IT'S Thursday evening and office workers clutching cloth bags are arriving in the dusk outside VegiTable, a vegetarian restaurant off Hollywood Road in Central. Inside, former journalist-turned-organic farmer Queenie So Lai-chun is piling farm-fresh greens into the open cloth bag of an expatriate customer.
'You may not recognise this vegetable,' says Ms So. 'It's Chinese Kale, gai laan. It has a rather bitter flavour. Here are some instructions on how to cook it.' The customer takes the recipe card, heaves the bulging bag over his suit jacket, and walks off into the rush-hour traffic, as another customer arrives with a cheery hello to Queenie.
Ms So is one of a small but growing number of organic farmers who are benefiting from Hong Kong residents' unease about the safety of vegetables grown in China and sold in the territory's markets and stores.
Hong Kong's first commercial organic farm, Produce Green, was started in 1988 by environmental activist Simon Chau following the first outbreak of vegetable-related food poisoning. The territory now has six commercially viable organic farms (see accompanying list).
The food poisoning cases which have occurred with depressing regularity in Hong Kong have all been caused by the improper use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides in China.
Health worries are of paramount concern to customers of organic farms: they like the fact that organic vegetables are grown without chemical pesticides and fertilisers and they are prepared to pay more for that assurance.
Ms So, who runs the Lamma-based Green Cottage farm with partner David Sheil, now has 200-odd members who pay a joining fee of $400 and around $100 a week for one large bag - weighing about six pounds - of whatever vegetables are in season.
