Hong Kong’s agricultural revolution: the rise in farming for fun
Recreational farming has taken off in the city’s less built-up areas, providing jaded urbanites with a family-friendly weekend escape
It is Saturday afternoon and Janice Tse Pui-fan is wearing wellies, planting seeds while her four-year-old daughter Wing Wing feeds goats nearby with a small group of other children.
Since April, it has become a weekend ritual for Tse’s family to spend an afternoon at an organic farm in Yuen Long, where they have rented a piece of land – eight feet long, four feet wide – to grow organic vegetables and fruit for one year.
“I am a working mum. It’s quite relaxing to come here,” said Tse, who works in the banking industry in Causeway Bay on weekdays. “My daughter likes running around. This is a good place. She can run, run, run. She can experience more than city life.”
Tse is one of many busy professionals looking for an antidote to the hustle and bustle of city life in Hong Kong. For a few young urbanites occupied with busy work, it’s never too late to switch to a rural lifestyle, even if just for half a day’s ploughing and sowing.
And more local farms are springing up on the city’s outskirts offering rented plots for farming and picking your own produce.
Leisure farms – many focused on organic farming with recreational and educational visits – have flourished over the past few years, partly due to the government’s push for sustainable development of local farming.