What Urban Farming can do for us beyond just growing more food
These smart farms are good for the environment, the economy and even our health
Text: Shannon T
Urban farming is great, especially in land-scarce Singapore where food security is a constant worry. By harnessing the power of technology, things like fickle weather, limited land space and crop pests are problems of the past. As we rounded up the top urban farms in Singapore, we began wondering what these smart farms can do for us beyond just growing more food?
Apparently, there’s lots more. From reducing our carbon footprint and creating pockets of green, to building communities and rendering support, read on for all the good stuff urban farms can bring to us city-dwellers.
Reduces Carbon Emissions
There’s no doubt that urbanised cities are carbon-making machines. After all, the world’s cities are responsible for 70% of all carbon emissions. Importing food creates carbon at every step of the supply chain and currently, Singapore imports 90% of its food.
Our food travels an average distance of 4,200 miles from farm to table — that’s 35 times around Singapore’s entire coastline! Localising food sources and making an effort to buy local produce can surely contribute to lowering our city’s fuel consumptions.
Promotes innovation and creates jobs
Urban farms require innovative tech solutions to overcome the geographical inhibitions in Singapore. Resources, energy and waste are also issues that needs to be taken care of regularly as the city develops. Constant R&D is necessary to find solutions to current and future problems to help establish urban farms as consistent and efficient sources of food. As urban farms grow and become commercialized, a variety of job opportunities are created as well, from the actual farming and handling of logistics to maintaining infrastructure and researching new technologies for future farms.
Introduces Green Spaces
Singapore suffers from urban heat, being a busy metropolitan area with lots of vehicles and human activity. While the weather is sweltering hot almost all the time, the hard and dry surfaces of our concrete and glass skyscrapers and megamalls do little to help, absorbing and remitting the sun’s heat more than natural landscapes.
Having pockets of urban farms scattered through the city can help counter heat island effects by absorbing carbon during photosynthesis. Just like our gardens, parks and plant features, urban farms add aesthetic appeal to the sea of concrete structures and provides restful spaces for leisure activity.
Building communities
City-living can feel like a dreadful rat race when there are always places to be and stuff to do. How often do city folks stop and chat with their neighbours, much less hang out and spend time together?
Planting urban farms within community living spaces, such as the ones by Citizen Farm, creates opportunities for members of a community to gather and bond. Community gardening (in this case, community farming) reignites the Kampung spirit from bygone days, building a sense of community for isolated members of the community. It doesn’t matter whether you are an aspiring farmer, seeking company or simply want fresh herbs for your pasta dinner, everybody is welcomed here.
Potential for care farming
Sitting within the list of nature-based therapies is care farming, which is the use of farming practices for therapeutic outcomes. Care farms are often designed to provide healing, social care or specialist educational services for individuals from vulnerable communities. While it has been a rapidly growing phenomenon over the past two decades in several European countries, such as the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Norway, and Belgium, care farming is now sprouting on local grounds.
Edible Garden City, the same folks behind Citizen Farm, has expanded their urban farming programme to start a holistic Therapeutic Horticulture and Care Farming initiative last year. Findings in a joint study with the National University of Singapore and the National Parks Board investigating the effects of habitual gardening on the elderly with early-stage dementia, showed positive emotional, mental and physiological impacts. Therapeutic Horticulture was also scientifically proven to benefit stressed-out office workers, at-risk youth, prison inmates and the differently-abled.
