We grow the farms of the future under the Singapore sun today

From rooftop to tabletop. Specialising in pesticide free crop production, Agritisan is a new start up developing vertical hydroponic systems in Singapore to diversify local produce options with a goal of providing social solutions to food vulnerability. Meatless Movement recently had a chance to chat with the two founders Clement and Furlyn.

We harvest everyday!
@agritisan

Tell us more about Agritisan

We are Agritisan, a local urban rooftop hydroponics farm that is pushing towards the nation’s initiative of 30 by 30 goal – to produce 30% of its local nutritional needs by 2030. Agritisan was founded in 2020 and is currently situated at Ubi. Our focus is to develop unique hydroponics towers that produce a high yield of vegetables while saving costs on energy resources. We sell freshly grown and pesticide-free vegetables and herbs to our dear customers, who are concerned with overseas vegetables that contain chemicals and those who aim to eat healthily. We provide them with the reassurance of our local fresh vegetables and herbs to fulfill their nutritional needs.

The name ‘Agritisan’ comprises two words, ‘agriculture’ and ‘artisan’, which combine to give the meaning – “Art of Farming”. The urban technology itself, shifting farms from large agricultural land spaces into our dense concrete jungle, is transforming and we wanted to give the futuristic impression of our farm, a haute couture of farming.

Our aim is to have our farms all over Singapore so that the nation can achieve its food security goal and Singaporeans can buy fresh vegetables anywhere with a very short farm-to-table distance.

We hope to bring everyone in Singapore more of lovely greens
@AGRITISAN

Agritisan was founded by Clement Clayrant and Furlyn Chow during the COVID period, after the government announced the 30 by 30 goal that incentivizes passionate local entrepreneurs to run agritech startups. It was a blessing in disguise for us since we have a passion for farming. Knowing this wonderful opportunity, we came up with an idea to start an agritech company to promote local fresh produce to people in Singapore, thus, promoting eating healthily as well. We also label ourselves as a social enterprise, gathering Singapore communities to learn the importance of growing our own vegetables and teaching them how to operate our farms.

We would also aim to change the stereotype of “hydroponics vegetables are not rich in nutrition”. Our vegetables have been tested to give the same and even more amount of nutrition than the current soil-grown vegetables. All thanks to our recipes of growing healthy and nutritious vegetables using our farming system.

We grow a wide variety of vegetables and herbs: bok choy, various kinds of lettuces, arugula (rocket leaves), sweet basil, thai basil, dill, tarragon, rosemary, lavender leaf, blue pea flowers and many more.

Our two bestsellers are our freshly grown sweet basil and dill. Here are some images of pesto and dill butter made with our sweet basil and dill by our customers.

Besides freshly grown vegetables and herbs, we also sell mesclun salads which are convenient to eat while you are in a rush. Just simply open it and season it with salt and pepper. Our salads contain butterhead lettuce, oakleaf lettuce, batavia lettuce, lolla rossa lettuce, arugula, with a sprinkle of tarragon to add flavour into it.

Share with us how urban farming is done

There are three parts to the farming process – harvesting, conducting quality checks, and packaging. The harvesting process takes about 1 hour. It usually starts at 9.10am and ends at approximately 10.10am.

After harvesting, we then moved on to the most important part, which is conducting quality checks. We want to assure our customers that Agritisan’s vegetables are of their best quality. Therefore, we are very strict on our quality control. Our quality control is done manually by our workers, whereby any damaged or “ugly” leaves will be put aside. This part would usually take around 50 minutes as we do not want to rush the process. This is so that only the top-quality vegetables will be given to our customers. Rest assured that the failed vegetables will not be disposed of. Instead, they will be distributed to our workers as they can still be consumed, so nothing will be wasted.

After quality checks are done, the last part would be packaging. Our workers will gently pack according to the customers’ orders as vegetables can be damaged if they are handled roughly during the packaging process. We used food-grade safe plastic bags, which will be sealed afterward. The packages of vegetables will then be placed inside brown kraft bags with handles so that they will be easy for our customers to carry.

Some of the challenges we faced are having rainy days during the harvesting period, and quality checking can be tiring.

Harvesting could not be carried out during rainy days, as the crops would be wet. This can cause them to turn bad faster after being packaged. The safety of our workers is our top priority as well. It can be dangerous for our workers to harvest under the rain. When we faced days with bad weather, we would communicate with our customers to ask for a later delivery timing. We are very thankful that our customers have been very understanding and supportive of us, and agreed to receive at later timings.

They’re all up for harvest today too!
@AGRITISAN

As mentioned before, quality checks can take up some time, which can be a tiring process. However, with the goal in mind that our customers will be very satisfied upon receiving the top-quality vegetables, we pushed on to maintain our high standards. Our determination and customers’ trust in us are what keeps us going!

Our products can be purchased by either: