Food done well – know your farmer’s heart and mind

Analysis

A  recent advertorial in MDT celebrated MGM’s Aji becoming the first Macau restaurant to earn the top three-star rating in Food Made Good Standard certification. Not only is this an occasion to congratulate a local restaurant for attaining a global achievement but the fact that these goals are being sought is recognition by food service providers and by some clientele market segments of the harms that arise from conventional industrial food systems and the important role that Food and Beverage businesses can play.

Certification with The Food Made Good Standard allows restaurants to provide their customers a level surety that every aspect of their business is rooted in sustainable practices along three pillars: Sourcing, Social connections and Environment. Knowing the source – even better, being connected sufficiently to the source to even know the name of the farmer or the fisherman – and ensuring that land, sea, families and communities are not exploited but cared for and that their livelihoods are guaranteed for the long term is the first pillar. Treating people well is the second: staff are to feel safe, supported and valued, customers well fed according to international health guidelines and are also educated to make better consumption decisions, and the final social responsibility is to the community at large. The environmental pillar exhorts that food businesses tread lightly on the planet mainly by sourcing as locally as possible to reduce food miles and wastage: emissions are to be low, water use is scrutinized and pollution avoided; food is not wasted; and other waste is avoided or at least diverted from landfill: Waste, after all, is an operational design failure.

Meeting such exacting standards is not easy as we are embedded into an industrialised food procurement web that offers convenient access to goods delivered via providor consolidators at one end, and being locked into government-provided waste-management services at the other. This however has not deterred a number of restaurants – notably mainly well-resourced hotel-restaurants – in China, Hong Kong and Macau from achieving this certification by going the extra lengths required to find alternative procurement pathways directly from the producers and by shifting to a mindset of frugal hedonism in the use of resources.

Although Aji is the first in Macau, in Hong Kong are Austin Ferrando Balbi’s Ando who is “[i]ndebted to the generosity of Mother Earth”; Swire Properties’ The Upper House in Pacific Place, Admiralty; Hugo’s at the Hyatt Regency, achieving a 2-star rating in 2024 (they have a herb garden on the ninth floor and partner with local food donation agencies); restaurants FEAST & Sugar at East Hotels that have recycled over 6,400kg of oyster shells for reef restoration!; and the Grand Hyatt’s Cantonese MICHELIN recommended, One Harbour Road where 1% of revenue goes to support farmers’ regenerative agriculture practices to sequester carbon via the NGO, Zero Foodprint Asia. Although restaurants with The Food Made Good Certification can also be found in Beijing and Chengdu, mainland China is yet to be included as a key partner for The Sustainable Restaurant Association. The Standard was launched in Hong Kong in 2019 and in Traditional Chinese in 2024, with a view to extending the networks further throughout APAC.

These kinds of standards are important for food safety and environmental reasons. A study published in the Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems late last month by a research team from Xiamen warn of the accumulation of nutrients (namely phosphorus) used in agricultural production in the waterways and soils of the GBA.  Inefficient applications in crop management, animal husbandry and aquaculture and very minimal recycling (7.89%) have led to most of the nutrient losses accumulating in soil (74%) and water (24%) creating environmental degradation.

Fake foods and ingredients have been a concern throughout China for many a year, but beyond intentional adulteration, factors affecting food safety in 11 cities across the GBA were found to be complex and varied in study data from 2022. In a paper from South China Agricultural University published earlier this year, of the factors causing food samples failing to meet the quality requirements, pesticide and veterinary drug residues ranked topmost, pointing again to harmful farming practices.

Growing awareness among consumers and suppliers about which agricultural practices cause environmental damage and food safety risks will hopefully prompt demand for efficiency in inputs and better management of natural systems via their food purchasing and consumption choices.

The Food Made Good Standard Framework

As individuals, to guarantee that our food is safe and soils and water (“the commons”) are preserved, stewarded and restored, we would be growing our own – not possible for most people without access to some land. We can buy appropriately labelled produce (organic, from regenerative farms, no-cage, Fair Trade, “responsibly sourced”) and trust the veracity of the labelling and integrity of the supply chains, but many claims are hard to verify and difficult to understand even for professionals. When we outsource our food safety and security as we lose direct links between the consumer and producer, and the parties along that chain hold differing agenda (not necessarily in the interests of the end used), certification bodies such as The Sustainable Restaurant Association offer a valuable guide to both providers and consumers.

Some restaurants such as Brae in Victoria, Australia, which like Aji have also been certified, take localisation and the ability of the consumer to verify the source of produce so seriously they are almost entirely integrated into their local supply stream: they practice regenerative farming themselves, eliminating chemical fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides and avoiding all logistics and transport emissions; they focus on soil health, building organic matter and engaging in land regeneration; they capture rain water for cooking, washing and drinking; they generate their own electricity, and compost and utilise their organic waste onsite, but only after any excess produce is preserved through pickling, drying, fermenting and other forms of preservation. Brae exemplifies the idea that “sustainability in foodservice is deeply shaped by context – especially when it comes to access to infrastructure, support networks, legislation and local supply chains”. Restaurants close to the land, or even on the land, have a better chance to connect with it and become integrated into the local ecology. The production of food and the subsequent waste-streams are directly managed and even tangible to the consumers so that the potential harms are recognised and avoided there and then. Humans, like animals, naturally tend not to sully their own living environment, that we do so now screams of how disconnected we have become from our own life-cycle ecology.

Framework of the phosphorus flows model of the urban agglomeration food system Source: Yang et al., 2025, Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, Volume 9.

In the metropolises of the GBA, similar literally ground-level integration cannot be readily achieved without either the vision of extraordinary leadership, or access to pathways and guidance offered by organisations that produce recognisable standards. The Sustainable Restaurant Association delivering the Food Made Good Standard is one such organisation creating awareness at the restaurant industry (through restaurants like MGM’s Aji) and consumer levels that health of our soils and water are deeply connected to and determine the health of our communities. By Leanda Lee, MDT