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Hei Kiu Au

In a corner of Hong Kong’s Tsuen Wan Market, a bustling indoor market where the floor is permanently damp and the air smells of wet fabric and drying fish, a sign reads Fu Kam Organic Farm. Below it, a cluster of grapes hangs from a metal pole – plump, luminous and impossibly glossy. There is no premium packaging, no branded box, no chilled display case, just bunches of shine muscat – the darling of Japanese fruit fanatics – and the woman who grew them.
“Come buy our local, organic shine muscat grapes!” a voice booms in accented Cantonese. “Grown with Mead Johnson baby milk formula!”
This is Yan Fuqin, known as “Sister Kam”. Before I can ask what baby milk formula has to do with grapes, she is already ushering me towards her car.
“Come,” she says. “I’ll show you.”

She drives me to her farm, also known as Fu Kum Organic Pitaya Farm, in Kwu Tung, a rural stretch between Sheung Shui and Lok Ma Chau that has somehow resisted urban development – until now.
Born in rural Chongqing to a family of farmers, Yan moved to Hong Kong in 1997 to join her husband, who reared pigs. However, when the government launched a voluntary buyout scheme for pig farms in 2006, her husband’s operation was cancelled the following year. She needed a new way to farm.
On the government’s advice, she began growing organic vegetables in 2009. But she quickly realised that the competition was too high. She pivoted to dragon fruit, and her farm has grown into what she believes to be the largest dragon fruit operation in Hong Kong.
As she drives, she gestures towards newly minted residential buildings, part of the Northern Metropolis project. “In 1997, there were almost 200 farms,” she says. “Now there are fewer than 20 commercial ones.”
The road narrows, winding through construction sites where trucks heaped with dirt rumble past, machinery beeping and rattling, dust coating the roadside foliage.
Then, we emerge on the other side of the hill. The sound recedes and the road calms. Birds chirp in the distance. The land opens into vegetable plots and fruit trellises.

Yan’s farm survived because it was tucked behind the hill, overlooked during the early waves of land resumption.
We arrive at a simple hut in her 4.67-hectare (11.5-acre) farm where dozens of expired Mead Johnson formula cans are stacked in neat piles.
“Mead Johnson called us right before the pandemic,” Yan explains. “They asked if we could experiment with using their expired formula as liquid fertiliser.” The company now donates about 2,000 cans annually as part of a sustainability initiative.
She dips a ladle into one of the barrels. The liquid fertiliser inside is milky and slightly thick. The smell is funky but not unpleasant – like aged dairy, maybe yogurt left a day too long. She adds yeast and water to the powder and lets it ferment “until it smells like cheese”, she explains. The process breaks down proteins and sugars, making the nutrients easier for plants to absorb.
“Farmers have always used expired milk, but baby milk formula was just always too expensive to use,” she says. “When they offered, we took the opportunity.”

We move on to the grapevines.
“Our farm initially grew mainly vegetables. But after the pandemic, people had grown accustomed to ‘two-dish rice’ takeaways and weekend trips to Shenzhen. Fewer people cook at home now, so we had to innovate.”
As premium fruits still drew interest, Yan turned to farming varieties she had never grown before: Indian jujube, Vietnamese gac fruit, Taiwanese sugar apple and, finally, shine muscat grapes – a variety rarely attempted on Hong Kong soil.
She studied growing methods in Shenzhen and Huizhou, eventually bringing in grafted seedlings from Taiwan in 2024.
“The first harvest came on December 18, 2025,” she says proudly. “Our very own shine muscat, grown here.”
She plucks a grape and hands it to me. The skin is thin and crisp, snapping before the flesh bursts – jelly-soft, succulent, with a low-acid sweetness that is floral and honeyed, with a distinct musky perfume that lingers. The texture is creamier than other shine muscats I have tried, almost velvety. It tastes like green apple and lychee had a child, and someone fed it baby milk formula.

The grapes instantly remind me of chef Vicky Cheng of Wing, who is always searching for local and regional fruits to serve at the end of a meal to his guests. He joins me on the farm a week later.
He stops at the vines, eye level with the hanging clusters. He takes a pair of scissors, snips a bunch from the stalk, plucks a summer black grape – a seedless Japanese variety derived from kyoho grapes – and bites into it.
“This,” he says. “This is wine-y. Intense. Distinct.”
He prefers it to the shine muscat: it has more character, more depth, he says. He keeps walking, inspecting bunch after bunch of shine muscat, noting how they vary: some yellower and riper, others smaller and pale green, still developing.
“I want to use local,” he says. “I really do. But from a restaurant perspective, I have to think about reliability. Even if I get a beautiful sample, the quality isn’t consistent. The yield isn’t enough.”

