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Jonathan Braude

Hong Kong's farmers and fishermen demand attention.

 'Who?' you cry.

 Don't you remember the chickens they slaughtered?  They weren't wandering loose in Kennedy Town, you know. Nor was there any poultry running round the stock exchange like a chicken without a head (those were the lemmings).

 No, those poor, doomed chooks were kept on farms in the New Territories.

 Agriculture and fisheries representative Wong Yung-kan set out the figures.

 Local farmers produced 13 per cent of the SAR's fresh vegetables, 12 per cent of its pigs and, in years when they didn't end up in landfills, 19 per cent of its chickens.

 And where do you suppose all the fish came from?  Exactly. Local fishermen supply 69 per cent of live and fresh fish sold in Hong Kong. If you'd known that, you wouldn't have touched it? Fishermen are starting to think you may have a point. They blame the Government. Reclamation, sewage - all that rubbish being poured in and stirred up, they say, is killing fish and forcing the boats further offshore.

 But because they cannot afford bigger boats for deep-sea fishing, many fishermen have gone out of business.

 Lee Wing-tat described a visit with fishermen to the Agriculture and Fisheries Department to ask for compensation. The officials were patronising and unhelpful.

 The farmers are miffed too. Farm waste controls have forced small pig farmers to sell out to bigger operators.

 Miraculously, pig production has surged since the Government introduced restrictions. But Mr Wong complained that while the Japanese were allowed to build multi-storey piggeries, Hong Kong sties could be no more than 4.7 metres tall.

 Meanwhile, farmers got washed out by floods and developers grabbed the land.

 As Choy So-yuk pointed out, tourist campaigns portrayed junks in the harbour and weather-beaten fishermen, but in reality 'the fish is not suitable for eating and the New Territories are piled high with containers'.

 Legislators demanded a strategy to keep 1,500 farmers on the land and 19,000 fishermen at sea.

 Economic Services Secretary Stephen Ip said the Government was doing a lot.

 There were no hootings, brayings or other farmyard displays of derision.

 Just a show of hands backing Mr Wong's call for a new agriculture and fisheries research institute.



Doom and gloom down on the farm