Meet The High-Tech Urban Farmer Growing Vegetables Inside Hong Kong’s Skyscrapers

John Kang Forbes Staff

I write about Asia's richest people and entrepreneurs on the rise.

Zinnia Lee Forbes Staff

May 23, 2022

Gordon Tam, co-founder and CEO of vertical farming company Farm66, wants to show that agriculture, combined with technology, has a promising future in cities, deserts and even in outer space.

In early February, residents of Hong Kong—an Asian financial hub home to 7.4 million people—faced a shortage of fresh food. Shelves stocking vegetables and the like were empty across supermarkets in the city as strict Covid-19 controls across the border in mainland China badly disrupted fresh food supplies.

Hong Kong, a densely populated city where agriculture space is limited, is almost totally dependent on the outside world for its food supply. More than 90% of the skyscraper-studded city’s food, especially fresh produce like vegetables, is imported, mostly from mainland China. “During the pandemic, we all noticed that the productivity of locally grown vegetables is very low,” says Gordon Tam, cofounder and CEO of vertical farming company Farm66 in Hong Kong. “The social impact was huge.”

Shoppers empty the shelves of a supermarket in Hong Kong on February 8, 2022. PAUL YEUNG/BLOOMBERG

Tam estimates that only about 1.5% of vegetables in the city are locally produced. But he believes vertical farms like Farm66, with the help of modern technologies, such as IoT sensors, LED lights and robots, can bolster Hong Kong’s local food production—and export its know-how to other cities. “Vertical farming is a good solution because vegetables can be planted in cities,” says Tam in an interview at the company’s vertical farm in an industrial estate. “We can grow vegetables ourselves so that we don't have to rely on imports.”

Tam says he started Farm66 in 2013 with his cofounder Billy Lam, who is COO of the company, as a high-tech vertical farming pioneer in Hong Kong. “Our company was the first to use energy-saving LED lighting and wavelength technologies in a farm,” he says. “We found out that different colors on the light spectrum help plants grow in different ways. This was our technological breakthrough.” For example, red LED light will make the stems grow faster, while blue LED light encourages plants to grow larger leaves.

Farm66 also uses IoT sensors and robots for quality control and to help manage the 20,000-square-foot indoor farm, which help the company recruit and retain workers. “A big problem for traditional farming is the lack of talent,” says Tam. “It’s because the children of many remaining farmers don’t want to take over the farms. They think it’s a very tedious job.”

“But by using technology, we can improve the working environment so that young people will be willing to farm,” he says. Farm66 currently employs 15 full-time employees, including data analysts, food scientists and mechanical engineers, producing up to seven tons of vegetables a month.