Singapore Unveils Singapore Food Story 2, a comprehensive approach to food resilience
Asia-Pacific’s agri-food system is at a critical point, facing challenges like climate volatility, water scarcity, evolving consumer demands, and natural resource degradation.
As the world’s largest and one of the most dynamic agri-food market, it holds significant potential to spearhead the development of innovative solutions to future-proof food systems, ensure nutritional security, and support sustainable growth, both regionally and globally, for future generations.
Now is the time for strategic partnerships and visionary leadership to shape the future of food — for the region, and for the world.
Given climate change and geopolitical developments, countries are increasingly vulnerable to global shocks and disruptions in our food supply. In recent years, we have seen how a single event could send ripple effects through the global market, disrupting the supply of food on our tables. The Russia-Ukraine conflict showed this clearly. It is happening miles away from Singapore. Yet, by disrupting the global supply of fertilisers and animal feed, the conflict indirectly triggered export restrictions on food items in Singapore. This is why food supply resilience has been a major concern for many countries, including Singapore. We have been looking ahead to anticipate new risks and stay resilient in an ever-changing world.
Grace Fu, Minister for Sustainability and the Environment explained at Asia-Pacific Agri-Food Innovation Summit that “Six years ago, we embarked on the “30-by-30” vision for a grow local strategy to build food supply resilience. We acknowledged that this was a challenging aspiration given our small and undeveloped agri-food sector, our limited land resources and high operating cost environment. Yet building up local production was necessary to provide an assured and regenerative source of food during supply disruptions. Together with other pillars of our food strategy, it gives us more options and flexibility in times of need. Collectively, that was the Singapore Food Story strategy.”
“Since then, we have had to deal with the impact of supply disruptions caused by border closures due to COVID-19, export bans by some countries and animal diseases. Over the years, we have gained resolve to secure our food supply. We have made progress in building our food security and gained experience in growing the industry. We have strengthened import diversification, increasing the number of import sources that importers can tap on. We have expanded our stockpiles. We have also been putting in place the building blocks to grow the local agri-food sector. These include planning for land and infrastructure, supporting ecosystem growth through the adoption of technology and better farming practices, and encouraging offtake of local produce” adds Grace Fu.
Singapore now ready for the next chapter of our food security plan – the Singapore Food Story 2. Singapore Food Story 2 aims to bring about overall food resilience – ensuring we have sufficient food supply in times of disruption. It replaces “30-by-30″, which is an aspiration only for local production. We can complement local production with other food strategies to achieve food resilience. We have re-assessed our needs, our resources, and our capabilities. And with these considerations, we are expanding our portfolio of strategies. To better respond to the increasing interconnectedness in agri-food trade, we have also further developed a fourth pillar on “Global Partnerships”.
