Motion: Dennis Tan on securing Singapore’s food future
“Food security is national security. It is time we treated it as such”, MP Dennis Tan told parliament on Wednesday (Sep 9). He added that “if we want Singaporeans to support local food, we need to make it easier for them to do so”. He called for the creation of a nationwide marketplace, built and run by the local farming industry in the form of a cooperative or federation. It could coordinate dedicated local produce sections or stalls in wet markets, to “embed local food into the daily routine of ordinary Singaporeans”. Mr Tan also suggested requiring the largest supermarket chains and Singapore Armed Forces cookhouses to source a guaranteed minimum share of their fresh produce from local farms. He also called for greater tax relief for farmers, such as by exempting locally produced food carrying the SG Fresh Produce label from GST and reducing the corporate tax rate for agricultural enterprises licensed by the Singapore Food Agency.
“Food security is national security. It is time we treated it as such”, MP Dennis Tan told parliament on Wednesday (Sep 9). He added that “if we want Singaporeans to support local food, we need to make it easier for them to do so”. He called for the creation of a nationwide marketplace, built and run by the local farming industry in the form of a cooperative or federation. It could coordinate dedicated local produce sections or stalls in wet markets, to “embed local food into the daily routine of ordinary Singaporeans”. Mr Tan also suggested requiring the largest supermarket chains and Singapore Armed Forces cookhouses to source a guaranteed minimum share of their fresh produce from local farms. He also called for greater tax relief for farmers, such as by exempting locally produced food carrying the SG Fresh Produce label from GST and reducing the corporate tax rate for agricultural enterprises licensed by the Singapore Food Agency.
