New plan to overhaul flagging local fish farming industry

Aims include boosting production, providing avenue to sell products

- Ariel Yu

A sweeping plan to overhaul Singapore's flagging aquaculture sector was announced on Nov 19, with the aim of boosting fish production while safeguarding the marine environment, and providing farmers with an avenue to sell their products.

The Singapore Aquaculture Plan (SAP), introduced in 2022, includes new initiatives that will provide farmers with greater access to high-quality fish eggs and the ability to sell their produce to the Chinese market.

Under the plan, fleshed out by Senior Minister of State for Sustainability and the Environment Koh Poh Koon during the Asia-Pacific Agri-Food Innovation Summit on Nov 19, farmers will also be able to, for a period, tap the intellectual property of new solutions or research developed under the existing agri-food AquaPolis research initiative for free.

According to the Singapore Food Agency's (SFA) 2023 food statistics, there were a total of 131 local aquaculture farms - including 98 sea-based seafood farms and 33 land-based seafood farms - which produced 7.3 per cent of seafood consumed in 2023.

News of this plan comes on the back of multiple reports on Singapore's flagging farming sector. In October, The Straits Times reported that the number of sea-based fish farms had dropped to 74 that month.

"For a small nation like Singapore that imports more than 90 per cent of our food we consume here, we are particularly vulnerable to global food supply disruptions," said Dr Koh.