Number of Community Gardens at HDB Multi-Storey Car Park Rooftops and Implication for Singapore's "30 by 30" Food Security Goal

4 Ms Mariam Jaafar asked the Minister for National Development (a) to date, what is the number of community gardens and urban farms that have been set up on unutilised HDB multi-storey carparks (MSCP); and (b) in view of Singapore’s "30 by 30" goal, what is being done to facilitate and accelerate the conversion of unutilised HDB MSCP rooftops to community gardens.

The Minister of State for National Development (Mr Tan Kiat How) (for the Minister for National Development): Mr Speaker, as part of greenery intensification under the HDB Green Towns Programme, suitable HDB Multi-Storey Car Parks (MSCP) rooftops are being converted to community gardens or commercial urban farms. The introduction of urban farms helps to bring food production closer to the community.

Although the production volume is not significant, it contributes to Singapore’s "30 by 30" food production goal. To date, the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) and HDB have tendered out 16 MSCP sites for commercial urban farming, while HDB has repurposed six MSCP rooftops into community gardens.

SFA and HDB consider multiple factors when identifying suitable MSCP sites for urban farming. These include the utilisation rate of the MSCPs, the loading which the rooftops at each site can bear, the availability of water and electricity supply, waste discharge facilities, as well as the current and future developments plans for the surrounding HDB blocks. Agencies are evaluating the outcomes of the first two tenders before deciding on future plans.

In addition, NParks will continue to work with HDB, Town Councils, Residents' Committees and Neighbourhood Committees to encourage the setting up of more community gardens, including at suitable MSCP rooftop sites or by converting parts of the common green in estates to community gardens.

Mr Speaker: Ms Mariam Jaafar.

Ms Mariam Jaafar (Sembawang): I thank the Minister of State for his response. I have three questions.

Mr Speaker: A reminder to Members to keep the supplementary questions to two, please.

Ms Mariam Jaafar: Okay, two supplementary questions. Community gardening is something that has become very popular. My first question is to HDB. Often, in converting our MSCPs to community gardens or urban farms, we do run into challenges. For example, HDB requires the hiring of a Professional Engineer (PE) for various regulations and rules, which to be honest, I find that some of them are a little bit questionable. For example, can they bear the load? That is something HDB is supposed to have already assessed. And also, if they can bear cars and lorries, I think they can bear vegetable pots, and requiring a sprinkler for hydroponics and we have water all around us. Things like that.

The first supplementary question is, can HDB review some of these rules to narrow down the sets of requirements, so that the burden of hiring the PE is a little bit lower and therefore less costly for us?

My second supplementary question is, it is not just HDB, but we have other SFA regulations to deal with. For example, can people come up to the car park to buy the vegetables? In the business space, we have had the Pro-Enterprise Panel that has helped a lot to relieve some of these regulations and rules to make things much more business-friendly. If we are serious about our Green Plan, should we have a Pro-Sustainability Panel to similarly look through such issues, so that ground-up and community efforts in the heartlands and by our enterprises can just go a bit faster in loosening some of these regulations?

Mr Tan Kiat How: Mr Speaker, let me address Ms Mariam's second question first. She spoke about whether there could be a Pro-Enterprise Panel equivalent to look at the streamlining of rules to make it easier for operators and partners, in terms of using the MSCPs for urban and commercial farming. Just to share with the Member, indeed, SFA has been working closely with and supporting the farms awarded from the first MSCP tender.

For example, there is a Regulations Workgroup, which is led by SFA and Enterprise Singapore, and it conducts multi-agency consultation sessions for the successful tenderers of the rooftop sites for urban farming. As part of the continuing efforts by the Regulations Workgroup, an industry guide was launched in 2020 last year to provide companies in the farming industry with one consolidated knowledge resource.

SFA has also worked with HDB and other relevant agencies to prepare a guide, specifically on the setting up of urban farms on HDB MSCP rooftops. The guide consolidates key information of the various regulatory approvals under the purview of different agencies and maps out the agencies' approval processes involved in the set-up. I assure the Member that we will continue reviewing this and continue working on this as we progress on the projects.

On the first question, I appreciate the Member's questions around what kind of regulatory approvals are needed and what kind of qualifications, for example, for Professional Engineers are needed. Just wanted to share with the Member that these are the first two tenders, we are going through the processes, we are learning along the way and we will certainly streamline them.

But it is actually not so straightforward to set up an urban farming infrastructure on a MSCP. For instance, HDB car parks are designed primarily for parking and not for other uses. Just one simple example, we think of power or electricity. Actually, HDB carparks only come with three-phase 30 amps electricity supply. Farm operators, especially for those in high technology farming, may require three-phase 100 amps electricity supply. It requires extensive work to upgrade the main switchboard, power cables, even perhaps building a new consumer switch room. So, this infrastructure requires certifications and we do require time and proper supervision.