Speech by MOS Alvin Tan at the Singapore International Agri-Food Week Welcome Reception

Excellencies,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,

1.     A very warm welcome to the Singapore International Agri-Food Week.

2.     Since its launch in 2021, SIAW has grown into a flagship event for driving change in the world’s approach to food security.

3.     This year’s theme, as Anuj mentioned, is “Accelerating Climate Resilience in Asia-Pacific’s Agri-Food System”. It is, in fact, very timely.

4.     Singapore is somewhat of a food haven. You would come across, and please do come across, our chili crab. But tonight we're going to talk about a food which is close and dear to Singaporeans’ heart. It's called the humble Hainanese chicken rice. And if you haven't had it, I'm sorry to whet your appetite, I'm going to use it as a metaphor for what I'm about to share.

5.     The Hainanese chicken rice is one of the staples of Singaporean food fare. It's very simple, it's very balanced, but more so than not, it's deeply satisfying – I assure you, ask your Singaporean friends around. A good plate of chicken rice needs four ingredients. I know this because my grandmother was from Hainan, and she would cook this, and she would tell me, you need the chicken, of course, you need the sauce, you need the soup, and of course, you need the rice, and they have to be brought together in perfect harmony for a yummy plate of Hainanese chicken rice.

6.     Likewise, a resilient food system depends on many different ingredients and parts, working together, from farmers to scientists, from financiers to governments and policy makers like myself. And today, I’ll use this very familiar, delicious dish to help to illustrate and to address three main questions, that is, I think, top of mind.

a.     The first question is the challenge: how do we feed Asia against a changing climate?
b.     The second is the recipe: how do we strengthen Singapore's food resilience?
c.     And the third is the future: how are we future-proofing food through science and partnerships?

The Challenge of Food Resilience

7.     Let’s start with the challenge, and this is the challenge of food resilience. How do we feed Asia against a changing climate? Food resilience is a global challenge. A drought in one region or a conflict in another can quickly ripple across borders.

8.     Asia feels these challenges acutely. Asia needs to feed a rapidly growing population even as weather patterns become more unpredictable – sometimes too wet, sometimes too dry. We experience this in Singapore.

a.     Research by National University of Singapore’s (NUS)’s Tropical Marine Science Institute suggests that Southeast Asia will likely experience fewer heavy rainfall and more dry days.
b.     These shifts naturally will affect our farms, and the food that reaches our tables.

The Role of Water in Food Resilience

9.     That is why when we talk about food resilience, we must start with one ingredient that makes it all of this possible – water. Agriculture accounts for about 80% of Asia’s freshwater use. As water stress intensifies across our region, food production will be directly threatened.

10. It’s thus timely that Temasek, Rabobank, and Oliver Wyman are launching this year’s Asian Food Challenge Report, which focuses on water resilience.

a.     The report maps the scale of Asia’s water challenge, the central role of agri‑food in the issue, and the barriers to change.
b.     It also identifies proven technologies and practices that can enhance water efficiency, and underscores the need for even more collaboration among governments, industry players, farmers, and financiers.
c.     We believe that if we act together, Asia’s farms could cut water use by 10% by 2035. That’s about 214 billion cubic meters or nearly 300 times Singapore’s annual water use. That’s a lot of water we can use for chicken rice and chicken rice soup!

Singapore’s Approach to Food Resilience

11. The second question that I wanted to talk about is about the recipe, and Singapore's approach to food resilience. How do we strengthen Singapore's food resilience?

12. Singapore imports over 90% of our food. We import the vast majority of our food, and it's therefore imperative and critical that we ensure that we have a continued food supply. That’s why we developed Our Singapore Food Story 2 – it’s our national recipe for food resilience. Just as a good plate of chicken rice depends on the right recipe, our food system depends on four key ingredients. Let me talk about each ingredient.

a.     I joined Government from the private sector during the height of the COVID crisis at the Ministry of Trade and Industry. MTI was primarily focused on helping to secure and diversify our food sources, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. During the pandemic, we added new food sources, for example, Poland for eggs and Saudi Arabia for shrimps. So the first ingredient, import diversification, is critical to our strategy.
b.     The second ingredient, which is very important, is to grow local. Local production provides, of course, a regenerative source of food during supply disruptions like the COVID-19 pandemic. To this end, we are taking a more targeted approach, focusing on food items that can best leverage the strengths of our local farming ecosystem. By the way, the ingredients used in tonight's canapes – the mushrooms, prawns and barramundi – are local produce provided by local farmers, including Spore Garden, Qian Hu and The Fish Farmer.
c.       In addition to import diversification and growing local, the third ingredient is stockpile. Today, we maintain a strategic stockpile of essential food items – rice, frozen protein and canned vegetables. These reserves provide crucial buffer while alternative sources are secured.
d.       The fourth ingredient is global partnerships. That's why all of you are here, and that's why Singapore is a convener of many of these discussion platforms. We need to deepen our global partnerships to increase the resilience of food trade and to guard against global food supply disruptions. The recent examples illustrate this, including our strategic food partnership with New Zealand and our memorandum of cooperation with Vietnam on rice trade.

