this city – my health, my wellbeing. But we
don’t see a lot of ‘we’ – the environment and
community. We feel lonely – people sometimes
don’t care. We hope people will join. Being
conscious has given us challenges that normally
aren’t there. It’s been tremendously challenging
being conscious – we’ve had to invent the wheel
really.”
According to Larry, “Every time you spend
money on food, you’re voting. The good guys or
bad guys?” Conscious businesses need as many
votes as possible in order to bring down the cost
of creating food with integrity; only through
consumer demand (volume) will these efforts
become more affordable.
One of the things that Larry’s enterprise is
doing differently – and consciously – is growing
menu items on their premises at Sohofama.
“Ideally, we want this to be our farm. Instead
of working the ‘farm to table’ model, we
wanted to build an urban farm where the tables
are.” Although they face constant challenges
maintaining their efforts, they’re making
headway.
Bobsy’s efforts to create a zero-food-waste
restaurant are also part of his conscious business
philosophy. He says, “The conscious business is
just as proud of its back door as its front door.
We try to minimise waste as much as possible.”
One way he is achieving this is with enormous
composting efforts. It’s great news for farmers
and it means there’s more locally grown organic
produce for us all to enjoy.
“We’re trying to compost everything, to
operate a zero-food-waste restaurant,” says
Bobsy. “Any organic matter should be going
back to the soil – to help generate good soil.
Without good soil, there’s no good food in Hong
Kong. We’ve been making Hong Kong farmers
very happy – we give them clean, vegan compost
that can go straight into their system. We
deliver at our own expense, it doesn’t cost them
anything.”
Is it possible to source produce entirely locally
in our city? Bobsy delivers the reality: “Hong
Kong doesn’t grow food as a country, so there’s
no way to source locally for businesses. It’s very
seasonal and very limited quantity, Hong Kong
farmers are very limited in what they can give.
But, Hong Kong has more than 500 organic
farms now – they’ve popped up in the space of
four years. That’s tremendous growth. Hong
Kong farmers aren’t farming because they have
no choice, they farm because they’re passionate
and they want to farm. There’s a new generation
of farmers, they’re university educated, and they
want to bring the integrity back to Hong Kong
soil.”
Bobsy is optimistic that the organic trend will
continue. He concludes, “Even in supermarkets
there’s a huge increase in the amount of local
produce available to families. This boom
in organic products and food, it’s a global
awakening and Hong Kong is no exception.”
April 2016
41
"Ideally, we want
this to be our
farm. Instead
of working the
‘farm to table’
model, we
wanted to build
an urban farm
where the tables
are."
