The impacts of COVID-19 in 2020 make many to start questioning our globalised system and realise how vulnerable the city populations are at the time of economic turbulence. There is a need for us to rethink the way we do things, as well as a creative redesign the structures and approaches for healthcare, business, education, agriculture, transportation, economics, and so many other areas.

Through our choices about how to travel, where to shop, what to buy and how to save, we shape the development of this new economy. By building life sustainable systems such as community farms and food gardens, social enterprises, alternate economic platform for fair-trading, micro-energy projects and community-owned co-operatives, our society will operate in a way that brings benefits rather than causing harms to people and environment.

We need multi-functional gardens everywhere

Today, in Hong Kong, over 95% of our food is imported. Feeding the population will be the immediate challenge at the time of economic turbulence and when transportation is getting more difficult. We have to transit towards a more localized and sustainable food system that is built upon small, less energy-intensive organic farms and community-based urban gardens. Apart from food supply, urban gardens will help us create a multi-functioning landscape that serves nature conservation, recreation, community-building, water and organic resource recovery.

Act NOW

• Take a course and learn to grow food in an earth-friendly way.
• Find space on a balcony, a roof or in public space for growing food
• Join clubs and cooperatives to make friends with people who are interested in food growing.
• Agricultural land covers only 6.1% of Hong Kong and is equivalent to the size of 6,800 football fields – buy or rent farmland, and support existing farms to continuous to grow food to assure some level of food security!
• Join a community farm and/or create one for your community
• If you have children teach them to grow some of their own food and connect them to the soil

Community Supported Agriculture Scheme

Since the first decade of the new millennium, KFBG has been promoting farmers’ markets and community-supported-agriculture (CSA) schemes to foster collaboration and mutual support between food producers and consumers. Under CSA schemes the consumer has face-to-face contact with the farmer and accepts to pay a regular fee and to receive a fair share of whatever seasonal vegetables the farmer produces. Such work creates fair trade platforms for direct sale of local organic produce and tightens the relationship between producers and consumers in supporting sustainable urban agriculture in Hong Kong.

Act NOW

• Join a CSA group and/or create one for your community
• Learn food preserving and processing – it is fun and serves practical needs
• Deepen your support to sustainable producers by assisting them to reach out wider community
• Network with other CSA groups to support and learn from each other.
• Share your experience and assist others to set up more CSA for community

Cultivate Community Resilience

A good community network decides the resilience of a community in responding to crisis and overcome challenges. The structure of CSA could be easily employed to bridge new community collaboration such as CSA initiatives in food-aid and resource sharing, natural soap making, recycling programmes. The network also facilitates invention of new solutions to unpredictable situations such than the numerous child-caring and mask-making initiatives emerged during COVID-19 period. Starting making friends with your neighbours to expand your network, seek group learning and develop collaborative initiative with like-minded individuals to cultivate our resilience.