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SINGAPORE – Parked cars will soon give way to growing vegetables, as the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) awarded tenders for urban agriculture on nine parking roofs on Wednesday (September 30).
The sites, which are the roofs of the Housing Board’s multi-story parking lots, comprise five individual sites and two groups of two sites each. They were awarded to six bidders.
Each site has a term of up to three years.
The highest bid of $ 90,000 for annual rental was awarded to IT Meng Landscape and Construction for a cluster site in Jurong West, with a site covering a total area of 3,311 square meters (three fifths of a soccer field) and the other of 2,974 square meters. subway.
Other parking locations include Choa Chu Kang, Tampines, Hougang, Ang Mo Kio, Toa Payoh, and Sembawang.
SFA Executive Director Lim Kok Thai said: “Proposals from successful bidders included hydroponic and vertical growing systems with a variety of innovative features such as IoT (Internet of Things), blockchain technology and automated climate control.
“With these farming systems, the sites have the potential to collectively produce around 1,600 tonnes of vegetables per year.”
He added: “We look forward to seeing these HDB multi-story parking roofs transformed into productive vegetable farms that will contribute to Singapore’s goal of ’30 by 30 ‘, and we will provide farm assistance and guidance where needed.”
The 30 by 30 target refers to Singapore’s goal of producing 30 percent of the country’s nutritional needs locally by 2030.
Sustainability and Environment Minister Grace Fu said in a Facebook post on Wednesday that “the challenges of Covid-19 and climate change, along with other business and environmental pressures, pose a threat to the supply of critical resources such as Singapore Food “.
As land is scarce in Singapore, the SFA has been “opening up alternative spaces to grow food, such as empty buildings like the old Henderson High School and the roofs of parking lots.”
“Over the next several years, we will master-plan the larger Lim Chu Kang area and involve stakeholders and the public in the process,” he said, adding that there are longer-term plans to “expand agriculture in the region. Lim Chu Kang area and aquaculture off the south coast (of Singapore) ”.
Melvin Chow, senior director of SFA’s food supply resilience division, said in May that the launch of the tender for the nine sites came as a result of growing interest from both industry and the public in urban agriculture in community spaces.
Last year, a pilot urban farm, covering 1,900 square meters, was launched in a multi-story HDB car park in Ang Mo Kio. Known as Citiponics Farm, their goal is to grow up to four tons of vegetables a month.
The tender for the nine sites, which was launched on May 12, was closed on June 16 and the sites were awarded using the price-quality tender method, where both the bid price and quality attributes, such as production , the layout and design of the site, as well as the business and marketing plans, were taken into account in the evaluation of the tender.
The SFA said it will work with HDB to tender more multi-story rooftop parking sites for urban agriculture in the fourth quarter of the year, as the measure is also in line with HDB’s Green Cities Program to cool the cities of HDB through the use of greenery, such as on car park roofs.
More details of these bidding plans will be released at a later date.
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