Hong Kong farmers worry Northern Metropolis plan leaves them out in the cold, uncertain if they can carry on
The plan includes building a “technopole” in the San Tin area that is being touted as “Hong Kong’s version of Silicon Valley”.
By Jack Tsang
South China Morning Post
Published: 3:00pm, 1 Jan, 2022
This is the first of a two-part series on land and those affected by the Northern Metropolis blueprint.
Wong Chin-ming has been running an organic farm in San Tin for almost 16 years, serving loyal customers and Michelin-starred restaurants looking for fresh local produce.
Now he fears the days are numbered for his two-hectare Hung Yat Farm, which has been included in the government’s Northern Metropolis blueprint to build an economic and residential hub for about 2.5 million people in the New Territories over the next two decades.
The San Tin area is envisioned as a “technopole” over 1,100 hectares (2,718 acres), and modelled after Silicon Valley in the United States.
“The plan is all about innovation and technology, ignoring the city’s agriculture, as if we do not exist,” said Wong, 55, full-time farmer for five years.
San Tin, one of Hong Kong’s oldest villages, has been encroached by brownfields and commercialised in recent years as some farmers have abandoned their property or sold it to developers.
But a dozen farmers including Wong have maintained a robust agriculture scene there, growing vegetables and flowers, and raising live seafood too.
His landlords are three major developers that acquired the land years ago.
Wong, who used to run a garden design business, started out growing healthier produce mainly for family and friends with food allergies and illnesses.
“I don’t use chemical pesticides and apply only natural fertilisers and enzymes on my vegetables,” he said.
As demand rose, he switched to farming full time, growing mainly bell peppers, corn, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers and white bitter melons. He also has four fish ponds, with jade perch, red tilapia and blue lobsters.
Toiling by himself for about 10 hours a day, he earns about HK$600,000 (US$77,000) a year.
With more orders than he can meet, Wong said: “Agriculture can be profitable in Hong Kong if we focus on organic products of high quality. People want to consume local produce rather than imports from the mainland, but the government does not seem to quite see it.”
There are 4,300 farmers left in Hong Kong. The city’s active agricultural land has shrunk by 58 per cent to 755 hectares between 1997 and last year, with local produce accounting for only 1.6 per cent of fresh vegetables last year, down from 13.9 per cent in 1997.
At least 126 hectares of active agricultural land will be affected in five core areas identified in the Northern Metropolis scheme.
Farmer Leung Yat-shun, 70, whose parents were farmers too, has been growing vegetables and flowers at his three-hectare Shun Sum Yuen Farm for more than 50 years.
His farm is near the San Tin station of the future Northern Link rail line and a few weeks ago, rail operator MTR Corporation set up a ground investigation site in front of his farm.
“I was told that a tunnel will be built over 30 metres under my farm and the impact will be minimal,” he said.
He grows a variety of vegetables, gladioli, lilies and sunflowers on his farm, which is within the blueprint area too. In the summertime, his farm is a photography hotspot as it transforms into a sunflower field welcoming visitors who pay HK$50 to enter.
“We get no support from the government. We can barely survive if we only rely on production,” he said.
Leung has 30 landlords, and when one of them demanded a 20 per cent rent increase earlier this year, he gave up that part of the farm.
Keen to continue farming, he said: “I’m not interested in the development plan. All I want to know is when it is going to start, so I can prepare to move.”
Jonathan Wong Woon-chung, 63, director of the Hong Kong Organic Resource Centre, a government-funded non-profit organisation promoting organic farming, said it was “a bit of a failure” that the Northern Metropolis plan referred to urban-rural integration but did not say how local farming would be sustained.
“But I see it as an opportunity for farmers to relocate to protected areas identified under the plan so they do not have to worry about land acquisition any more,” he said.
The government has suggested conserving privately owned wetlands and fish ponds in Mai Po and San Tin, although the metropolis blueprint referred to a “modernised aquaculture industry” rather than agriculture, and did not provide details.
Wong said the government should do more to support local farming and improve Hong Kong’s food security.
Just as the metropolis blueprint was strategic to the city’s future development, food supply could become a major issue in future and a forward-looking agricultural policy was needed, he added.
The government unveiled a New Agriculture Policy in 2016 and began a study two years later to identify priority areas for farming, but earlier this year, officials said they needed three more years to complete it.
Meanwhile, an Agricultural Park of about 80 hectares is being built in Kwu Tung South, also in the northern New Territories, to provide plots for farmers to rent. The first phase of seven hectares is expected to be ready by next year or 2023.
Farmer Wong Chin-ming recalled being thrilled when the project was first announced in 2016, but the slow pace of development has left him fearing it offered only false hope.
“It has taken years for them to build a farm with such a small scale. How can the park be able to take in all the local farmers?”
He still hoped to find somewhere to relocate to if the Northern Metropolis plan forced him to quit his current site.
“I’m still very excited about being a farmer and hope to pass on my knowledge to others,” he said.
The city’s development authority said farmers affected by government clearance projects could receive an “ex gratia allowance” under current policy.
A land rehabilitation scheme was also available to help them identify suitable land to move to and continue farming.
“Under this scheme, government farmland will be identified, readied and rented to eligible farmers by short-term tenancy,” a Development Bureau spokeswoman said.
