Category — Asia

In land scarce Singapore, a new crop of farmers and gardeners are proving that we are not too small to grow our own food

By Annette Tan
Today Online
20 April, 2013

Excerpt:

Singapore — It’s not often in Singapore that one can boast about sharing a meal with the farmer who grew the vegetables that are on your plate. Yet there we were, breaking bread with Singapore’s new crop of urban farmers, all bent on proving that it is possible to grow and eat our own produce in this concrete jungle.

On our plates were a mix of locally- grown abalone and willow mushrooms tossed with red spinach gleaned from the very first harvest by Comcrop, an urban farming initiative whose pilot plot is a 400 square foot aquaponics test farm in the National Youth Council Academy Greens.

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Choi Chang-hwan, a 71-year-old retired worker, right, and his wife show off the rooftop garden of their house in Junghwa-dong, Seoul. Photo by Park Sang-moon.

The Agriculture Ministry announced in June it will push for measures to encourage over 5 million city dwellers, about 10 percent of the country’s entire population, to participate in urban farming by 2020.

By Kim Mi-ju
Korea Joongang Daily
Sept 16, 2011

Excerpt:

When Choi Chang-hwan, a 71-year-old retired oil company worker, wakes up every morning to sweet chirpings of sparrows, his top priority isn’t turning the pages of the morning newspaper while waiting for breakfast, like other aged Korean men.

After jumping out of bed, Choi goes straight to the rooftop of his two-story house in Junghwa-dong, northeastern Seoul, to check the progress of his homegrown vegetables.

“There’s nothing like planting a seed, nurturing it and harvesting it,” Choi said. “It’s amazing to see how vegetables go from my roof to my table. I water them every day and feed them with compost. The seeds sprout and the vegetables grow beautifully.”

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‘A Real Urban Farm’ in Hong Kong. Pokfulam is a residential area on Hong Kong Island, at the western end of the Southern District.

“Pokfulam is like an oasis in the desert, and there is nothing else like it on Hong Kong Island.”

By Grace Tsoi
Hong Long Asia Cities
Feb 21, 2013

Excerpt:

The death of agriculture in Hong Kong is an unquestionable fact. It is hard to believe that farming is still a regular activity in Pokfulam Village—a place that is so close to the urban heart of our city.

While a few households are still tilling the soil in Pokfulam Village, Chan Kwan-tin’s farm is the most eye-catching of them all. There is a large patch of green in front of his little house where he grows a dozen varieties of vegetables, ranging from turnips to watercress. This is Chan’s proudest project; he single-handedly transformed the barren land into a flourishing farm. He carefully carved the fields into rows and planted different vegetables in each area. Across the fields he has hung some colorful, fluffy dolls to keep the birds at bay. Chan’s farm is comprised of two parts that are connected by concrete paths and stone steps. Chan built them all by himself, and the stone stairs are a special point of pride.

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Metro Manila – Bahay Kubo Organics

By Enzo Pinga, Ryan Aguas, Maximillian Pascual

Team Bahay Kubo Organics hopes to bring communities together at the center of the growing and selling process by empowering them with urban aquaponic farming.

Bahay Kubo Organics seeks to provide solutions for environmental degradation. This project is particularly concerned with environmental degradation caused by waste by-products from traditional farming. Other problems this project seeks to address are the disruption of food supplies from weather volatility, lack of nutrition, and limited livelihood opportunities for communities. It proposes the use of an aquaponics farming system, and hopefully bring communities together at the center of the growing and selling processes.

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As a first step, a farmer company was set up to manage micro-loans through a revolving fund.

Water is a critical resource in urban settings, with the poor often being forced to endure unreliable supplies and contaminated wells.

International Water Management Institute (IWMI)
Issue 16 – 2013

Excerpt:

The urban poor in South Asia often lack livelihood opportunities and adequate nutrition. One way to address both these shortcomings is to encourage urban farming. Projects facilitated by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), one of the partners of the Resource Centres on Urban Agriculture and Food Security (RUAF) Foundation, assisted urban gardeners and entrepreneurs in Gampaha, Sri Lanka, with marketing, business planning and agricultural water management. The initiative led to a policy amendment in Sri Lanka’s Western Province followed by a process to incorporate urban agriculture in the National Agriculture Policy.

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Sinhala is the mother tongue of the Sinhalese people, who make up the largest ethnic group in Sri Lanka, numbering about 15 million.

