Agribusiness and Trade: Sustainable food innovator seeks inspiration from NZ
Ray Poh from one of Singapore’s leading vertical farms talks with Tim McCready about what he can learn from New Zealand’s agriculture sector.
Artisan Green, founded in 2018 by Ray Poh, is a high-tech, indoor farm that uses stacked growing systems, precision automation and plant science to produce pesticide-free leafy greens in the densely populated city-state.
Poh didn’t start out in agriculture. After years working in the casino industry in Macau, he returned to Singapore looking for a new challenge that was meaningful and sustainable.
That led him to vertical farming, a sector combining climate-controlled growing environments with data and automation. With no prior experience, he began experimenting on a small indoor site with practical knowledge gained through site visits and workshops in Japan and Australia, and volunteering at other farms.
Now, Artisan Green is the country’s top producer of baby spinach as well as other leafy greens and herbs.
In land-scarce Singapore, space is precious. But so is food security.
Singapore imports more than 90% of what it eats, however, as part of its “30 by 30″ goal to produce 30% of its nutritional needs locally by 2030, the Government tenders parcels of land for agriculture. Artisan Green won its plot by demonstrating the commercial viability and technical sophistication of its operation.
From its original 300 square metre facility, the company is preparing to move into a new two-hectare site in Singapore’s designated agriculture zone. The expansion includes a 5500sq m vertical farm, along with significant outdoor greenhouse space and a 4000sq m facility to support post-harvest operations.
This will lift production from one tonne a month to 30 tonnes per month in the initial phase. The second phase will see this increase to 90 tonnes per month.
Poh says the larger scale will allow Artisan Green to bring prices down and make the locally grown produce more competitive.
“Our aim is to price between overseas imports and imported organic produce,” he says. “People support us even though we’re more expensive than imports because we’re local, and our customers – especially younger families – want to avoid exposing their children to pesticides.”
In partnership with Siemens, Artisan Green has digitised its crop recipes: water and nutrient profiles, lighting cycles and temperature settings, allowing consistent yields without relying on a large team of plant scientists.
“We encapsulate the entire growing cycle into our recipes,” he says, “which means that anyone using this platform in the future will not have to be a plant scientist to operate it.”
Poh explains that the intellectual property developed will help make future expansion easier. With the science centralised and scalable, Artisan Green can replicate its model overseas using local workers, without having to bring in expensive technical talent.
He likens it to McDonald’s. “You don’t have chefs in McDonald’s. You just need operators, while all the R&D is done in the central kitchen.”
Poh was in New Zealand last month as part of the Asia New Zealand Foundation’s ASEAN Young Business Leaders Initiative programme.
The delegation of 11 agribusiness entrepreneurs visited businesses around the country and attended Fieldays to learn about New Zealand’s agricultural sector, build local connections, and explore future business opportunities.
Poh says that for a city-based grower like him, seeing how New Zealand brings together science, industry and government in the agribusiness sector has been eye-opening.
“Agriculture is in New Zealand’s blood,” he says. “It’s not just individual farmers doing their own thing, you can see how industry and government work together to advance the sector.”
He points to New Zealand’s plant science research and downstream operations, including packhouses, marketing, and distribution networks, as areas that Singapore still needs to develop.
Too often, he says, small farms in Singapore fail not because they can’t grow food, but because they can’t get it to customers efficiently. It’s one reason why Poh started his own distribution company, which now handles produce from other local farms as well.
There are lessons New Zealand might take from Singapore too, particularly the value of investing in science to develop high-value crops that can command a premium.
“We can’t grow things like baby spinach outdoors in Singapore. It’s too hot. So we grow it indoors. But to make that work, you need margins, and you need to grow something premium,” Poh says.
And you need to know your science.
“A lot of people think AI or automation is going to revolutionise agriculture. But you can’t eat software,” he says.
“So you need to know your basics in plant science first, then automate from there.”
Poh sees both countries as coming at the same problem from different angles. New Zealand has deep-rooted farming knowledge and strong science institutions. Singapore brings innovation in urban food production.
If the future of food is global, then the best ideas will likely grow in both places.
