It’s Only Natural
Organic farmer Wu Luluan (right) and her assistant pack fresh vegetables to be express-delivered to customersSitting down to lunch on a cold winter’s day at Chunnixiang Ecological Farm, more than an hour’s drive out of Beijing urban area, was a simple affair. The sparsely furnished but warm kitchen was tucked away in a small section of a hothouse, vegetable dishes steaming on a well-worn dining table. The options included kale, brussels sprouts, horse radish and home-made bread with fermented soya paste. The fresh taste was obvious - more so because the vegetables had been picked an hour before and the farm grows its produce organically.
Wu Luluan, who owns the farm with her husband, is a woman with a mission. She wants to get people eating more healthily and the country farming organically. The term organic is generally used for anything produced or involving production on a farm with no use of chemical fertilizers, artificial chemicals or pesticides.
The former teacher got into farming in 2006 after she and her husband experienced recurring health problems and spent much of their salaries on hospital bills.
“After investigation and medical consultation, we found that the poor nutrition we were getting from local food was at the root of our deteriorating health,” she told ChinAfrica.
In a quandary over where to source healthy foods, she took the plunge and decided to try her hand at growing her own vegetables and following a healthier lifestyle.
Government assistance
Today, after a lot of study, trial and error, and help from other farmers, Wu is a successful organic farmer with 4 hectares of rich naturally-fertilized land.
“I can harvest in several thousand kg of vegetables annually from just two hothouses,” she says, adding that crops can be grown year round. Beds of thriving fennel, chives, peppers, beetroot and shallots give the sweating hothouse an inviting aroma, all oblivious to the freezing temperatures outside.
Wu said the government also encourages farmers to grow organic vegetables, giving her a $1,000 annual subsidy as well as contracting her to manage several of the hot-houses registered to the collective of Guangjitun Village in Yanqing District of Beijing, where Wu’s farm locates. She resists the lure of investors saying some farmers often want to produce more by using chemicals, something she won’t accept.
Her operation made in excess of $58,000 profit in 2015 and provides employment for up to 20 skilled farmers in peak season, who come from across the country.
“Local farmers in Beijing are wealthy from leasing their land use right to farmers coming from different places nationwide and don’t want to work on this farm,” she said.
Liu Fuli hails from northeast China’s Jilin Province where she has her own farm. She came to Beijing to work with Wu three years ago, after her own farm was flooded. Her brother now runs the family peanut farm.
“Organic vegetable farming is much better than the crops I planted at home and I think this healthy method is the future of farming,” said Liu. She is also encouraged by trend in her province of younger people going to rural areas to take up organic farming.
Wang Yongyan who hails from northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province was invited to work on Wu’s farm after being employed by a Chinese farmer in Russia for two years.
She says farmers in China live a good life and organic farming is the future. “Around my farm in Heilongjiang, most farmers grow their own organic veggies for themselves,” she said. Both her and Liu believe the higher cost of organic vegetables to consumers are not a factor when compared to the health benefits.
Wu sells her vegetables via a 200-plus social media customer base, and consumers receive their orders by express delivery. City dwellers can also lease a space in the hothouse and grow their own crops, a service which is proving popular with her health-conscious customers.
One of her innovative methods of remaining sustainable is to sell live fish. Wu has a contract with a nearby state-owned reservoir where the fish are farmed organically. The live fish are placed in thick sealed plastic folders along with oxygenated water and express-delivered along with vegetable orders.
Keeping it natural
On the other side of Beijing, farmer Sun Rongze who owns the Jintianmao Farm, grows her crops “naturally.”
“I want my children, family and friends to have a better, healthier lifestyle. This motivated me to get into farming and growing my own food. I need to trust how the food we consume is grown,” she told ChinAfrica, adding that she has seen more and more farmers getting involved in farming both naturally and organically, while helping to change consumers’ mindsets about nutrition and what they eat.
Sun, a former human resources manager, says natural farming is one step up from organic farming as the method of growing crops attempts to keep conditions as natural as possible, employ no mechanization and relies on diversity. She believes this is the direction farming needs to take for sustainability of agricultural sector.
“I use strawberries, milk and brown sugar as fertilizer, bee hives in the hothouses to pollinate the plants and ward off pests by using ladybird beetles and growing shallots,” she said.
She operates 69 hothouses on just over 14 hectares each producing 100 kg of vegetables every six months. This long growth cycle means consumers pay a lot more for the vegetables.
Sun has been awarded a certificate from the Ministry of Agriculture to verify that her crops are grown naturally. This involves teams of agricultural experts regularly checking factors such as the farm’s soil, water and types of fertilizers.
She said the government has been very helpful in assisting her with this process and encouraging natural farming. Sun’s farm produces an impressive 60 kinds of fruit and vegetables a year and provides jobs for at least 20 farmers, all of whom now favor natural farming methods.
Like Wu, Sun’s sales are mainly from supplying the lifestyle farmers’ markets in Beijing along with a thriving social media customer home delivery base. Both farms produce a variety of crops that include cauliflower, brussels sprouts, and fennel which are very popular with foreign clients.
Goods to market
One of the busiest lifestyle markets in Beijing is Farm to Neighbors (FTN), which operates every weekend in the Liangmaqiao area of the city. It was launched in 2014 by Erica Huang, who sought to provide a venue for farms around Beijing that practiced organic agriculture in her quest for clean eating in China.
Both Sun and Wu supply FTN with produce which is driven by a more aware public who are demanding healthier options, much in line with the country’s current supply-side reform that seeks to remove red tape and allow the market to have a bigger voice in where resources should be allocated.
From small beginnings, FTN has grown to more than 50 vendors each weekend, which is made up of farmers, food artisans and craftspeople, with visitors exceeding 2,000 each day. Many of the vegetables and foodstuffs found at FTN are new to Chinese consumers and have been requested by foreign visitors who want a taste of home, from a safe source they can trust.
FTN and similar outlets across China are providing a vital resource for these farmers and suppliers. “Most of them do not supply to conventional markets because of their high cost of organic-standard production and this makes their selling price too high for conventional markets,” said Huang, adding that organically grown foods are at least 50 percent pricier than conventionally grown foods, she said.
According to Huang, similar markets have sprung up in China’s big cities such as Guangzhou, Dalian, Kunming, Hefei, Chengdu and Shanghai.
She said that while most of FTN’s farmers are not “organic farms” by legal definition, due to them being of a small-scale without the means to get organic government certification, all the farms supplying produce have been inspected by her team and have their farming methods registered for the sake of transparency.
“I think FTN is important because it builds a sense of community and bonding in an age of rapid development. It provides a face-to-face platform where people can learn where their food comes from and who produces it. They can even visit the farms to see how food is grown, I think this is very special,” she said.
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Hothouses like this grow organic vegetables all year round Photos by Francisco Little