How Sustenir Agriculture does farming without farmland
Benjamin Swan, co-founder, and CEO of Sustenir Agriculture is an Australian living in Singapore who wanted to find a way to grow produce for his own salads. “I’d buy a bag of [imported] lettuce and within 24 hours you could literally watch the produce melt in the bag. It was just because of the time it took to get to us.” The exorbitant carbon footprint it takes to import food from abroad pushed Swan to consider indoor farming. “We have this centralized farming system, which is based on geographic constraints. One kilo of lettuce imported from Australia generates 7.2 kg of carbon. We can focus on these imports, displace that carbon emission and waste.” According to Swan, one kilo of lettuce can be produced at Sustenir Agriculture with one-twelfth of the carbon emissions it takes to import lettuce from Australia.
Starting with experiments in a basement in Singapore, Swan and his business partner experimented with techniques he learned from traveling to Japan and the Netherlands. “We started doing some pretty crazy stuff like chilling the water and growing arugula at 42 degrees and 100% humidity. We kind of had that eureka moment that we could grow impossible products that would otherwise not grow in Singapore, that it could be commercially viable.”
While keeping his day job, the budding indoor farmer spent his weekends and after-office hours connecting with academics and farmers from all over the world to learn more about this industry.
“I took bites from what everyone was doing, because everyone was doing things so differently, and from that, I just formed my own hypothesis on how growing would happen.” With the knowledge gained, he focused on “growing impossible products at impossible places”.
“If we keep going with farming the way it’s being done right now, we’re going to need farming land the size of Brazil by 2050 to feed the growing population. That means more deforestation, more pesticide run-off into rivers killing fish – it’s not great.
“It’s not to say that traditional farming is the devil, but we’re saying that we need to fix it because it’s not sustainable.”
Sources:
- https://youtu.be/vjG8M1b-bN4
- https://qz.com/1988596/the-urban-farm-start-up-sustenir-is-undercutting-importers-by-30-percent/
- https://www.mti.gov.sg/FutureEconomy/Leaders-of-Transformation/Sustenir-Agriculture
- https://www.greenqueen.com.hk/sustenir-singapore-kale-hong-kong-with-launch-of-vertical-farm-in-the-city-3/
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