Marcus from Habitat Collective Singapore

Tell us a little about yourself!

I studied anthropology at university, and that gave me exposure to other cultures, both present and past, and different ways of living. That background brought me the perspective to critique not just Singapore, but our global society.

My wife and I started Habitat Collective about four years ago. Before that, I was doing similar things but working for other people - an urban farming company that did edible landscaping, and even running a fish farm at one point. I was trying to re-educate myself into the food system that allows us to live in Singapore.

How did you start doing what you are doing now? 

It's definitely not common. There's a very small community of us that I can consider to be proper permaculture people, and even that is quite a difficult term to use. What is proper permaculture?

I think it's strange to practice permaculture in Singapore but I think that's also why it's necessary. Singapore is special in its own right, super urban, super developed and developed really, really fast within the span of a generation. Very quickly, our people have lost a connection to the land that was once very integral to their lives and their livelihoods.

Because it happened so fast, the people of Singapore now don't know where their food comes from, have lost all the skills that will allow you to work on the land, get your own food, shelter, water, energy from the land.

At some point, I had interest in environmental concerns, environmental degradation and climate change, and recognising that agriculture and our food system is one of the biggest contributors to that. It spans further than that now. It is the mechanism of the machinery of modern neoliberal capitalistic society that drives all that, not just on the food side of things.

The most basic needs would be food, water, shelter, energy. And in Singapore, we can't achieve that on our own because we don't have our own land anymore. Everything is centralised in a very paternalistic government, and everything is available to you through the medium of money. With that, you can get everything, but not through your own hands, not through your own body or your property.

I thought the only way to do that was to distance yourself from those systems and get yourself familiar with how to grow your own food, how to manage land, how to manage modern systems, shelter, natural food. Then very quickly, I started to learn about permaculture and recognise that it fit almost exactly to my belief system and my ethics. So it became the body of knowledge that I draw from the most.

What you're seeing now [on the rooftop garden], this is very different from what we usually do. Most of our work tends to be in the ground. Because drawing from permaculture, a lot of the work, if it's not in the ground, feels like it has no future continuity to it.

We work in hotels, in schools, in private homes. It was me on my own first and then together with my wife, we started Habitat Collective about four years ago.

What we want to do with this space is create projects that have more impact on Singapore and more people, or can really utilise what permaculture can do for our space. It's quite limited given the size and regulations around the projects that we've done so far.

The other factor is that those projects we do are private, so we can't really share the body of work we are doing and we can't create an impact in that way - like get people into the community, into the permaculture community, and see what we are doing and interact with it and learn as well.

So, this space is public enough to do a bit of that. But it's not in-ground, I can't plant a food forest, although I'm pushing it a little bit, even with the chickens! This space is a result of that desire to reach more people, to create more impact.

The direction that Singapore has taken in relation to the food security problem is very high-tech, which is kind of the opposite direction that we are taking. So, most of the money is in supporting those systems, and we are trying to create a counterbalance. But there is no money for it. It's not promising to feed, to supply the supermarket at low prices anyway, which is what high-tech systems promise to do. Although, we know that it doesn't work. And recently, we are finally seeing the signs, they are not working, they are all failing and closing down. Like all the hydroponics systems that were funded during Covid. So hopefully there will be at some point in time a turning point."

What are you most proud of in this process? 

Given the limitations on how much permaculture in terms of stewardship of the land we can do in Singapore, what we have slowly tried to do also is to create more interest in what the other side of the food culture would look like, the consumption side.

So, what Habitat Collective has been trying to do is to get people to understand what are ingredients or produce that are more suitable to our environment and our climate, and also to our landscape. And try to find ways to slowly push that into the mainstream food culture.

Singapore is largely an immigrant nation, majority Chinese. So, a lot of the food culture since that period has been Chinese influenced. And before the full scale urbanization, the farms in Singapore were also growing those produce from China. And the recognition is that that is not suitable for our environment. It requires greenhouses, it requires quite a lot of pest management to grow that produce.

And then the other side is that being an extremely globalised state, the westernised food culture also finds its way into Singapore. And those are also very inappropriate for our environment.

So, we are trying to look at what our previous generations in Singapore were growing in Malaysia and Indonesia. Even now that has changed quite a bit. Things that are more perennial in Singapore culture as well. And things that thrive in more forest systems. We are also looking across other tropical regions in the world and then testing and experimenting with produce from there.

We're growing them here and also experimenting in the kitchen - what we can do with those crops and produce. Putting out maybe a garden pesto or a different take on local food using ingredients that are more suitable, that we grow in our gardens.

We try to work with chefs to do pop-up dinners here using the produce that we grow. We just started running a pop-up cafe once in a while. Me and my wife cook with the produce, make drinks from the stuff we grow as well. And get people interested in food that way. Not everyone is interested in gardening or farming, but everyone is interested in food.

What advice would you like to give to others who are younger/earlier on their journey? 

Permaculture in Singapore has challenges. You don't look at it in a property level, but you look at it in a neighborhood level or a city level, where there are a lot more resource flows that you can join.

But I also think it's quite important to look at the origins of permaculture and really anchor yourself into its grounding principles and ethics and philosophy, rather than take permaculture for the forms that you see out there. You take the forms as examples of how those principles are applied in those contexts, and not just bring them in wholesale. Ground yourself first in the principles and ethics and see what you can do with those in your context.

And Singapore isn't the only playground - you can go beyond Singapore. But I think also permaculture isn't just food and gardens. It applies to a lot of other aspects of life as well, although that is not practiced as much out there.