Home-grown fruit and vegetables in Hong Kong are not easy to find?
I say there is as much ‘local’ food in Kowloon as in Kent
By Andrew Su
South China Morning Post
Sept 14, 2023
Excerpt:
Well, that depends on how one defines home-grown. Yes, most of our food comes from over the border in mainland China. But the mainland is basically next door. A lot of our food comes from produce and meat farms in Guangdong province, which borders Hong Kong. Some would say that’s pretty much eating local.
Many Hong Kong residents still assume that produce from the mainland is either inferior, fake or produced using cheap, unhealthy methods.
Yet that’s what we mostly eat on a daily basis – unless you can afford only imported goods at pricey gourmet grocers, which goes against all eco-ideals of local eating.
It is worth noting that some of our freshest organic vegetables are actually farmed in the Pearl River Delta, where land is available and cheap. It is also how most local goods can be made available at such low prices and with such tiny carbon footprints.
Even if those farmers were in Hong Kong, they wouldn’t be able to just leave their choi sum on a cart with a coin box for everyone to self-pay. We don’t have the luxury of such bucolic behaviour.
Hong Kong is a city of over 7 million citizens. The population density here is close to 7,000 people per square kilometre. Kent, the county in which Cliff now lives, has fewer than 500 people per square kilometre.
