With its lease ending this December, Oh Chin Huat Hydroponic Farms, has chosen to cease operations instead of relocating to a new site as the cost of relocating has become too much to bear. Professor Paul Teng, an Adjunct Senior Fellow with the Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies at the RSIS, noted that the Government is pushing for farms to improve their productivity through technology. Addressing the issue of high production cost, Professor Teng said that despite modern technology, the cost of producing food in Singapore will remain higher than imported food in the short to medium term, given the high capital expenditure such as land and labour costs. Prof William Chen, Director of NTU’s Food Science and Technology programme, said that farms can tap cheaper local innovations to boost production instead of relying on expensive overseas technology. For example, he has developed a way to create inexpensive fertiliser by fermenting prawn shells with fruit waste.