SINGAPORE: Vincent Wei walked slowly across a dusty stretch of land in southern Malaysia, stopping now and then to point at nothing in particular. Here, he said, would stand a greenhouse. Over there, rows of leafy greens. To the small group of Singaporean farmers trailing behind him, the empty field wasn’t hard to imagine filling up. What they were really seeing was hope.
Back home, many of them are barely hanging on. Land is scarce, electricity is expensive, and costs keep rising in a city where farming has long been pushed to the margins. Wei’s message was simple: just across the border, things could be different. Cheaper land. Lower power bills. A fighting chance to stay afloat. The plot they stood on is set to become part of a new Johor–Singapore special economic zone (SEZ), a cross-border experiment that could reshape how Singapore feeds itself.
A cross-border lifeline for struggling farmers
The SEZ, launched last year, is a $123 million bet on cooperation. Once complete, it is expected to produce 10,000 tons of fresh food annually. For Singapore’s struggling farmers, it has quickly become a rare bright spot.
Wei, whose agri-tech company Archisen has partnered with Southern Catalyst in a venture backed by Malaysia’s Ministry of Finance, believes the 200-acre site will fill up fast. His pitch: 25-year land leases that come with ready-built infrastructure and electricity—costs that often cripple farmers in Singapore.
“We can help them bring their costs down,” he said, raising his voice over the rumble of excavators clearing palm trees nearby. The plan is to get farms up and running by the third quarter of this year. Wei knows the timeline is tight, but he doesn’t think there’s time to waste. “If we wait too long,” he said, “some of these farms won’t survive.”
High-tech dreams meet harsh realities at home
Singapore has spent years trying to revive farming, even as skyscrapers and housing estates swallowed up what little land remained. Just this month, it unveiled the world’s tallest vertical farm—an S$80 million project designed to churn out up to 2,000 tons of vegetables a year.
But the reality has been far less glossy. Farm closures and failed agri-tech startups have piled up, exposing how hard it is to make high-tech farming profitable. Rising energy prices, labor shortages, supply chain disruptions, and tighter access to funding have all taken a toll.
Those pressures have forced Singapore to dial back its ambitions. A once-bold goal to produce a third of its nutritional needs locally by 2030 has been revised. The new aim is more modest: meeting 20% of fiber and 30% of protein needs by 2035, driven by lingering fears of global disruptions like the pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
Money has also dried up. Investment in Singapore agriculture ventures peaked at $1.1 billion in 2021, but by last year had fallen to about a tenth of that, according to AgFunder. Wei describes the moment bluntly as a “fundraising winter,” where survival—not growth—is the priority.
Cheaper produce, deeper dependence?
For many companies, the Johor-Singapore SEZ now looks like the only way forward. Vegeponics, a Singapore-based grower, is expanding its container and vertical farms into the zone. By operating on both sides of the border, it expects to cut monthly costs—sometimes as high as S$70,000—by around a third, said marketing manager Jesper Fan.
That could translate into more stable prices for shoppers in one of the world’s most expensive cities, where everyday items like milk and eggs are often flown in from as far away as Australia and Poland.
Still, the shift comes with uncomfortable questions. While farmers may find breathing room, Singapore could become even more reliant on food grown beyond its borders. For growers who once dreamed of strengthening food security at home, the future may lie elsewhere.
Wei sees it differently. He believes the hub can knit the region closer together and make food supplies more resilient—not just for Singapore and Malaysia, but beyond. Interest, he said, is already coming from farmers in Japan, South Korea, and China.
What began as casual walks through overgrown fields is now turning into serious conversations about farm layouts and investment schedules.
“It’s about time we did something like this,” Wei said. “If you don’t work with your neighbor, who do you work with?”
