Organic coffee grown and roasted in Hong Kong the fruit of a sustainable farming project in roadless corner of New Territories
- Among the organic crops sown on former rice paddies in Lai Chi Wo, a village in the northeast New Territories, are turmeric, ginger, melons … and coffee bushes
- From a small start, there are more than 700 bushes that this year could yield 70kg of beans. Once roasted they make coffee with ‘good body and smooth taste’
From Ma Liu Shui pier, it takes a small ferry 90 minutes to get to Lai Chi Wo, a remote village in Hong Kong’s northeastern New Territories.
The bushes, part of the HSBC Rural Sustainability programme sponsored by HSBC, a global bank, bear small, round, mostly green fruit – called “coffee cherries” – that have yet to ripen. This crop will be harvested in November.
Katie Chick Lai-hiu, the senior project manager, plucks the few that have already turned red and puts them in a basket. “Hong Kong doesn’t have a very high elevation, and it’s hard to increase the density of coffee beans because there’s not enough temperature variance,” says Chick, who is from the University of Hong Kong’s Centre for Civil Society and Governance (CCSG).
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Reviving a remote Hong Kong village through growing coffee
“This is a limitation that might affect the quality of coffee beans grown – but there are many factors that can affect quality. We’re trying to see if there are other ways to improve the flavour of our coffee.”