With their hands in the earth and their heads in the clouds ... On the roof of this Hong Kong skyscraper, office workers harvest the fruits of their labor in the colorful rows of radishes and carrots that swear in the grayness urban.
Perched 150 meters high, at the top of the Bank of America Tower, in the financial heart of the former British colony, this farm is one of the sixty micro-farms that have spread since 2015 on the canopy of a megalopolis in bad space.
They have sprung up on disused helipads, on the roofs of shopping malls or on public terraces, thanks to private initiatives such as that of the social enterprise Rooftop Republic ("The republic of roof terraces"), which promotes a philosophy of life. healthier and greener.
Andrew Tsui, one of the co-founders, sees urban agriculture as a way for city dwellers to reconnect with their food.
An imperative in this territory of southern China, "the city of instant noodles" as Mr. Tsui calls it in reference to the addiction of Hong Kong people to ready-to-go meals which generate frightening amounts of waste.
A rural territory
There is "something broken" in the relationship Hong Kongers have with food, laments the 43-year-old entrepreneur.
"This dates from the time when we started to subcontract the origin of our food by focusing on industrial production lines," he says.
According to official statistics, Hong Kong sends 3.600 tonnes of food to its landfills every day, the equivalent of 250 double-decker buses. Less than a quarter of the city's food waste is recycled.
And about 90% of the food consumed by the city's 7,5 million people is imported, mostly from mainland China.
It is sometimes ignored but Hong Kong is not just a mineral forest of skyscrapers since 75% of its territory is rural. Green spaces composed mainly of natural parks but also, according to official figures at the end of 2020, 755 hectares of cultivated land.
These are mainly found in the New Territories, in the north, very far from the urban and financial heart of Hong Kong.
“The challenge for us is to make agriculture part of our daily lives,” Tsui continues. "The first step, of course, is to make it accessible."
There is still room
Despite the extreme density of population of its districts, there is still room in Hong Kong for urban agriculture, assures Mr. Tsui.
His company has identified more than 600 hectares available on the canopy of this urban jungle. "So we have the ability to double the space to grow food."
To achieve this, Rooftop Republic is working closely with architects, town planners and real estate developers in the hope of integrating urban farms with plans for office buildings.
The company has also succeeded in convincing large international groups such as the Singaporean bank DBS, whose Foundation has joined forces with Rooftop Republic to create an academy offering training in urban agriculture.
US real estate consultancy giant JLL has added urban agriculture to its portfolio and even has a farm on a building.
"In Hong Kong, people focus on the commercial value of properties, but we want to promote the concept of sustainability," said Eric Lau, one of the group's leaders in Hong Kong.
Urban agriculture is, according to its followers, a means of forging a social bond. More and more companies are offering it to their employees to promote cohesion.
"A necessary knowledge"
Retired from the public service, Lai Yee-man turned to agriculture to reconnect with nature but also with her neighbors.
Owner of a farm in the New Territories, the XNUMX-year-old learned from professionals the techniques and tips to develop her plot.
So much knowledge that she in turn passes on to others at Sky Garden - the largest urban farm at the top of a shopping mall in Hong Kong - where locals cultivate 1.200 square meters of edible flowers and fruit trees, whose products are mostly donated to charities.
"People pay more attention to their health and buy organic," she explains. "Here, we teach them not to waste and to cherish their food".
