Across Singapore, land for soil based farming has gradually lost ground to redevelopment for housing, military and agritech farms. Land in Singapore is "property", "asset" and "rental income".

For Ground-Up Initiative, land is social and communal. Land had been the defining characteristic from our genesis, as our late founder Lai Hock came to the realisation that human happiness arises and is nurtured via interaction. He describes the relationship with earth and nature, often by Tolstoy’s quote "One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between man and nature shall not be broken".

In Singapore, we have broken that connection with the earth. Out of this need to reconnect city dwellers with the earth, GUI was built from the ground-up—a natural space belonging to, built up and maintained by a community, with  a natural farm, an earth oven, a community-run tuckshop, and a woodworking space. 

Soon, our home is destined to be buried under four feet of soil and earth. Developers intend to raise the ground to mitigate against future floods. They told us to leave by the end of December 2023. We've known this for a while yet the truth remains bittersweet.