Green revolution a crowning glory for HK skyscrapers
High above downtown Hong Kong’s bustling, trafficclogged streets, a group of office workers is toiling away – not on a corporate acquisition or a public share offering, but on harvesting a bumper crop of lettuce atop one of the skyscrapers studding the city’s skyline.
It’s rooftop farming taken to the extreme, and more about reaping happiness than providing food.
The volunteers are picking butter lettuce, Indian lettuce and Chinese mustard leaf growing in rows of low black plastic planters on a decommissioned helipad on the 146m-high roof of the 38-storey Bank of America tower. The scenery: a vertiginous panorama of glass office towers framed by lush mountain peaks and Victoria Harbour.
‘‘It’s pretty dirty but still I really enjoy it,’’ said Catherine Ng, one of five volunteers who work for the property company managing the tower.
The farm is run by Rooftop Republic, a three-year-old startup whose founders are tapping the growing interest in organic food and taking advantage of unused roof space in the cramped, highrent Chinese city.
Hong Kong, with its skinny office blocks and apartment towers and busy, affluent residents, might seem an unlikely place for rooftop farming to catch on. The finance and trading hub has rural suburbs, but farming takes up only 700ha of its land, and agriculture accounts for 0.1 per cent of its economic output.
Rooftop Republic’s founders say the appetite for their services is growing among Hong Kongers seeking a more sustainable lifestyle and concerned about where their food comes from.
‘‘We have been getting more and more interest from people who want to grow their own food,’’ said Michelle Hong, one of the founders. ‘‘A lot of it is triggered by concerns about food safety and the realisation that a lot of the food they consume might be laden with pesticides. I think people want to have more control and also more trust.’’
Hong Kong imports almost all of its food, much of it from mainland China. Public awareness
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about food safety in the former British colony has risen after countless food contamination scandals on the mainland.
Rooftop Republic has set up on average one farm a month since its founding, and now manages 36 farms covering 2800 square metres, including one in mainland China. It also provides workshops for companies, building owners, schools, and community groups.
The Bank of America farm was a milestone because it was the first in the city’s financial district. The company has since set up two more in the area, and Hong said it was looking at a few more sites.
Vegetables from the tower are donated to a food bank for use in lunch boxes distributed to the needy.
Some of Rooftop Republic’s other farms are at hotels or restaurants, which use the herbs, eggplants and melons for dishes on their menus.
Plenty of other groups or individuals had started cultivating their own rooftop vegetable gardens, said Matthew Pryor, a Hong Kong University architecture professor who has counted at least 60 and thinks there are a lot more he doesn’t know about.
Pryor’s research found approximately 1500 rooftop farmers in the city, cultivating a total area of about 1ha. He thinks there is potential for that to easily grow to 50,000 people working on a suitable rooftop area of 600ha.
Pryor helped to set up a farm on top of a university building, where volunteers, mainly staff, grow tomatoes, potatoes, strawberries, lettuce, dragonfruit, papaya, beans, peas and squash.
He said he discovered through his research that their main product isn’t edible.
‘‘The rooftop farms here produce virtually nothing’’ compared to Hong Kong’s overall consumption, Pryor said. ‘‘What they do produce, however, is happiness, and this social capital that they generate is enormous.’’
The farms can help stressedout, overworked and socially isolated Hong Kongers be happier and improve their wellbeing by letting them hang out with their friends and commune with nature.
Those benefits are on display at another Rooftop Republic farm, at airline Cathay Pacific’s headquarters near the city’s airport on rural Lantau Island.
Airline staff have planted crops that thrive in Hong Kong’s cool, dry winter growing season, like kale, cabbage, radishes and carrots, which they can take home.
‘‘We’re right by the sea, we have great views of the harbour, at the same time we have got great views of the airport. We see planes every two minutes,’’ said volunteer Prian Chan. ‘‘So it’s awesome to be here.’’ –AP
‘‘What [the rooftop farms] do produce, however, is happiness, and this social capital that they generate is enormous.’’ Matthew Pryor, Hong Kong University
begin next week as Cosby, 80, faces charges that he drugged and molested former Temple University athletics administrator Andrea Constand at his suburban Philadelphia home in 2004.
While Cosby’s lawyers sparred with the judge in court yesterday, they are also counting on him to make critical rulings to bolster their defence that Constand is a money-grubbing liar.
They want the judge to let them call Marguerite Jackson, who says Constand spoke of framing a celebrity before she went to police with allegations that Cosby drugged and molested her in 2004. They also want to let jurors know how much Cosby paid her in a 2006 civil settlement.
‘‘Those are the bookends: I have a motive, and I have a payoff,’’ lawyer Kathleen Bliss argued. ‘‘The jury should be allowed to view the full context of that.’’
Assistant District Attorney Kristen Fedden said prosecutors doubted that the discussion with Jackson happened. Constand’s lawyer has said Jackson is ‘‘not telling the truth’’.
The judge blocked Jackson from testifying at Cosby’s first trial, saying her testimony would be hearsay.
Prosecutors want him to do the same for the retrial.
Prosecutors say the theory that Constand wanted to set up Cosby is undermined by his testimony in a 2005 deposition that she only visited his home when invited and that he gave her pills without her asking for them.
They have also argued that the settlement is irrelevant to the criminal case.
Assistant District Attorney Stewart Ryan contended that Cosby’s negotiators initially asked that he be released from any criminal liability and tried to bar Constand from co-operating with law enforcement. He said this amounted to obstruction of justice.
–AP