Meet The High-Tech Urban Farmer Growing Vegetables Inside Hong Kong’s Skyscrapers

Meet The High-Tech Urban Farmer Growing Vegetables Inside Hong Kong’s Skyscrapers

Share to Linkedin In early February, residents of Hong Kong—an Asian financial hub home to 7. 4 million people—faced a shortage of fresh food. Shelves stocking vegetables and the like were empty across supermarkets in the city as strict Covid-19 controls across the border in mainland China badly disrupted fresh food supplies. Hong Kong, a densely populated city where agriculture space is limited, is almost totally dependent on the outside world for its food supply. More than 90% of the skyscraper-studded city's food, especially fresh produce like vegetables, is imported, mostly from mainland China. "During the pandemic, we all noticed that the productivity of locally grown vegetables is very low," says Gordon Tam, cofounder and CEO of vertical farming company Farm66 in Hong Kong. "The social impact was huge." Shoppers empty the shelves of a supermarket in Hong Kong on February 8, 2022. Tam estimates that only about 1. 5% of vegetables in the city are locally produced. But he believes vertical farms like Farm66, with the help of modern technologies, such as IoT sensors, LED lights and robots, can bolster Hong Kong's local food production—and export its know-how to other cities. "Vertical farming is a good solution because vegetables