Sustenir Agriculture is a Singapore-based agri-technology and fresh-produce company that utilizes controlled-environment agriculture (CEA), indoor vertical farming, hydroponics, automation, and data-driven cultivation to grow specialty vegetables in urban settings. The company’s primary objective is to make crops that are difficult or uneconomical to cultivate in Singapore’s tropical climate available through local, year-round production. 1

Operating under the broader Sustenir brand, the company positions itself around the concept of “growing a resilient future for people and planet.” Its product portfolio includes leafy greens such as kale, lettuce, spinach, and other specialty varieties.

The company describes its establishment in Singapore in 2013, while some accounts note commercial development intensifying from 2014 onward.

Origins

The founding of Sustenir is closely linked to Benjamin Swan, an Australian engineer working in Singapore. In 2012, while employed at Citibank, Swan encountered material on vertical farming and explored whether the concept could be adapted for land-scarce Asian cities.

Rather than replicating conventional vertical-farm designs, Swan aimed to develop a system efficient within Singapore’s specific constraints: limited land, a tropical climate, high urban density, and heavy reliance on imported food. He began prototyping and experimenting with variables such as lighting, nutrients, and environmental conditions. Early experiments were conducted on a small scale, including a makeshift operation in the basement of co-founder Martin Lavoo’s home.

Following numerous iterations, Swan and Lavoo formally established Sustenir in 2013.

Early Development

Initially, Sustenir focused on proving that crops typically associated with cooler climates could be produced commercially in tropical Singapore. One of its early successes was kale, followed by other specialty crops. By 2015, the company introduced its kale to restaurants and food-service customers, including SaladStop. In 2016, it expanded into retail through supermarkets such as Cold Storage.

This strategy allowed Sustenir to avoid direct competition with traditional vegetable farms by concentrating on specialty crops that were normally imported.

Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA)

CEA forms the foundation of Sustenir’s production system. Rather than relying on unpredictable outdoor conditions, Sustenir controls key variables including:

• Temperature
• Humidity
• Light
• Carbon dioxide
• Water
• Nutrients
• Growing duration
• Air conditions

This allows the creation of distinct environmental conditions for different crops. For instance, plants associated with temperate climates can be grown in Singapore without exposure to the natural tropical environment. The Singapore Food Agency notes that this approach enables control over environmental factors throughout the plant’s growth cycle. 3

Vertical Farming

Plants are grown in vertically stacked systems rather than horizontal fields. This method is particularly advantageous in Singapore due to land scarcity. While conventional farms expand horizontally, vertical farms increase production by adding growing layers within the same footprint. Sustenir promotes this as a key advantage, claiming substantially higher productivity per unit of land compared to conventional agriculture.

Hydroponics

Sustenir employs soilless hydroponic growing systems. Plants receive water containing carefully controlled nutrients instead of relying on soil. The Singapore Food Agency references the Nutrient Film Technique (NFT), where nutrient-rich water is circulated and reused. This system reportedly enables Sustenir to use approximately 95% less water than a traditional farm.

Sustenir aims to transform the growing process into a data-driven production system. The farm utilizes an artificial-intelligence system known as S.A.R.A. — Sustenir Agriculture Realtime Assistant — to monitor variables such as temperature and carbon dioxide.

Automation is applied to repetitive activities including:

• Seeding
• Packing
• Environmental monitoring
• Crop management
• Data collection

However, human workers remain essential for delicate operations such as harvesting and transplanting, as noted by Jaslin Koh, Sustenir’s head of nursery. This results in a hybrid model combining automation, environmental control, plant science, and human cultivation expertise.

Sustenir is well-known for its specialty leafy vegetables and high-value produce.

Kale

Kale is considered the company’s signature crop. Sustenir produces both Curly Kale and Tuscan Kale, with branded products like Kinky Kale. The company optimizes characteristics through controlled cultivation, adjusting environmental conditions to influence taste and texture. The Singapore Food Agency describes its kale as having a distinctive crisp, zesty, and sweet profile.

