Agriculture and aquaculture in Hong Kong

The local aquaculture industry is also facing challenges from competition with imported aquatic food products and concern of fish and seafood safety.

The industry led to many wealthy Chinese businessmen, who established themselves as the middlemen merchants with international connection.

[5] An Accredited Farm Scheme for protecting the environment and consumers against residues of agricultural pesticides was introduced in 1994.

The dependency on imports has increased steadily, since the ratio of population growth far exceed agricultural production numbers.

In 2012, Hong Kong's population of more than 7.1 million[9] daily consumed: In 2006, there were 2,100 farms in the territory, employing directly about 5,300 farmers [11] and workers.

[12] A fact sheet published in 2014 estimates that only 7 square kilometres of land in Hong Kong are actively farmed.

Yardlong beans, water spinach, amaranth, cucumber, and several species of Chinese gourd are produced in summer.

A wide range of temperate vegetables including tomato, sweet pepper, cauliflower, carrot, and celery are grown in winter.

A wide range of fruit is grown on the lower hill slopes, the main types being lychee, longan, wampee, local lemon, orange, tangerine, guava, papaya and banana.

Pigs raised on local farms are crosses derived from Duroc, Landrace and Large White parent stock.

The commercially important marine species are bigeye, golden thread, croaker, horse-head and pomfret.

[2] Hong Kong's fishing activities are conducted mainly[citation needed] in the waters of the adjacent continental shelf in the South and East China Seas.

[18][19] In 2022, the local inland ponds covered an area of 1,129 ha and produced 2,073 tonnes of freshwater fish.

[16] The Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department and its closely related marketing organisations provide infrastructural support and technical services to the various primary industries.

This work is carried out in an experimental station in Sheung Shui and results are made available to farmers by the department's advisory service.

Examples of well-received new produce varieties are: supersweet maize, heat tolerant lettuce, coloured sweet pepper, spaghetti squash, strawberry and white bitter cucumber.