Our dystopic food system produces both both hunger and excess, a logic so contradictory that seems only possible in dystopic futures of cyber punk fiction.
In every crisis there is an opportunity, and now is the time to rethink what living could mean if we were to put urban agriculture on the agenda. Growing food in the city is not a return to the past, it is a vision of sustainability and resilience.
COVID19 is deepening the hunger crisis. According to Oxfam’s latest report, 12,000 people per day will die from hunger caused by the pandemic pandemic – potentially more than the COVID death toll. Daisy Tam discusses hunger crisis with Karen Koh on RTHK Radio – 123 show.
Sourcing local and seasonal has become the response to the disruptions seen in our food supply chain. More than just a temporary solution, local production should be part of the city’s resilience planning – contingency for future risks.
What would we eat after the apocalypse? What future foods would be available and in what forms? In this playful take on the future of food, I threw an apocalyptic feast and invited my audience to a tasting menu of reconstituted eggs, vacuum packed steaks, and canned fruit and freeze dried vegetables.
Hong Kong and Singapore are often considered twin cities on the global stage – it is similar in terms of size and wealth. In this long awaited opportunity to speak in Singapore, I presented the case of Hong Kong.
My view is that urban agriculture is not a thing of the past, many cities in the world are experimenting with different modes of growing food in the city as a way of building resilience.
As part of the Better Business Innovation Series, the American and British Chamber of Commerce brought together key players in sustainability, from start-ups and NGOs to established businesses, members of government, academia and the investment community to explore the challenges we face in the Food and Beverage sector.
Speaking to a packed room of students at City University was a great way to kick start 2018! Introducing students from the School of Creative Media with diverse backgrounds in Art, Animation, Photography Digital Video, Games, Installation to the study of food was challenging as it was rewarding. The talk “Securing our Food System” invited the audience to rethink our food system.
As part of the Interdisciplinary Unit of their IB curriculum, this group of Grade 7s from Hong Kong Academy spent the whole week learning about food security. Speaking to a group of 60 well-informed and curious minds was quite the challenge – what a lively discussion! Despite the fact that there is no such thing as Food Studies in Hong Kong, I’m glad to know that the topic is slowly making its way into various curriculums!
The Zurich University of the Arts hosted a talk series on the topic of Ecologies: Matters of Coexistence for their graduate students coming from Switzerland, Singapore, Taiwan, China and Hong Kong as part of their Transcultural Collaboration programme. Consuming Nature was a dialogue between myself and Artist Tsang Tak Ping with a good 60 people in the audience thinking together about our relationship to nature and what it means to co-exist.
A one-day event that brought together practitioners and entrepreneurs who are keen to change the way we eat. My panel “The Big Picture” kickstarted the day by looking at the bigger picture of global food trends, the challenges we face and alternatives that might change our food future.
This has been a long-awaited workshop. Taking place in the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston, this seminar brought together academics and researchers working in the field of urban resilience.
An opportunity to speak to an audience of 1200 at the Academy of Performing Arts – the largest Tedx event here in Hong Kong! In spite of its status as Asia’s gourmet city, Hong Kong is in fact NOT food secure. “How secure is food? The case of Hong Kong” gives a quick overview of our urban food system and urges the government, businesses and individuals to put food on the agenda in order to start the change we need today.
As part of the month long event aimed at using technology to tackle food waste in the F&B sector in Hong Kong, Metta held a series of 5 workshops bringing together industry leaders, start-ups, NGOs and researchers into discussion.
As part of the Knowledge Transfer Project “Greener Living – micro urban farming and turning waste into resource”, I started a vertical garden to grow an edible wall with my students where we planted organic vegetables using wasted resources.
I was invited to chair the session called Food for Thought at Asia Society’s event “In a grain of Rice: Food & Culture for South and Southeast Asia”. I shared examples drawn from my research and own experiences to discuss the cultural significance of rice and reflected on how food bring communities together through participatory practices.
“Lost Food: Food, Knowledge, Culture” was one of the earliest event I organised at Hong Kong Baptist University. I invited a panel of speakers to talk about our forgotten food culture and lost knowledge – from the way food is produced, to the way its prepared and consumed, how little we know shows how alienated we are from our everyday necessity.
