Grace Lim, co-founder of GroGrace, is Singapore’s unique woman farmer entrepreneur. She co-founded the agritech company in hopes to meet Singapore’s 30 by 30 food security goal.
As someone who cooks almost every other day, understanding where food produce comes from is crucial for fostering informed and healthy eating habits. This in turn, helps to empower myself to make conscious choices about what I consume.
Unethical farming processes like injecting growth hormones in fish or chicken, or even massive use of pesticides in vegetables continue to pose significant risks to human health, environmental sustainability, and animal welfare, undermining the integrity of our food systems.
I stumbled upon Grace Lim’s video on Instagram on one of my doomscrolling nights, where she introduced her indoor vertical farm at an old warehouse in Jurong, Singapore and was intrigued by her vision. Despite her busy schedule (she tells me she works 18 hours a day), she managed to find time to sit down and answer my questions just in time for International Women’s Day (8th March).
What strongly moved you to become an entrepreneur and start GroGrace?
It all started because when my kids were very young and I wanted to give them the best food and the most nutritious food in one meal. The easiest way to do that was to give them green juices and green smoothies. You know, you blend up a bunch of vegetables and then you put in your superfood powders like spirulina, moringa powder, and so on. And for me, that was the best way to feed my children, and I was doing that for a few years.
One day, I read an article that reported that more than 90 per cent of the produce that’s grown in this world were grown using unethical farming practices, meaning to say that these produce were sprayed with copious amounts of pesticides. I was absolutely appalled and devastated because I feel like we all deserve to eat clean food, right? And yet, these agricultural companies are conglomerates. They’re like big brand names and they’re doing that to enrich themselves and poison people.
I wanted to do something about it, but I didn’t know what I could do about it as I was still raising my kids. One of the low hanging fruits was to start growing my own food. And that was what I did. I bought a very simple hydroponic system from a Danish man in Singapore, who designed it. At one time, I was growing 36 different kinds of vegetables, like a wide variety of Asian greens and also herbs. I was also growing cherry tomatoes, as well as a very unique variety of cucumber called Armenian cucumber. I was supplementing what we were buying from supermarkets!
One day, I harvested two big baskets of Tuscan kale with my son, and we came into the kitchen; I remembered feeling immense joy, because it was farm to table. I knew exactly what I was feeding my children, and we were just so happy juicing the kale and making kale chips, salad and all that.
And at that moment, I had an epiphany. I asked myself, ‘What if I could grow the same clean, healthy, nutritious produce for humanity on a commercial level? So not just growing for my own family or for people that I know, but like commercially, on a large scale to feed people?’ That really excited me to the point where I started to give time to research. I started reading more about indoor farming, and I realised that indoor farming is the only way to grow clean food.
As I delve deeper and deeper into the topic of indoor farming, I realised that the world needs indoor farming because the world’s population is going to increase to 9.7 billion people by 2050 and as the world’s population increases, the demand for food will also increase. But traditional farming is facing numerous challenges that make it impossible for them to meet this demand for food, and we’re talking about climate change, water scarcity, degradation of topsoil, and destruction of biodiversity.
When you use pesticide, you don’t just kill the pests on your vegetables, but you kill other insects like bees and butterflies as well, right? So the destruction of biodiversity and, of course, rapid urbanisation as well.
I was so blessed to be in the position where I can actually say, ‘Okay, my kids are fine and they’re well taken care of. I’ve worked for like, 40 years of my life and I have an apartment that I’ve paid with my CPF, so I’m, sort of like, in a good place to pursue my passion and my purpose. I thought, ‘This is what I’m going to do for the rest of my life.’
I read that GroGrace received funding support from Singapore Food Agency (SFA). Did you also pour your own money to this organization?
Well, of course the Singapore government will not give you 100 per cent of the capital expenditure that you need to build the farm, right? They have a funding scheme and a strict criteria on how you can get the funding. I also poured in my own money, but it was also my family’s money. My father really believed in what I was going to do.
When I wanted to get into the agritech business, I wanted to work with only the best in class, and I know that the Dutch are world leaders in agricultural innovation. So I started looking for Dutch technologies and Dutch partners who want to set up this business with me.
And I’m a spiritual student. So when I put my intentions out there, I believe that the universe would receive my message and answer my prayer. That was exactly what happened. While I was looking for Dutch partners, the agriculture advisor from the Netherlands embassy was also looking for a local partner for a Dutch consortium. So I reached out to them and that was in 2018, 2019.
