Food

We are what we eat, and more than 99% of our food is imported from outside Hong Kong.  We live sophisticated lifestyles, and the wealth of the territory has allowed us to construct vast industries of production, transportation and distribution for an incredible variety of foods from all over the world (ref: ecological foot print).

But this comes at a high price: not only the cost of getting the food to Hong Kong, the level of wastage and concerns over food quality (as a manufactured product) and food security (countries buy up land in other territories to guarantee their own food supply).
As with materials we see little of the cycle of production in our food, and many of the images from the food processing, consumption and waste sides of the global  food business are highly disturbing (remember that film about meat processing factories vs  hamburger restaurant diners?)

Hong Kong may be able to buy its way around these problems at present, but in the event of a major environmental or political disaster (like the Peak Oil crisis in Cuba), we will rapidly need to become self-sufficient in food, and it will take a lot more than the activation of our urban green spaces and roof decks for food production to sustain the population.