For a chef, consistency is non-negotiable. For a small organic farm, it is nearly impossible.
However, filmmakers Daphne Mandel and Guy Bertrand, who have spent two years documenting Kwu Tung’s resilient community for their film Cha Guo, see it differently.
“From a consumer’s perspective, the natural inconsistency in size and appearance is often a sign of authenticity,” Mandel says. “Imperfections can actually inspire confidence that what you’re buying is genuinely organic.”
Yan’s farm’s commitment to a “virtuous production cycle” – vegetable scraps to goats, goat manure to soil, expired formula to grapes – is precisely what makes it remarkable. But the changing environment outside the farm also raises a question Bertrand has been asking since they started filming in November 2023.
“How much of [the farm] can still be called organic? The farmer can only control what’s inside the fence. She doesn’t control the air, nor the water. With all the construction, the pollution, the noise – at what point does it stop being organic, even if she never uses chemicals?”

Mandel and Bertrand have watched the transformation up close. When they first visited, the construction felt distant. Now, Mandel observes the growing presence of trucks.
“The activity is insane, and it’s so close to the farm. It’s a miracle you can still arrive at the end of that path.”
For Bertrand, the farm represents something larger than grapes.
“People used to live horizontally. Each house had its own small vegetable plot, a tradition and culture that goes way back,” he says. “All of that history is in this soil. The question is whether an ecosystem like this can survive massive urban development.”
Yan’s farm, he notes, does outreach with schools, teaching young people that soil is not something dirty, that food comes from the earth, not a supermarket shelf. “That boundary between urban and nature doesn’t have to be a wall. It could be an opportunity.”
But opportunity requires scale – exactly what Hong Kong lacks.
“There’s simply not enough production to supply restaurants or supermarkets,” Mandel says. “Contraction, not expansion. That’s the reality.”

Yan knows this better than anyone. She is standing at the vines, checking the grapes. Beyond the hill, the cranes are still there.
I ask how many more harvests she thinks she has left.
“Three years ago, they [the North District Government Offices] told us we have 20 more years,” she says. “I can only take it at face value. But deep down, I know that if one day, when they come knocking on our door with shovels, we have no choice but to go.
“For now, the grapes are growing – and that’s all we can really control.”


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Shine muscat grapes grown in Hong Kong? This farmer is doing it – using baby milk formula

Organic farmer Yan Fuqin holds a bunch of her farm’s shine muscat grapes at her stall at Hong Kong’s Tsuen Wan Market. Photo: Hei Kiu Au

Shine muscat grapes grow at Yan’s Fu Kam Organic Pitaya Farm in Kwu Tung. Photo: Hei Kiu Au.

Farmers work at Fu Kum Organic Pitaya Farm in a still from Cha Guo, a documentary on Kwu Tung’s resilient community. Photo: Daphne Mandel and Guy Bertrand

Fermented baby milk formula mixture is seen in barrels at Fu Kam Organic Pitaya Farm. Photo: Hei Kiu Au

Mead Johnson now donates about 2,000 cans of expired baby milk formula to the farm annually. Photo: Hei Kiu Au

Cheng taste-tests summer black grapes fresh off the vine. Photo: Hei Kiu Au

A still from the Cha Guo documentary shows Yan and her dogs. Photo: Daphne Mandel and Guy Bertrand

Yan and Li Yongcan, the co-owner of Fu Kam Organic Pitaya Farm, stand among bunches of shine muscat grapes at the farm. Photo: Hei Kiu Au

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Lifestyle

Food & Drink

Yan Fuqin’s organic farm in Kwu Tung uses Mead Johnson formula to grow soft, creamy shine muscat grapes, but its future is under threat


Yan Fuqin’s organic farm in Kwu Tung uses Mead Johnson formula to grow soft, creamy shine muscat grapes, but its future is under threat.


Food and agriculture

Hong Kong

Baby formula

Environment

Shine muscat grapes grown in Hong Kong? This farmer is doing it – using baby milk formula

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Yan Fuqin’s organic farm in Kwu Tung uses Mead Johnson formula to grow soft, creamy shine muscat grapes, but its future is under threat

Yan Fuqin’s organic farm in Kwu Tung uses Mead Johnson formula to grow soft, creamy shine muscat grapes, but its future is under threat