What were some of the challenges you faced initially when launching GroGrace? Was it a high learning experience?
There were so many challenges when I first launched GroGrace and one of the biggest challenges was to secure sales contracts. You build this farm and grow all these vegetables but sales don’t happen overnight. You have to build connections and relationships with hotels, restaurants and food caterers. You have to build your brand with B2C customers, and there’s so much to be done before people can actually say, ‘I want to give you the opportunity to try your products,’ right before they say whether they’re keen to buy your vegetables from you.
It’s a long process, and that’s obviously something that didn’t occur to me. I guess I was so engrossed with just growing amazing, clean produce that I didn’t spend enough time to think about the take-off, and how I should be selling my vegetables.
I was quite naive; I didn’t think that it would take me a while. And it has been two years. But I must say, in the past two years, I have built some amazing contacts. So, yeah, it doesn’t happen overnight.
It’s about building that sales channel and having enough revenue to run the company, because we have salaries to pay, we have utility bills to pay, and rent to pay. So having a healthy cash flow and enough revenue is really a big challenge for me.
Unfortunately, when we signed my shareholders agreement with my Dutch partners, shortly after, it was COVID, right? So my Dutch partners were supposed to come to Singapore four to five times a year for us to sit together for two weeks to come up with the design and engineering of this farm, this proof of concept farm that we’ve decided to build, right? And because of COVID, they were not able to come down, so we actually collaborated, virtually. I think we must have clocked in thousands of Zoom hours for two years to come up with our design.
I’ve learned that being an entrepreneur makes me an expert in every aspect of the business and it has made me more knowledgeable and resilient about how to run a business.
What’s the current output of produce coming from GroGrace? Are the produce exported or disseminated to local restaurants here in Singapore?
It’s really hard to say the quantity of produce that is coming out from this farm. Because the truth is every vegetable has a different kind of weight. So if I’m gonna say, I’m turning my farm into just a lettuce farm, we grow up to 6,000 heads of lettuce.
Currently we have different sales channels: we sell to wholesalers, retailers and markets. We also sell to other farms in Singapore and some of these farms have turned into aggregators so they would commission us to grow for them or they would buy from us, and turn our products into a salad mix.
We also have our B2C model, which is our subscription boxes and group buys. We also depend on our wholesalers to do our distribution for us.
How does a hydroponics system balance a sustainable production?
Indoor farming itself is sustainable agriculture. We don’t use vast pieces of land and instead of growing crops, we use the piece of land to grow more trees or forests. We are highly indoor water efficient than other farms because we grow with rainwater and recycle our water.
Indoor farming doesn’t require the use of fungicides and pesticides. Also, it doesn’t depend on the weather for the results as it’s considered controlled weather agriculture. And also, agriculture consumes a lot of water source and the world is facing a severe water crisis so we really need to find new and innovative food to help us to preserve the depleting resource.
What’s the most fulfilling experience for you so far on this journey?
I’ve had random people coming up to me and say, ‘Grace, I believe in what you do and you’re doing amazing work. Love your vegetables!’ I’ve also had customers who’ve come up to me, to volunteer in my business, to start a group buy, write codes or even connect me to the ecosystem. They all want to see the farm be successful and that’s the most fulfilling experience for me.
I realised I am not in this alone, and I have people who are cheering me on and who believe in my vision.
What’s your five-year plan?
To be able to raise money in the next six months and with this money we have, we hope to build a much bigger farm in Singapore. We want to be able to contribute to the food security here. Right now, my proof of concept farm is very small and we aren’t able to move the needle, but I want to build a farm that’s 10x the size of the proof of concept farm and make this contribution.
I would also like to be able to travel to other parts of the world to share our total integrated solutions for indoor farming. We are an agritech company, we want to help cities to build food resiliency. We want to go to Hong Kong, the Middle East, Norway and say we have a proof of concept farm and demonstrate that we can grow a lot of food in a very small space.
Where can we find Grace when she’s not at her facility?
I work about 18 hours a day, but I am not in my farm the whole day. I’ve tons of paper work to do, I’ve got to meet people, have back-to-back meetings and even farm tours. I also do my own deliveries for both condo and group buys.
If I’m not in my facility, I am running around for my business. If I’m not working, I love to cook for my partner, my children. I love to think about how to use my farm’s produce to create new recipes. I want to be able to create a food channel for GroGrace where people can learn how to use our produce in many creative ways.
And if I am not doing any of that, I would just be chilling on my couch, and watching a good movie.
Order a GroGrace subscription box or visit her farm.
