A FEASIBILITY STUDY ON ROOFTOP VERTICAL FARMING IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

The importance of sustainable development cannot be stressed more in the current times, especially for a small city-state Singapore where resources are of extreme scarcity. Out of the many aspects of being sustainable, achieving environmental sustainability and food resilience have been addressed. In the vision to achieve the abovementioned goals, various policies have been constantly implemented over the last few decades.

In the aspect of building green, BCA Green Mark Scheme and LUSH Programme are deemed effective among new developments, while the response rate among existing developments remain low. In terms of strengthening Singapore’s food resilience, improving local productivity and implementing high-tech farming method have been addressed. Thus a new concept of implementing vertical farming on top of roofs to not only increase local productivity but also green the building have been proposed. The feasibility of which has been studied in this paper.

In depth interviews have been conducted with representative parties from each industry to understand requirements and concerns from all aspects. The results indicated that technical and procedural feasibility are rather high and concerns are relatively easy to deal with. On the other hand, economic feasibility is the determining factor for a commercial vertical farm to sustain in the long run. To achieve commercial viability, a large-scale production to reap the economies of scale is preferred. Taking into consideration of social and technical concerns, operating the first few vertical farms on large industrial premises is proposed. Meanwhile, small vertical farms could be operated on smaller roofs to organize community activity to raise the awareness among public which the drive the market demand in the long run.