Pawele Arthikaya Nangwana Nagarika Krushikarmaya means Urban Agriculture that Improves Family Economy.
By Dr. Thilak T. Ranasinghe – Email: thithura@sltnet.lk
The book has pictures and line drawings with 272 pages. Sri Lanka

Forward is written by Thusitha Malalasekera – Veteran Science Writer -cum- Health Communicator

He trusts that the book fills very much needed gap in Sinhala Agricultural Literature which paves the way to an active lifestyle change by guiding people for urban agriculture (UA) while observing the concept of the Family Business Garden (FBG). By so doing, the book fulfils one of the national needs in the country.

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The Urban Farmer from Singaporean of the Day on Vimeo.

Founder of Edible Gardens, he hopes to help everyone in Singapore understand the importance of food growing.

He dreams of building a collective of urban farms in Singapore

By Olivia
Green Drinks Singapore
June 20, 2012

Excerpt:

We’re a team of young and aspiring Singaporeans who are searching for a way to address our food security issue. Our project is located in tropical Singapore where 5 million people live somewhat harmoniously together on a 699 sq km space. We import 93% of our food from our gracious neighbours while we try to grow 7% of it locally. As you can imagine we are not in a very favourable position and the edible garden city project seek to change some of that. We are motivated by the belief that urban farming should be a common and accessible livelihood in land scarce Singapore and hope to encourage dialogue about the role of agriculture and labour in our culture and to strengthen a movement towards the re-valuation of agriculture, the true value of food and the power of the community.

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Author of ‘Japanese Farm Food’, Nancy Singleton Hachisu moved from California to Japan in 1988, with the intention to stay for a year, learn Japanese, and return to the United States. Instead, she fell in love with a farmer, the culture, and the food, and has made the country her home. Nancy has taught cooking classes for nearly 20 years, and also runs a children’s English immersion program that prepares home-cooked meals with local ingredients.

Japan Ministry of Agriculture “Farming Frontier 2012″ – December 1 and 2, 2012, in Tokyo

Excerpt from Nancy’s book:

I realized it wasn’t enough just to cook for them, so a few years ago, we started a kitchen garden. Now even the little ones have jumped into the fray. In the morning, when I call out, “Who wants to help cook?” I get about ten miniature assistants climbing up on the stools around the table anxious to help peel potatoes or smash organic canned tomatoes.

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Workshops participants were amazed to see how Papua chili, Italian eggplants, curry leaves, rice, cucumber, green grass jelly, basil, bananas, peppers, lavender, kale, spinach, oregano, rosella, lemon grass, moringa, passion fruit and many more thrive there.

Urban farming workshop held in private home in Jakarta

By Omar Niode Foundation
Aug 9, 2012

Excerpt:

At the household level, urban agriculture can be a source of income, can provide direct access to a larger number of nutritionally rich foods (vegetables, fruit, meat) and a more varied diet, can increase the stability of household food consumption against seasonality or other temporary shortages, and can increase the time mothers spend caring for their children, as opposed to non-agricultural activities that are more likely to be located further away from home.

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The farm currently has 120 vertical towers, and hopes to increase the number to 300 by next year.

By Olivia Siong
Channel News Asia
24 October 2012
(Must see. Mike)

Excerpt:

SINGAPORE: Singapore now has its first commercial vertical farm, which means more local options for vegetables.

The technique uses aluminium towers that are as tall as nine metres, and vegetables are grown in troughs at multiple levels.

The technique utilises space better — an advantage for land-scarce Singapore.

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Community Gardens in Singapore. Link here.

National Parks: Let’s Make Singapore our Garden

Excerpt:

For over forty years, Singapore has enjoyed economic success. At the same time, Singapore has become greener, despite increased urbanisation. Satellite photographs show that almost half of Singapore (47% in 2007) is covered in greenery, compared to about 36% in 1986.

As Singapore continues to urbanise, we need more innovative ways to improve our living environment. Imagine Singaporeans having a home within a garden, instead of just having a garden outside a home.

Singapore has come a long way since our first greening efforts in the 1950s.

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Yang Hee-sook (right) and her family visit their allotment at the Daewon Weekly Farmstay in Seocho-gu on October 6 to take care of their cabbages. Photo by Lee Sang-sub/The Korea Herald.

On 23,000 square metres of land here, where the Seoul Metropolitan Government had once planned to build an opera house, lies the city’s new dream of a greener future.

By Kim Young-won and Sang Youn-joo
The Korea Herald
13-10-2012

Excerpt:

With beads of sweat dripping from their foreheads and the tips of their noses, groups of people work on a Saturday morning watering vegetables and crops, pulling out weeds and scattering organic fertilizer over fields.

If it wasn’t for the wall of skyscrapers in the not-so-distant background, the scene could be mistaken for a typical farm field in the countryside.

Yet, this is Nodeul Island in the Han River, right in the middle of Seoul.

