One of the speakers at the 2019 NZILA Firth Conference is Bjorn Low, leader of a grow-your-own-food movement aimed at changing the Singaporean mindset around farming. In 2012 he co-founded Edible Garden City, with the hope of building urban farms to help Singapore tackle its food security challenges.

Born and raised in the tropical island city-state, he started his career as an online marketing specialist at the then BLUE Interactive a WPP Digital agency, having completed his MBA prior to that. His stint in marketing took him to London, where he worked on the global Debeers account as an Associate Business Director.

It was during a particularly harsh winter that he realised something was missing in his life, and that working in the corporate sector was not something he wanted to continue doing. Low quit his job, and for the next 3 years, travelled and worked on organic farms across Europe, before returning to his homeland.

Low will be speaking at the Christchurch conference on food and land use disruption.

LAA: Why did you start Edible Garden City?

BL: I had the opportunity to experience small scale decentralised farming in Europe and after getting my Diploma in Biodynamics agriculture from East Sussex, I wanted to bring some of what I’ve experienced back into Singapore. A city state with 5 million people food security and food sustainability needed a push in the right direction. Singapore imports 90 percent of what it consumes and has only 1 percent land dedicated to agriculture. I felt there was a possibility for farming to take a different approach targeting under utilised land. Singapore as a garden city, the green backbone of the city is well established, there was an opportunity to be creative here and to turn it into an edible garden city adding towards the food sustainability goals in the city.

LAA: What's the ethos behind it?

BL: As agriculture and farming is so inaccessible in Singapore, we wanted to connect urbanites back to nature and urban farming was a great tool for us to do so. We practice natural horticulture and farming techniques and use sustainable design ideologies and farming principles how we approach the build of the urban farms and food gardens. We believe strongly that these urban farms can provide CARE to the community from the food we grow that nourishes the community to the programs that we run that engages the community through horticulture therapy programs.

LAA: What does it do?

BL: Our design approach on using permaculture food foresting as one of our landscape design methodology to bring food gardens into commercial development in Singapore.