This thesis investigates a community of local organic food producers, distributors and consumers in the process of urbanization of Hong Kong. It focuses on these people’s common concerns to the consequences of urbanization in the society against the overdevelopment, the unequal marketing system of local agricultural products as well as the failure of government policy on the environment. Some work as new organic farmers and some stay in the urban areas as responsible consumers based on their life experiences, family concerns and agencies. They interact and enlarge their group through shifting the boundary of the community by accepting traditional farmers who convert to organic farming. The local organic food, as a commodity, provides space for this group to interpret their ideals and di...[ Read more ]

This thesis investigates a community of local organic food producers, distributors and consumers in the process of urbanization of Hong Kong. It focuses on these people’s common concerns to the consequences of urbanization in the society against the overdevelopment, the unequal marketing system of local agricultural products as well as the failure of government policy on the environment. Some work as new organic farmers and some stay in the urban areas as responsible consumers based on their life experiences, family concerns and agencies. They interact and enlarge their group through shifting the boundary of the community by accepting traditional farmers who convert to organic farming. The local organic food, as a commodity, provides space for this group to interpret their ideals and discontent to the mainstream society; they are against Hong Kong as a core of global capitalism, overdevelopment and inequality.

However, the local organic food cannot compete with the low-price imported items in free market economy. The farmers and consumers join together to resist the imports of source-unknown organic food from mainland China, to find foreign elements to improve their group’s competence and to appropriate the government’s social programmes for resources. Interestingly, they compete among themselves for economic and social benefits by manipulating the definitions of authentic organic food and their behaviours in different social incidents.

My argument ends in the start of a social movement which constitutes a new kind of lifestyle; the participants adopt the concepts of “organic” into the daily life of producing and processing food, consuming with awareness of environmentalism, supporting marginalized groups and encouraging face-to-face human relationships. A new lifestyle is created by the introduction of local organic food in Hong Kong. The lifestyle is considered local, environmentally-friendly, responsible to producers, fair to humanity and ethical; it responses simultaneously to the changing China-Hong Kong relationship and the impacts of global capitalism.