How Hong Kong’s post-war initiative to support struggling farmers helped Gurkhas returning to Nepal – where it had a lasting impact

Farmers on the breadline in post-war Hong Kong were helped by the Kadoorie brothers’ agricultural aid initiative that retrained them and gave financial support
The scheme was extended to help Gurkha soldiers returning to Nepal readjust to agriculture, and gave small disbursements that proved vital to remote communities

Jason Wordie

Published: 8:45am, 26 Feb 2023

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Fresh water provision was a perennial Hong Kong problem from its mid-19th century urban beginnings; critical shortages were commonplace.

The Shing Mun Reservoir scheme in the New Territories, opened in 1935, provided essential supplies for urban areas, but at the expense of New Territories livelihoods, which changed forever within a few years.

Streams formerly channelled towards rice-field irrigation were diverted to the reservoir, leaving many farms waterless. Where irrigation was possible, and soils were suitable, some former rice fields became market gardens, with produce grown for sale in Hong Kong and Kowloon.

As this was possible only in locations near the Kowloon-Canton Railway or along main roads, more villages and their now-worthless rice fields were steadily abandoned; many were completely deserted by the 1970s.

Lawrence Kadoorie, one of the brothers behind the Kadoorie Agricultural Aid Association set up to help farmers, speaks to a villager working the fields in Hong Kong in the early 1960s. Photo: SCMP

Rapidly altered New Territories agricultural conditions were obvious to district officials by the late 1930s. The Japanese invasion of Hong Kong in 1941, years of occupation and gradual recovery after the war meant rural livelihood issues were in urgent need of practical solutions.

More efficient vegetable farming methods and animal husbandry skills – particularly for chickens and pigs – were essential. Farmers who had grown rice for generations had to acquire completely new skill sets.

The Hong Kong government, through the New Territories District Administration, provided agricultural extension officers and experimental farms, where new crop varieties could be tested before widespread introduction.

A family in Hong Kong, happy to have received help from the Kadoorie Agricultural Aid Association in the way of poultry, in 1973. Photo: SCMP

Established in 1951, the Kadoorie Agricultural Aid Association emerged as a post-war philanthropic response. This was an initiative of Sephardic Jewish business magnates, brothers Lawrence and Horace Kadoorie, who funded various development projects, established an experimental farm at Lam Tsuen (now Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden) and gave free breeding pigs and poultry to impoverished villagers, in particular widows with children to support.

The livelihoods that this timely assistance provided are warmly recalled.

Two women with ducks given to them by the Kadoorie Agricultural Aid Association, in Tai Po, Hong Kong, in 1970. Photo: SCMP

Less remembered are the benefits these agricultural extension programmes brought to Gurkha servicemen as farming steadily declined in the 1970s and ’80s. In those years, most British Army Gurkha soldiers retired to the remote Himalayan villages from where they originated.

Often a few days’ walk or more into Nepal’s mountain ridges and remote valleys, these hamlets lived on subsistence agriculture; ironclad (if meagre) military pensions were vital additional support for many families. Agricultural resettlement courses were tailored to the requirements of former servicemen.

Fact-finding “welfare treks” visited remote mountain villages to determine requirements first-hand. Small practical disbursements, such as sacks of cement, might help improve pathways, or enable weir construction on mountain streams, providing significantly improved irrigation; corrugated-iron sheeting helped roof a village schoolhouse.

Horace Kadoorie (right) with Capt Katchering, an ex-Gurkha serviceman and one of the instructors preparing Nepalese soldiers for life back home, in 1972. Photo: SCMP

Decades before the corporate social responsibility buzzword was coined, these microgrant disbursements made a lasting difference throughout Nepal.

By the late ’80s, circumstances altered further. After 15 years of military service – often longer – in Hong Kong, Brunei and Britain, few retired Gurkhas actually wanted to return permanently to a remote village precariously perched on an avalanche-prone mountainside, with no running water, modern sanitation, accessible healthcare or educational facilities beyond basic levels.

Gurkha wives, in particular, were even less interested in returning to lives of back-breaking drudgery, carrying water long distances by bucket, and so on. Driving and mechanical courses, and other practical skill sets also enabled further overseas employment possibilities.

As these more popular alternatives were introduced in the early ’90s, the once-popular agricultural extension courses conducted at Lam Tsuen, close to the New Territories military bases and married quarters where many Gurkha families had spent large tracts of their lives, were gradually discontinued.

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