With the Lunar New Year ringing the bell, preparing traditional steamed brown sugar rice cakes and carrot cakes at home does not sound unfamiliar to many Chinese households. In a modern city like Hong Kong, there is a group of young people who realised the needs of their community, and have been trying to bridge the soil, culture and the people by tracing traditions and wisdoms. To welcome the coming of the Year of Horse, the young farmers dig into the soil and pick the freshest ingredients from an urban farm to make fortune cakes for city dwellers.
In the small patch of organic farm land, young farmers and activists are pursuing a bigger dream; to restore sustainable farming practices and lifestyle in the city and to remind people of the forgotten truth that the modern, urban city cannot survive solely on economic and property development, without the support of its own food production systems. Before the kick-off of the Lunar New Year, workshops in areas like using firewood and brick-stoves to make cakes attracted flocks of city dwellers to the Ma Shi Po village to have a taste of making their own food with gone-by methods.
Facing the government’s proposal to proceed the urban land development plan of ‘North East New Territories New Development Areas’ to turn more than 100 hectares of arable land into residential properties, the Mapopo Community Farm set out to demonstrate and address the issue that farmers should have the right to claim their productive farmland. Situated within the affected area and being one of the farming villages in Fanling, northern New Territories of Hong Kong, Mapopo was started up as a community project a few years ago with a sustainable farming initiative to preserve local culture and to testify the feasibility of the co-existing of villages and urban settlements.
The farm has successfully promoted and demonstrated sustainable and alternative land use to the public though many creative activities, like collaborating with local artists and design students to tell stories of the village and farmers via different kinds of media; organising farmers’ markets, workshops, eco-tourism; and operating an organic farm .Fresh vegetables are produced using composting and organic fertiliser inputs from the community. The farm also recruits volunteers to share farm work and sweats on the field for supplying good quality organic products to the community. There is a strong message that Mapopo wants to bring up: to save the farmland and villages for Hong Kong’s sustainable future.
A good start-up project always meets its community’s needs. Mapopo has made an A+ effort of it and will hopefully peak before the government realises what the city really needs and avoid the loss of nature, farmland, food sufficiency and farmers’ livelihoods.
