Hong Kong: Day in the Life: Urban Farmer
Pol Fàbrega came to Hong Kong in 2012, and in 2015 co-founded Rooftop Republic, a social enterprise that promotes sustainable living through building and managing urban farms in Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area.
By Ken Wu
The Style Sheet
30 July 2020
Excerpt:
Morning
‘I wake up around eight, have an espresso and some fruit, and head to Dream Impact, the co-working space our Rooftop Republic team uses. We have around ten full-time employees, along with ten to fifteen farmers that work with.
A typical morning might include meetings with the marketing team, sales team and project teams to go over what we need to do that week. I do a lot of the sales and business development, so I’m in constant contact with potential clients who are interested in creating urban farms on their properties. We’ve recently set up a project at a clubhouse, which is going to be used by their restaurant’s kitchen, so the morning might include a site visit to check on a project like this.
For a farm-to-table project, the chefs decide what they want to grow, and we also organise educational activities for the members of the club. Typically, we plant seasonal herbs, fruits and vegetables — for example, water spinach, sweet potatoes and melons in summer. For the cooler months, it might be things like beetroot, carrots and tomatoes. Edible flowers are also popular right now. Sometimes we get a special request such as habanero chillies, which are expensive and hard to find. We have one client that requested 14 different chillies! It’s always a challenge when we’re asked to grow something that isn’t local, because it’s more vulnerable to local pests and diseases, but it’s certainly possible.’
