Farmers expects 30 pc vegetable loss if chilly weather persists

Farmers expect 30 percent of vegetables to be lost due to the effects of the numbing weather on Tuesday.

Hong Kong experienced chilly weather today, with temperatures hovering around single-digit degrees Celsius, heavily affecting the vegetable farmlands in the New Territories.

The chairman of Hong Kong New Territories Local Farmers Association, surnamed Wong, stated that today was windy as well as raining, and the cold weather has affected most of the New Territories farmland, but she has yet to receive reports of farmlands freezing over.

She also stated that it was a bitter 4 degrees at Yin Kong Tsuen, chilling the vegetables and damaging the roots of the produce, such as Chinese kale shrinking in size due to the biting weather.

She expects that if the cold weather continues, about 30 percent of the produce will be lost, and if there is freezing, then the effects will be even worse.

Wong added that she had taken anti-frost measures by placing a mesh tunnel over the vegetables to prevent frost forming on them.