13.  Beyond these four ingredients which I have outlined this evening, we must also keep evolving and coming up with our new aspects of this recipe through research and innovation. That's where I think platforms like this can help us.

Driving Agri-Food Innovation in Singapore

14. In this regard, we launched the Singapore Food Story R&D Programme in 2020 to foster a conducive and supportive innovation ecosystem for research and innovation in agri-food. The programme drives innovation across four key domains: agriculture, aquaculture, future foods, and food safety. For future foods and food safety in particular, the first phase of the programme focused on seeding alternative protein R&D capabilities and building local food safety capabilities. Let me share some examples of stand-out dishes that have come out of this programme:

a.     The first stand-out dish is ProScreen, developed by a research team at the Singapore Institute of Technology. It automates protein profiling, cutting the time needed for protein functionality testing from eight weeks to just one week. This technology has already been licensed to Ha Li Fa, a local food manufacturer, to produce plant-based fish balls.
b.     Another stand-out dish is CRISP Meats, under the Agency for Science, Technology and Research, or A*STAR. CRISP Meats has developed over 20 specialised cell lines for cultivated chicken, quail and fish. This has produced two spin-off ventures, Meatiply and ImpacFat. Notably, ImpacFat cultivates Omega-3 rich fish fat and has recently expanded operations to Japan.
c.     With the emergence of innovative food tech, we must also critically prioritise food safety. Researchers from the A*STAR Bioinformatics Institute have developed AllerCatPro, a novel screening tool that predicts whether a protein could cause allergies with close to 100 percent accuracy. This is science keeping our satay safe.

15. Building on these foundations, we launched phase two of the Singapore Food Story R&D Programme in 2023. This is intended to enhance food security and food safety. Our approach to future foods focuses on developing alternative proteins that are safe, sustainable and scalable, but also delivers the taste, texture, and nutritional completeness that customers expect. We want these efforts to contribute to the further commercialisation of novel foods like alternative proteins, and for them to eventually contribute to Singapore’s and the world’s food security needs.

16. Tonight, I am pleased to announce that we will award $42 million to 11 promising initiatives under Phase Two of the Singapore Food Story R&D Programme.

a.     We will award four projects under the second Future Foods Grant Call, to address nutrition and functionality of alternative protein products. For example, the SIT team behind ProScreen will be building on their earlier successes to develop an AI-driven food processing platform to enhance the taste, functionality, and nutrition of alternative protein products
b.     We will also award six other projects under the Food Safety Grant Call, to advance novel, non-animal approaches for toxicological evaluation of food innovations. One such project, by A*STAR and NUS, aims to develop next-generation toxicokinetic systems for faster and more cost-effective food safety evaluations.

Building Global Collaborations

17. Then we have the 11th and final project, which strengthens Singapore’s talent pipeline and research capabilities by partnering global universities.

a.     Food security challenges transcend borders. Working with leading international institutions allow us to access complementary expertise and accelerate innovations beyond what any single country could achieve.

18. In 2024, NUS and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign launched the Centre for Precision Fermentation and Sustainability, with the support of Singapore’s National Research Foundation

a.     This partnership combines Singapore's urban food systems expertise with Illinois's agricultural research strengths, supporting efficient and sustainable production of high-value ingredients like healthy lipids, functional proteins and vitamins.
b.     We’ve also injected additional funding under Phase Two of the Singapore Food Story R&D Programme, to focus on translating R&D outputs into market-ready solutions - a point which Anuj mentioned earlier. We want translational research to go to market.

Conclusion

19. Ladies and gentlemen, we spoke of the challenge, the recipe and the future.

a.     How do we feed Asia with a changing climate,
b.     How do we strengthen Singapore's food resilience, and
c.     How do we future-proof food through science and partnerships.

20. Platforms like SIAW help to bring us together to deal with these challenges, come up with the right recipes, and work on future and novel solutions. Because progress happens when governments, industry, and researchers work together to share knowledge and turn all of your good ideas into action.

21. Singapore may be small, but our commitment to innovation allows us to serve up meaningful impact for the region, and the world.

22. Thank you for being part of this vital journey. I wish you productive discussions and meaningful connections in the week ahead.