Urban farmers can soon start to rent the rooftops of nine multi-storey car parks managed by the Housing and Development Board (HDB) to grow crops, the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) said.

These are car parks located in housing estates such as Chua Chu Kang, Jurong West, Sembawang, and Tampines.

SFA said it is doing this as part of its strategy to achieve Singapore’s “30-by-30” goal -- to produce 30 per cent of the country’s nutritional needs domestically by 2030.

The nine sites will be launched for rental by public tender, the agency said.

These will add to the various alternative sites marked out for commercial farming in land-constrained Singapore.

These rooftop spaces are also in line with HDB’s Green Towns Programme to “intensify greening” in public housing estates, the agency added.

“The sites shall be used to farm vegetables and other food crops, as well as for other related purposes, such as the packing or storage of produce,” SFA said. 

The single sites available for tender suitable to testbed ideas are:

Block 513A Choa Chu Kang Street 51 (1,934 sqm)

Block 723A Tampines Street 72 (2,526 sqm)

Block 946A Hougang Street 92 (1,808 sqm)

Block 352A Ang Mo Kio Street 32 (3,171 sqm)

Block 260 Kim Keat Avenue (2,317 sqm)

There are two cluster sites in Sembawang and Jurong West meant to enable farms to “derive savings through production at scale”, SFA said. 

They are available for tender.

They are at:

Block 354 Admiralty Drive (2,551 sqm) and Block 316A Sembawang Vista (1,831 sqm)

Block 276 Jurong West Street 25 (2,974 sqm) and Block 273 Jurong West Avenue 3 (3,311 sqm)

Successful bidders of a cluster site will be awarded the combined spaces for the site.

More to be launched

The agency is working with HDB to launch more rooftop sites for urban farming by public tender in the second half of 2020.

Details will be released at a later date.

Citiponics urban vertical farm launched its pilot rooftop plot in February 2019.

The 1,800-sqm farm is located on top of Block 700 Ang Mo Kio Avenue 6.

It was meant to be able to produce about 4,000kg of vegetables a month at the height of its production.

Citiponics has grown vegetables such as nai bai (baby bok choy), kai lan (Chinese kale) and cai xin (Chinese flowering cabbage).

The SFA did not state what crops can be grown at the rooftop farms.

All photos via Citiponics