Loco for locavore: we talk to local farmers feeding the movement

What started out as a hobby turned into a business rife with hard work for Teh Chin Hua. He would regularly go to a kelong in Sembawang to fish – a practice that is now illegal – when the original owner wanted to give it up. “When I took over the farm, it was just to play,” Teh chuckles. “The owner told me that the operating cost is low, but when I took over I realised it’s actually very expensive so I had to start farming to earn money.”

Business was easier 12 years ago. Boats from Hong Kong would buy up his entire supply of tiger grouper. To increase profits, Teh bought another kelong in Pulau Ubin. But four years ago, the boats stopped coming to Singapore. That’s when 28-year-olds Wong Jing Kai and Bryan Ang stepped in. Ang met Teh on a fishing trip and decided to help him with his struggles. Like true millennials, they turned to the internet. “We wanted to bridge the gap between Singaporeans and local seafood,” explains Wong. “Normally, you'd start with restaurant deliveries but we wanted to reach out to the community first – we went door to door around our estate before becoming the first kelong to establish an online store.”

Aside from supplying to restaurants like Level33, Salted and Hung, Dehesa and Labyrinth, Ah Hua also has a couple of eateries of its own to showcase its produce. “The biggest challenge for us is the lack of appreciation for local seafood,” says Wong, “people would rather pay slightly less to get something from the market, which is not as fresh as ours because we do same-day deliveries. We really value quality – right down to the feed – and customer satisfaction.”

The expiry of the land lease is a common challenge cited by farmers in Kranji Countryside. Over at Hay Dairies, Singapore’s only goat farm, they face similar issues. “Building a new farm takes three to four years and requires at least five to eight million dollars,” shares John Hay, the second-generation owner of the farm that’s been around since 1988. “With a 20 year lease, that only leaves us with 16 years to recoup our investment.”

As such, farms are trying to diversify their products and increase awareness of the area as a whole. “The farming community is tight-knit,” says Wong. “There’s mushrooms at Kin Yan Agrotech, blue pea flower nasi lemak at Bollywood Veggies and so much more to explore here that’s different from what you can find in the city.”

“We want to make something really awesome instead of focusing on farming for commodities,” says Christopher Leow, the general manager of Edible Garden City. “We focus on specialty products like kale and microgreens that people can order through our subscription box programme to make a salad purely out of local produce.”

But quality isn’t something most people associate with locally farmed vegetables – with many preferring imports from Europe or Japan. Edible Garden City plans on changing that by using better quality inputs and compost made in-house with the help of black soldier flies.

“We need to change mindsets because people still think that farming is about food scarcity, making it a numbers game,” says Leow. “Farmers need to be able to focus on quality instead of scale. When that happens, wastage is reduced because people see the value in the product and use it more carefully.”