Friendly Green Giant

The world is facing a major food crisis, and it's only going to get worse if we don't change the way we farm, shop and cat. Luckily, Sustenir co-founder and Beco Ventures founder Benjamin Swan has some high-tech ideas

- Coco Marett

Can you imagine wanting a good salad so badly that you launch a multimillion‑dollar urban farming company and develop groundbreaking technology that not only yields quality produce but completely disrupts the farming industry?

Benjamin Swan did exactly that. What started as a mission to grow some delicious leafy greens became a rude awakening about the global food crisis, ultimately leading Swan to work “like a mad scientist” to develop high‑tech systems to replicate—and, eventually, even improve—nature’s growing processes.

It certainly helped that he is a trained engineer. Swan first moved to Singapore from Australia to lead the construction of the SkyPark at Marina Bay Sands (MBS). “Today, whenever we drive past MBS, my son calls it ‘Daddy’s boat’,” Swan says with a smile. He then joined Citibank, where he oversaw the construction of its regional offices to meet sustainability standards. He also designed its smart banking platform—it was his first foray into digitalisation, taking a process from analogue to digital, another skill that would later help him integrate the power of technology into the world of agriculture.

Accustomed to a wide range of local produce in his home country, Swan was frustrated with the quality of fruits and vegetables he found in local supermarkets in Singapore, which imports 90 per cent of its food, and that he “was paying a premium for substandard quality”. He says: “It was in 2012, while working at Citibank, that I saw a conceptual rendering of vertical farming by [American microbiologist] Dickson Despommier. Initially, I thought, ‘This is never going to work in Hong Kong or Singapore, where rent is so expensive.’”