SINGAPORE – Cars are not the only things under shelter at a multi-storey carpark in Hougang.

Vegetables such as bayam (Chinese spinach), chye sim and kale are grown at the Greenhood vertical farm situated on the roof of Block 946A Hougang Street 92, which was opened to the public on Sunday. 

Besides maximising land use, Greenhood stands out from other rooftop farms because its vegetables are grown in a climate-controlled greenhouse. This means the vegetables on the 1,808 sq m farm are not exposed to the elements of weather, and pesticides are not needed. 

Greenhood, a commercial company, won a government tender three years ago to run the rooftop farm, which began operations in June.

Seedlings are first grown on an ebb and flow table, where they are watered and the water drained, for three weeks until they are about 5cm tall. They are then transferred to vertical aeroponic panels and fed nutrient-rich water for another three weeks until they are ready for harvest. 

Engineer Niven Ang (below), 27, harvested some bayam at the end of a farm tour.

“The harvesting was a lot easier than typical soil harvesting because you can just pluck (the vegetables) off the columns. Whereas in soil harvesting, you have to uproot the entire thing from the soil,” he said.

His wife Cheryl Lee, 25, a healthcare worker, said: “We got to try the produce from there, and it’s really fresh compared with what we get in the market.”

Greenhood founder and chief executive Gaurav Saraf (pointing in the picture below) gave up his job as a director at a Japanese bank to devote himself to running the farm, because he wanted to do “something tangible and indisputable in terms of actual contribution to the planet”. 

“When you look at current farming practices, they’re not very sustainable,” he said. “It takes thousands of kilometres for crops to reach consumers. Then there’s all that carbon footprint and consumers also don’t get fresh produce. So I find that the whole system is broken and there’s a lot of food waste as well.”

While he was cooped up at home during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, Mr Saraf discovered that growing his own vegetables was a “very surreal experience”.

“The growing part was a lot of fun and also the eating part, because I had never experienced something so fresh, (so) we started eating salads very often.”

In May 2020, the Singapore Food Agency launched a tender for nine rooftop sites at multi-storey carparks to be converted for use to farm vegetables and other food crops.

It was one of the agency’s strategies to increase local food production towards Singapore’s “30 by 30” goal – to produce 30 per cent of the country’s nutritional needs locally by 2030.

Mr Saraf, who holds a degree in mechanical engineering as well as a master’s in business administration, was one of the bidders for the tender.

He was awarded the tender in September 2020, and construction work began in October 2022.

The Indian national, who worked in Singapore for a decade in the finance sector, said running the start-up has been challenging, from securing the necessary permits to the “excruciating” process of constructing the farm on the carpark rooftop.

Now that the farm has been set up, Mr Saraf’s next challenge is to secure more customers such as restaurants and individuals. The farm, which sells its produce on online platforms, will deliver purchases to customers.

“On the one hand, you can choose convenience. But on the other hand, I would implore people to try out our greens and taste the difference for yourself,” he said.

Mr Rovin Chew, 38, who works in IT operations, visited the farm with his seven-year-old son Ventus after seeing a poster about the event at his block, which faces the multi-storey carpark. 

Mr Chew said he would be keen to learn from Greenhood if it were to conduct courses on soilless farming.

The farm has a market that is open every Sunday for customers to purchase vegetables, which are priced between $2 and $6. Greenhood can be reached at https://www.greenhood.sg