(Ed. note: IATP's President, Jim Harkness, is blogging from China as he meets with experts on China's food and farm system)
On the way to the DeRunWu Organic and Natural farm near Beijing, we stopped to make a few deliveries to nearby customers. The northern suburbs of Beijing, dusty villages and cornfields less than a decade ago, are quickly being covered by sprawling, gated residential compounds. Initially built to re-create the American suburban experience for expat families, these pricey developments are increasingly occupied by China’s own growing middle and upper classes. These people are Ji’s market (the owner of DeRunWu), but they’re also the biggest threat to his business. Suburban sprawl is driving up land rents so quickly that it has become his biggest expense, and Ji’s having trouble finding farmland near enough to the city for easy next-day delivery. He pointed out large plots of fallow farmland that have been bought by speculators and left idle as they wait for the price to rise. As we wandered the well-groomed but sterile streets of the Yosemite Villas looking for the right address, we pondered the ironies of “green consumption.”
Just before we reached the farm, we passed a row of very productive-looking gardens. “This is where farmers grow the food that they eat. They use some chemical fertilizers, but no pesticides: they only use those on the crops they sell.”
Then it was on to the farm, which consists of a row of five greenhouses and the strips of ground between them. The greenhouses were built with financial support from the local government, which gave farmers free building materials, seedlings and fertilizer as part of a plan to develop the area as a strawberry production zone for the city of Beijing. But as the laws of supply and demand would have it, the price of strawberries crashed when the whole district began growing them, and many farmers turned to other crops or simply abandoned the greenhouses. Mr. Ji has a long-term lease on his farm from the local town government, and hired local farmers and an agronomy technician to work for him.
In the winter, the metal frame will be covered with plastic sheets, and during the coldest months, straw mats as well. Aside from a few vegetables like tomatoes and eggplants, they can grow produce right through the winter at this latitude.
Instead of chemical fertilizers, the farm uses sheep dung and worm waste. (A sack of 50 kg of worm poop, costs 400 Chinese yuan per ton.) They also take spoiled or worm-eaten vegetables and make a sort of liquid goop that is spread on the fields.
Mr. Ji gets advice from agronomy professors at Beijing Agricultural University and is also constantly experimenting. On our way to the farm, he spoke animatedly on his cell phone about the new type of sawdust they are spreading on the soil this year, and how it holds in moisture and promotes a healthy community of worms and microorganisms.
There were lots of white and yellow butterflies on the farm, as well as this fat toad, which Ji pointed out as a sign of ecological health.
Mr. Ji has his own ideas about controlling pests: he doesn’t. Non-chemical treatments that other organic farmers use, such as chilli peppers, are not allowed on his farm. And his workers aren’t even allowed to kill bugs with their hands! He calls this radically non-interventionist form of farming “ecological organic,” to distinguish it from plain old organic.
As a result, the crops I saw looked pretty scraggly. It was also Monday, so crops had just been picked clean for delivery, and that probably explained the lack of yummy fresh, photogenic vegetables.
Ji did find me a juicy, meaty tomato, which I had already eaten half of before I thought to document it!
Ji has installed a solar shower for the locals who work the farm. Perhaps because the crops had just been picked that morning, the workers weren’t around when we visited. Ji said they take a long lunch back in their village nearby. Labor costs are another major expense for the farm, but there are plenty of willing workers. What with the small sizes of their fields, North China’s arid climate and the disastrous schemes of local government, villagers are happy to become salaried employees like in the collective era and let DeRunWu take on the risks.
After our farm visit, Ji picked up his wife and they gave me a lift back into town. They were going to see “The Future of Food,” a documentary about industrial agriculture that we showed at IATP last fall! The library at the Sino-Japanese Environmental Training Center had just ordered a copy, and a dozen or so people were gathering to watch it together.
Just before I hopped out, I asked what subject Ji had gotten his PhD in. “Nano-Materials,” he answered. To which his wife added, “for guided missiles. He made weapons.” We were all silent for a moment and then Ji said, “Arms are only beneficial to some people, but food is good for everyone.”
