Welcome to Climate Changed, a series profiling members of the Tatler community, who are leaders in the world of sustainability, on how they’re tackling the threat of the climate crisis head-on. Here, Hong Kong’s farming entrepreneur Raymond Mak tells Tatler about refocusing his company to educate the community about the environmental impact and benefits of its mobile farming solution
Raymond Mak (Gen.T 2021) is a co-founder of Farmacy. Launched in 2018, the company builds mobile indoor farms, which supply fresh, high quality greens to the city’s supermarkets. In 2022, it made a switch from focusing on selling a product and service to creating a positive impact in society.
The dramatic change came after what Mak describes as a time of understanding the company’s mission, unique position and how it adds value to clients. “We realised that we had to focus on impact-delivering on a sustainable lifestyle, helping our clients adopt it through awareness building and behavioural change.” And to do this, Farmacy needed a revamp. “It was best to start by reminding ourselves that we don’t just sell products and services to grow as a business, but we create impact and drive sustainable growth.”
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Instead of traditional for-profit sales, the business development team—now renamed “Impact & Growth”—focuses on communicating the impact of their products, as well as emphasising the need for better farming practices, which result in less food waste and produce high-quality greens. Farmacy recruited talent for the team and implemented new training protocols, with impact communication at the forefront.
Mak has taken this a step further with an initiative launched last October: using mobile farms as educational tools, via its work with schools around Hong Kong. “Schools care about the education and learning values of their students, so we design programmes which are in sync with this,” says Mak. “If we only talk about agriculture, the plants and the system, it is not as effective as engaging students and educators directly with our farms. They will learn important skills about farming and sustainability—and get good quality food at the same time.”
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