Lettuce

Various lettuce varieties are produced using CEA, allowing consistent growth in Singapore despite the country’s tropical outdoor environment.

Spinach and Other Greens

The brand portfolio includes spinach and a broader selection of specialty greens.

Ice Plant

Ice plant serves as another example of Sustenir’s strategy to produce specialty vegetables locally that consumers would otherwise encounter primarily as imported products.

Strawberries

One of Sustenir’s notable technological achievements is the ability to grow strawberries indoors at commercial scale in Singapore. At the 2018 launch, Singapore’s Ministry of Trade and Industry highlighted this as a first-of-its-kind capability in Singapore and Southeast Asia at that time.

Sustainability is central to Sustenir’s business model.

Water Conservation

The company uses recirculating hydroponic systems rather than conventional irrigation. Reports indicate that its NFT system can use around 95% less water than a traditional farm.

Land Efficiency

Vertical farming allows multiple layers of crops to occupy the same physical footprint, which is significant given Singapore’s scarce agricultural land.

Shorter Supply Chains

Locally produced vegetables do not require long-distance transport by air or sea. The Singapore EDB notes that Sustenir’s model reduces food transit times dramatically; a 2022 report described the average time from harvesting to supermarket availability as less than 24 hours.

Reduced Pesticide Exposure

The indoor growing environment allows tighter control over pests. Sustenir adopted SS 661: Specification for clean and green urban farms – Agriculture, becoming the first grower to receive this certification in 2023. The standard promotes urban-farming practices for safe, quality produce grown without chemical pesticides.

Sustenir does not primarily define itself by growing ordinary vegetables more cheaply. Instead, it focuses on “impossible” or difficult crops — plants poorly suited to Singapore’s natural climate.

For example:

• Singapore’s natural climate: Tropical
• Target crops: Kale, lettuce, strawberries (generally associated with cooler environments)

Sustenir replaces the natural environment with an engineered one, operating on the principle:

Instead of changing the crop to suit the environment, change the environment to suit the crop.

Sustenir’s consumer brand is positioned around several overlapping ideas:

Freshness

Local production allows produce to reach consumers faster after harvest than imported vegetables.

Nutrition

The company markets its vegetables based on freshness and nutritional quality, describing its greens as cultivated with attention to vitality.

Technology

Sustenir is fundamentally an AgriTech company, combining agriculture with engineering, automation, sensors, data, and environmental-control systems.

Sustainability

Messaging links food production with resource efficiency, particularly regarding water and land usage.

Food Resilience

Strategic positioning emphasizes food security, asking if a city can produce more of its own food despite having very little agricultural land.

Benjamin Swan

Benjamin Swan is the most prominent public figure associated with Sustenir. Before founding the company, he worked in engineering/project management and finance-related corporate environments in Singapore, including roles connected to Marina Bay Sands and Citibank. 5

Swan did not come from a conventional farming background. This influenced Sustenir’s identity, approaching agriculture from an engineering and systems perspective to convert farming from an analogue process into a measurable, controlled, and digitally optimized system. In December 2021, Swan stepped down as CEO to focus on Beco Ventures, an agricultural-technology investment venture, while remaining associated with Sustenir’s board.

Martin Lavoo

Martin Lavoo co-founded Sustenir with Swan. The two worked together during the company’s experimental phase, including the early prototype farm used to test technology before commercialization.

Sustenir’s concept was designed to extend beyond Singapore. The technology is intended to be modular and transferable, allowing deployment in other densely populated cities.

In 2018, the Singapore government highlighted Sustenir’s expansion into Hong Kong and its planned 50,000-square-foot facility there. Later accounts describe operations and expansion beyond Singapore, including Malaysia and Hong Kong.

The underlying proposition is not simply growing vegetables in Singapore, but building technology that allows cities to grow food locally regardless of natural agricultural limitations.

