunnels and rooftops can be reimagined as productive landscapes when local governments act as conveners between landowners, farmers, designers and communities.⁹

For Australian planners and policymakers, the next five years will be decisive, they must integrate food systems into climate adaptation and urban planning, protect and repurpose land and water for both rural and urban agriculture, invest in skills and infrastructure for controlled-environment and community-based farming, and build transition support for regions so that as climate risks intensify, Australia’s cities and country towns share the responsibility and opportunity of feeding the nation.

References

1. Singapore Food Statistics 2022 – Singapore Food Agency
2. Singapore Food Statistics 2023 – Strengthening Singapore’s Food Resiliency
3. Applications of vertical farming in urban agriculture – European Journal of Horticultural Science
4. IPCC AR6 Working Group II – Food security and climate impacts
5. Climate change impacts on phenology and yields of five broadacre crops in Australia – Anwar et al 2015
6. IPCC AR6 Working Group III – Urban systems and other settlements
7. Tackling the climate–food–migration nexus through urban food systems – IAI
8. Unconventional Business: Farming in Urban Singapore – IGPI report
9. Paris is opening the world’s largest urban rooftop farm – Global Center on Adaptation
10. Parisculteurs case study – ISO/AFNOR 37101
11. Singapore shows what serious urban farming looks like – Reasons to be Cheerful
12. Predicting changes in agricultural yields under climate change scenarios – 2025 meta-analysis
13. Modelling the effects of climate change on irrigation water requirements of wheat and canola – Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems
14. Vertical farming: An assessment of Singapore City – Wong et al 2020

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