Sustainable living: hydroponic mobile farms to let anyone grow vegetables in Hong Kong, slashing carbon footprints

Shops, restaurants, schools, and households could grow their own fresh produce, reducing need for imports, if mobile farming trial is successful

Technology is the latest brainchild of team of University of Hong Kong MBAs behind urban farm that supplies restaurants vegetables and herbs grown without soil

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Farmacy grows vegetables and herbs hydroponically in Causeway Bay, and is trialling mobile farms. Co-founder Raymond Mak talks about cutting Hong Kong’s carbon footprint and delivering fresh produce. Photo: Jonathan Wong

Published: 8:15am, 13 Aug 2019Updated: 7:24pm, 13 Aug 2019

As a social movement gathers pace on the city streets this summer, there’s another growing revolution – a green movement.

This one is all about groundbreaking farming technology that cuts lengthy supply chains to allow easy access to fresh produce rich in nutrients and bursting with flavour.

Farmacy (farmacyhk.com), an urban farming technology company launched in January 2018, has been offering herbs, micro greens, and edible flowers to restaurants, hotels and home cooks. It will take things to the next level in a couple of weeks with the launch of its first “mobile farm”.

“That’s a farm that is so mobile it can be stored in your home, restaurant, school or supermarket. In the future, supermarkets won’t need to import vegetables, you can grow the vegetables fresh – lettuce, pak choi, choi sum, whatever,” says Raymond Mak, Farmacy’s CEO and co-founder.

Farmacy grows vegetables and herbs hydroponically. Photo: Jonathan Wong

Using hydroponic technology, the greens will grow in-store so that consumers know exactly where their food is coming from – they can actually see their vegetables as they grow. The pilot mobile farm will be launched in mid-August at the organic convenience store JustGreen in Sai Kung.