Report-back Demonstration of SLP 1101 Course, Semester 2 of 2019/20
Overall Pictures of the Project
Here are the background information and the related SDGs of our project!
Background Information
According to the related data of the Census and Statistics Department, there are less than 1% of Hong Kong citizens who are employed by agricultural occupation from 2014 to Feb 2020. Also, over the past few decades, the share of locally grown fresh vegetables has dropped from over 30% of the Hong Kong market in 1986 to only 1.7% in 2016. This means Hong Kong starts to rely on imported food heavily.
In fact, the government has tried to help to improve this situation. According to the relevant report, the government carried out a new Agricultural Land Rehabilitation Scheme (ALRS) under the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department (AFCD) to help those who want to rent private land to farm. The AFCD has received 484 applications over the past 10 years and it took place as a matchmaker to line up different landowners with potential clients. However, there have only 165 successful cases until 2019. Also, the operating costs of a farm are up to HK$300,000 a month. At the current rate of earnings (peak time HK$10,000 a day), the business is barely sustainable. This has shown that the requirement of stepping in this industry is high and the payback is not good enough. Therefore, not many teenagers want to engage in this industry.
Moreover, Hong Kong has a lack of Agriculture Education. In Hong Kong, only Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) and The University of Hong Kong (HKU) are providing specific agricultural courses. As a result, students in Hong Kong lack opportunities to get in touch with the agriculture area.
Hence, we want to provide a chance to students who are interested in this area especially for the organic rooftop farming part as the potential of rooftop farming is very high in Hong Kong and it is more sustainable. In reality, an urban farm for HK$500 will "earn back" itself in a year. Rooftop Farming uses about 90% less water and 4 times less space when compared to traditional farming. With the help of urban farming, it can produce 100 times food than with regular farming per square foot. It is much more productive.
If you want to know more details, you can check out the below links:
https://hongkongfp.com/2018/04/01/back-farm-future-agriculture-hong-kong/
https://asia.clickandgrow.com/blogs/news/38039556-6-benefits-of-urban-farming-vs-traditional-farming
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Through our project, we want to achieve one of the SDGs called Sustainable Cities and Communities which indicates making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe and sustainable. We want to gather more talents to join the rooftop farming industry. If more teenagers participate in this industry and contribute to its further development, the supply of organic vegetables in Hong Kong will increase and the demand of organic vegetable imports will decrease. As a result, local citizens can enjoy high quality local organic products and have a healthier diet. If this is our final outcome, we can make our city and human settlements inclusive, safe and sustainable. Through this project, we would like to enhance students' interest in agriculture and try to provide relevant resources to support them in their career path.
What is Service Learning?
Service-Learning means an experiential learning pedagogy that integrates meaningful community service with academic study and reflections to enrich students’ learning experience, in order to achieve the intended institutional or programme learning outcomes. Service Learning courses in Lingnan allow students to make a positive impact on society by applying their academic knowledge outside of the classroom. Students can not only increase their sense of civic responsibility and engagement, but also benefit the community at large. In this course, we are going to create an activity related to agriculture and we hope that it can encourage more teenagers to participate in agriculture.
What is Design Thinking?
Design Thinking is an iterative process that we use to understand the user, challenge assumptions and redefine problems in an attempt to identify alternative strategies and solutions that might not be instantly apparent with our initial level of understanding. At the same time, it is a way of thinking and working as well as a collection of hands-on methods.
The Use of Design Thinking
By using the Design Thinking, we try to transform an idea into a real solution.
Empathize
Through the interview with Rooftop Republic Organization, we found that the agriculture industry lacks of young blood and the interviewee mentioned that they have tried hard to encourage more teenagers to join their organization in these few years. However, rooftop farming is very potential in Hong Kong.
Define
After we realized this situation, we wanted to do something to encourage and attract more teenagers to join the agriculture industry. If this can be achieved, this industry can gather more talents and new blood. As a result, this industry can have further development.
Ideate
By brainstorming all the potential solutions, we selected one of them which we think is the most feasible one. We decided to hold a new course related to agriculture in Lingnan University at the very beginning. However, after several consultations, we changed our mind and we decided to hold an activity related to rooftop farming as we thought this option is more suitable for us at this stage.
Prototype
In order to achieve our ideas, we created an activity plan and a promotional video to attract students to join our activity.
Test
We tested our ideas with two different groups of people including the Rooftop Republic and two students from Hope College. We perceived the Rooftop Republic as the end beneficiary and the students from Hope College as the target group in our project.
You can see more details in the "highlights of the project" !!!
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