Could Community Gardens Play a Role in Boosting Singapore’s Food Security?
The global challenges of climate change, supply chain disruptions induced by Covid-19, and growing global demand for food put pressure on Singapore’s ‘30-by-30’ food security strategy. One way to produce more food locally would be to use unconventional means, a so-called a “fourth basket”, according to Jose M L Montesclaros, a research fellow with the Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS Centre), at NTU’s RSIS and Paul Teng, an adjunct senior fellow with the same centre as well as managing director and dean of NTU’s NIE International. Community Gardens are the potential “Fourth Basket” for leafy vegetables. “Kampong” clusters where communities cluster together within their neighbourhoods to form a corporate entity and digital technologies can be leveraged to increase productivity levels of community gardens as well as farmer expertise and marketing information on crops and pricing.