Farming against real estate dominance 173practice, a point that I will more fully develop in later sections. In addition to
Becky’s parents, the activists also recruited full-time farmers to work on land they
rented from neighboring tenants. Starting from 2010, they have held a regular
weekend farmer’s market, which first catered to local middle-class families in the
New Territories but now also attracts all kinds of visitors. The Ma Shi Po campaign
also allied with nearby farmers in order to promote locally grown vegetables even
though those farmers do not grow organically.
The Ma Shi Po farm tour is unconventional in the sense that visitors see not only
nice green farms and fruit trees but also find out about how major land developers have
acquired land in northeastern New Territories and how they have turned productive
farmland into abandoned spaces. During the tour, the tour guide shows visitors the
many patches of abandoned land filled with weeds alongside still active farmland
that is teeming with colorful vegetables. The quotation that opened this section is
part of a regular narrative in the guided farm tour of Ma Po Po, which highlights the
deteriorating farming conditions and the brutal evictions happening in the region.
At the same time, the tour guide emphasizes the benefits of having a farm next to
urban neighborhoods, noting that such proximity helps recycle food waste such as
soy bean curb residue and fish intestine from the nearby wet market, enables the
transformation of food waste into useful fertilizer, provides urban households easy
access to the producers of their vegetables, and rejuvenates traditional market spaces.
At the conclusion of the tour, visitors are reminded of cases of unsafe food imported
from across the China border, such as vegetables with harmful pesticide residue and
chickens with flu virus, and hence the importance of having community-supported
agriculture both in urban neighborhoods and within the larger Hong Kong area.
Today, the Ma Shi Po farm tours regularly attract around 50 people every
other weekend. Urbanites are fascinated to see a farm right next to an urban
neighborhood and just a short distance from the train station. But perhaps the
biggest impression one gets at the end of the tour is that farming is now seriously
threatened by real estate development in Hong Kong. Mrs. Chan, a first-time
visitor who went with her family said,
We love the countryside a lot. It is much better than going to a shopping mall.
We learned about this tour activity through Facebook. We have never been to
a rural village and farming fields. We really want our kids to see how a farmer
works and to know where our food is from.She felt very regretful, however, when told that the farm would soon disappear
with the implementation of the Northeastern Development Plan (Law Wai Yee 2013).
With increasing numbers of visitors and customers, the Ma Shi Po campaign
has achieved massive success in attracting public attention. Middle-class families
have started to spend weekend holidays there, and schools organize educational
tours to the farm. Middle-class housewives concerned with food safety drive
to Ma Shi Po to buy organic vegetables. The farmer’s market in Fanling, the
New Territories, has also begun to attract interest. In 2013, a major Hong Kong
newspaper, Ming Pao, promoted the farm with the following editorial: