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[강혜지]

DPM Lawrence Wong at the Launch of the "Feeding Our Future" Exhibition

DPM Lawrence Wong at the Launch of the "Feeding Our Future" Exhibition | Prime Minister's Office Singapore

연사: 로런스 웡 싱가포르 부총리

단어수: 748

글로서리

1. hawker culture: 호커 문화 / 싱가포르 음식 문화

2. El Nino: 엘니뇨 현상

3. Brunei: 브루나이

Food is a topic close to the heart of all Singaporeans. It is a big part of our lives. As a diverse, multi-cultural society, we enjoy a wide variety of food options. Many of our important customs and traditions are built around food. It is a reason why a key part of our Singaporean identity is about our distinctive hawker culture - how food brings together all of us and builds shared experiences and memories.

What makes all this possible is access to a wide variety of fresh food produce. We have enjoyed this access in Singapore for so long that it is easy to take the security of our food supply for granted. But, as we all know, most of what we eat is imported, and vulnerable to supply disruptions.

We saw this in recent years, when global food supplies were disrupted. One reason for the disruption was the war in Ukraine. It may seem like a remote far-away event with no implications to us. But in fact it has profound far reaching consequences for everyone especially in food. Because Ukraine is a major global exporter of grain, wheat and fertiliser. So when the war broke out, the prices of everyday essentials like rice and bread increased worldwide. This also contributed to a shortage of chicken feed and supplies. This impacted Malaysia, and that is why Malaysia eventually banned the export of live chickens to Singapore last year. So it was a series of knock on effects. You may think it initially had nothing to do with Singapore, but in the end it still had everything to do with us.

As a result of climate change, we can also expect erratic and extreme weather patterns. Some people think climate change is something that will only happen in the distant future; but in fact it is already happening today. We can already see more frequent intense rainfall and prolonged dry spells around the world. In the coming months, the situation will be made worse by the El Nino phenomenon. This is something that occurs once every few years and raises global temperatures temporarily, which will all impact crop yields globally. Indeed, this has already led countries like India implementing export restrictions on food items this year. All this means is that global food supplies will remain volatile for the foreseeable future. And as a small country reliant on imports for our food needs, Singapore will have to adapt to this new reality.

What can we do to make our food supply more resilient? The first – and this is the main strategy that we ae pursuing - is to diversify our imported food sources. We will have to continue to import, but we can diversify our food imports so that we do not become overly-reliant on any one source. That is why over the past year, we have opened up new food sources. We can now import eggs from Brunei, and live chickens for slaughter from Indonesia.

Second, we are building up our capacity to stockpile essential items. It’s very expensive to stockpile. But what we do is to consider the key food groups that are necessary from a national standpoint for survival through an emergency. So we looked at our nutritional needs in terms of carbohydrates, proteins and fibre, and then we stockpile key food items like rice for carbohydrate, frozen chicken for protein and canned vegetables for fibre to meet these needs. If a calamity were ever to befall Singapore, we will have to make sacrifices. We will have to forgo access to some of our favourite foods, but we will not starve. We will have sufficient to keep our basic nutritional needs going. So that is what stockpiling is about.

Third, we are enhancing our local food production. With limited land, obviously we cannot grow all the food we need. And given our overlying cost structures in labour, in utilities, in fact it will be very had for local food production to be competitive. But if we can make our existing agri-food sector more resource-efficient, more productive, then hopefully local production can complement our first two strategies and serve as a meaningful buffer for Singapore in times of need. That is why we aim to be able to produce 30% of our local nutritional needs by 2030, up from less than 10% today. That is a big jump from less than 10% today to the ability to produce 30% of our local nutritional needs by 2030.