Sustenir aligns closely with Singapore’s push toward local food production and agricultural technology. With little agricultural land but significant technological, financial, and research capabilities, Singapore serves as a natural testbed for urban agriculture.

Government officials have cited Sustenir as an example of how technology can make agriculture more productive in land-constrained environments. In a 2018 speech, Singapore’s Ministry of Trade and Industry highlighted the company’s ability to use technology to produce crops that traditionally would not grow well in Singapore. 4

Consequently, Sustenir occupies a unique position as simultaneously a food producer, technology company, sustainability business, and food-security experiment.

At a high level, Sustenir’s business model follows this flow:

Technology + controlled environment
↓
Local production of specialty crops
↓
Fresh produce
↓
Retail + food-service customers
↓
Higher-value differentiated vegetables

Historically, the company supplied supermarkets and restaurants. Current retail channels identified include Amazon Prime, RedMart, Cold Storage, and FairPrice Finest.

Unlike traditional commodity-farming businesses competing on lowest cost per kilogram, Sustenir focuses on crops where freshness, availability, consistency, specialty varieties, and local production provide additional value.

Several factors distinguish Sustenir from conventional vegetable producers:

1. Climate Adaptation: It grows crops that do not naturally fit Singapore’s climate.
2. Engineering Approach: Farming is treated as an engineering problem, with lighting, water, nutrients, temperature, humidity, and CO₂ managed as controllable variables.
3. Data Utilization: The growing environment generates information analyzed to improve crop performance.
4. Vertical Space: Multiple growing levels concentrate production in a small footprint.
5. Import Substitution: Historically focused on specialty crops that would otherwise be imported.
6. Commercial Sustainability: Aims to make resource-efficient local production commercially viable, not just futuristic.

Indoor agriculture requires substantial infrastructure and energy for LED lighting, air conditioning, cooling, environmental controls, pumps, automation, and monitoring systems. Using less land and water does not automatically equate to using less energy.

Sustenir’s technology depends on continually improving the efficiency of the entire farming system. Benjamin Swan described a major technological turning point around 2018, when the company recognized that individual technologies were not sufficiently integrated. Developing a more cohesive system subsequently reduced total utility costs and capital expenditure while increasing yield.

This illustrates that Sustenir’s competitive advantage lies in the integration of many technologies into a commercially workable growing system, rather than vertical farming alone.

From a Singapore perspective, Sustenir represents a transition from traditional agriculture to technology-enabled urban agriculture. It demonstrates that agriculture in a dense city does not necessarily require soil, sunlight, and large fields. Instead, it can involve software, sensors, LEDs, hydroponics, engineering, biology, and data.

Singapore’s government has used Sustenir as an example of how technology can allow agriculture to overcome geographical and climatic constraints.

Sustenir Agriculture is a Singapore-founded AgriTech company that uses indoor vertical farming, hydroponics, and controlled-environment technology to grow specialty vegetables locally in a tropical, land-scarce city. Founded by Benjamin Swan and Martin Lavoo, the company became known for producing crops such as kale, lettuce, ice plant, and strawberries that traditionally required cooler climates. Its approach combines plant science, environmental controls, data, automation, and resource-efficient farming to reduce dependence on imported produce while improving freshness and food-system resilience.

Its broader philosophy can be summarized as:
Grow locally. Control precisely. Use resources intelligently.

1. Sustenir Agriculture – An urban farm using modern technology
2. The Peak Next Gen | How Benjamin Swan of Sustenir Agriculture is spearheading sustainable farming in Singapore – The…
3. CNBC Transcript: Benjamin Swan, Co-founder and CEO, Sustenir Agriculture – CNBC – WindowsWear
4. Speech by SMS Koh Poh Koon at the Launch of Sustenir Agriculture | Ministry of Trade and Industry
5. Get to Know Benjamin Swan of Sustenir Agriculture, a Pioneer in the Sustainable Food Revolution