On 23,000 square metres of land here, where the Seoul Metropolitan Government had once planned to build an opera house, lies the city’s new dream of a greener future.

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Schoolchildren line up to thresh rice on the grounds of Choongmoo Elementary School in central Seoul, Monday. Last year, the school started a project to have students grow crops and vegetables to learn to respect life and help eliminate bullying. Korea Times photo by Kim Bo-eun.

Farming activities have been cited as preventing bullying and violence in schools, which has become more frequent of late.

By Kim Bo-eun
Korea Times
Oct 10, 2012

Excerpt:

Fall is the joyous time of harvests. And although the nation’s urban centers are devoid of harvesting, in Choongmoo Elementary School, central Seoul, there is an initiative to bring back some of the season’s associated joys.

Its school grounds were filled with the sound of blades cutting crops and threshing machines, as well as laughter, Monday, as students helped to harvest the rice crops they planted in the spring.

“Everything is fascinating and fun,” exclaimed second-grader Lee Min-so, who was evidently excited about the activities. “It’s great that we can experience farming at our school.”

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Green thumb: Kenji Nakahara, who spent his entire working life at Toyota Motor Corp., tends vegetables he is growing on a farm in Toyota, Aichi Prefecture, in July. KYODO

City provides all the training as baby boomers leave automaker

By Yui Matsutake
Japan Times
Aug. 30, 2012

NAGOYA — In the city of Toyota, Aichi Prefecture, a growing number of retired corporate employees have taken up farming thanks to a city-run agricultural training program.

The city, the home base of Toyota Motor Corp., launched the training center in 2004 ahead of a surge in the number of retirees when baby boomers began reaching retirement age in around 2007.

It was a big hit and now more than 250 participants are actively engaged in farming.

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A woman walks past vegetable boxes at City Farm, an organic farm set up on the rooftop of a tower block in Hong Kong.

“I am happier eating what I grow rather than food I buy from supermarkets.”

By Agence France-Presse
August 14, 2012

Excerpt:

“I think urban farming is becoming more popular… we have grown bigger in a short time,” said Osbert Lam, the founder of “City Farm”, which has about 100 regular gardeners two years after opening.

There are 400 growing boxes on the 10,000-square-foot (930-square-metre) rooftop available to rent for between HK$150-200 ($20-25) a month each.

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By Eva Tam
Wall Street Journal
Aug 4, 2012

A rooftop garden maintained by the intellectually disabled may be a new solution to a healthier and happier living in Hong Kong. The WSJ’s Eva Tam explains how this project can benefit one of the most densely-populated cities in the world.

Urban farming, Korea’s new eco-friendly trend

KBS World
2012-07-03
KBS World Radio’s news and feature programs help you explore the multiple facets of Korean culture, politics and society.

Excerpt:

The city of Seoul has proclaimed this year as the beginning of urban farming and invested 6.5 billion won, nearly 5.7 million dollars, to turn 1% of the city area into urban farms. The city government plans to convert unused patches of land found throughout the city into green farming zones. An urban farming park located in Nodeul Island in central Seoul is a part of the municipal government’s new green policy. About 70 different rice varieties were planted in the park’s 10-million square meters of land, named the “toad field,” because of the toads living near the rice fields.

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Photo by By QIRanger.com.

By QIRanger.com
June 4, 2012

Excerpt:

Looking out my windows I can see several swatches of land where the residents of Dongtan produce crops. Mostly radish, cabbage, and peppers are grown to make the delicious kimchi Koreans are so fond of; however, from time to time, I will see something else. They don’t grow it because they’re trying to earn extra money, but rather because Dongtan used to be farmland. Since Samsung moved in, the land’s been gobbled up and the farms have disappeared.

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See videos here.

Using vacant land in Jakarta

Jakarta Globe
May 15, 2012
3 Segments

Sigit Kusumawijaya and the group Indonesia Berkebun (Indonesia Gardening) have started a social movement to use vacant land in Jakarta and other cities to plant food crops. Find out how they did it.

Insight Indonesia is the Jakarta Globe’s talk show – in English – on Beritasatu TV. Host Lin Neumann, the founding editor of the Jakarta Globe, interviews business leaders,

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TEDxBandung – in the Indonesian language

Oct. 2011

Ridwan Kamil is one of the biggest names in modern Indonesian architecture. As an architect with a love for green, he uses creative design to solve urban issues. He is famously known as the designer of Aceh’s tsunami museum and Rasuna Epicentrum (Jakarta). His house was made from 30,000 used Red Bull bottles. In 2009 he was received the Top Ten Business Architecture Award from BCI Asia and Architect of the Year from Elle Decor Magazine.

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