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The good Earth

By Yang Guang (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-09-15 10:12

And she did, throwing herself enthusiastically into all aspects of running a CSA farm - sowing seeds, watering, weeding and harvesting, cleaning produce, and doing packaging and delivery.

Weeding, she recalls, was the most arduous of all these tasks. Weeds were rampant because no chemical herbicides were used, says Shi. Crouching in the scorching sun and pulling out the endless weeds one by one, Shi says that sometimes felt "disheartened and discouraged".

On June 18, 2008, the Madison-based The Western Guard published a full-page article on Shi's life at Earthrise Farm.

"A slight girl from Beijing, China, has a very ambitious goal - to return to her home and start the first CSA farm in China. She has already broken one tradition - as she is the first graduate student to come to the US not to study at a university but to be a farmer," it said.

When Shi returned to China in October last year, she began to mull ways to adapt CSA to the Chinese situation.

"Land in China is managed on the basis of a household contract system. The produce from the land of one household can only support one or two families. Therefore, it would not do to experiment with CSA in individual households," Shi says.

"Besides, Chinese people don't tend to spend much on food consumption, but the low productivity of organic farming, especially in the beginning, typically leads to higher prices and could create sales problems."

She turned her attention to Dondon farm, a production, teaching and research base developed jointly by the Haidian district government, Renmin University and Beijing Hongda Borui Investment (Group) Co Ltd, that began operating in April 2008 but was fumbling.

CSA first emerged in Germany, Switzerland and Japan in the early 1960s and took root in the United States in the 1980s, in response to rising concerns about food safety, the impact on the environment, urbanization of arable land and fairness of trade between consumers and growers.

Its defining characteristic is its cohesive community of consumers. Before each planting season, community members sign a contract with farmers, sharing benefits and risks with them, and paying in advance for the produce of that season.

The advantages of CSA are manifold: Farmers are provided with adequate cash flow and relieved of sale pressures; community members are ensured healthy produce at a reasonable price; agriculture is sustained and the environment protected because little pollution is generated by organic food production.

Each farm has what are called "working share subscribers" and "non-working share subscribers".

Each working share subscriber is responsible for all the labor in his allocated 30-sq-m plot, for which he pays 1,000 yuan ($146) in annual rent.

The seeds, organic fertilizers, farming tools, water and required technical support are all provided by the farm.

The non-working share subscribers enjoy a 20-week (between June and October) supply of organic vegetables of about 10 kg per week, for a capital input of 2,500 yuan ($366).

Whatever produce is left after meeting this is made available to the working subscribers.

By April this year, Dondon farm had 17 work-share subscribers and 30 non-work subscribers.

Lu Yarong, a working share subscriber, started farming in early May in her plot called guazuo douyou - literally "melon on the left and bean on the right" - and harvested the first batch of vegetables just two weeks later.

Every Saturday, Liu Bingheng, Lu's 4-year-old son, badgers his parents to get to work, because "the cucumbers we grow ourselves are especially sweet".

On a usual day, after working for three hours from 9 am to noon, the Lu family can take home 5 kg to 7 kg of freshly picked vegetables, ranging from cucumbers, tomatoes and eggplants to beans, peppers, and radishes.

Lu, herself a lecturer in Agriculture Economics at Renmin University, points out that the CSA farm gives full play to the multiple functions of agriculture.

"It provides consumers with green and healthy vegetables and that's agriculture's economic function; it's a place for urban residents to relax and labor and that's agriculture's cultural function; it further offers children like my son the opportunity to get to know about farming and that's agriculture's educational function," Lu says.

Besides five managers and 12 farmers, Dondon farm also has a dozen committed interns.

"The half-year intern program began in April. Some are college students interested in agriculture, while some have resigned from their regular jobs to learn about organic agriculture," says Huang Zhiyou, executive manager of Dondon Farm.

Lei Peng, a 23-year-old postgraduate student, interns here during his summer vacation. Except for Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, when he joins the other interns for lectures and discussions, Lei works two sessions every day - 8 to 11 in the morning, and 3 to 6 in the afternoon.

"I grew up in the countryside, so I have a strong emotional connection to the Earth and farming. What I've learned and done on the farm will help me in my further studies in Agriculture Economics," says Lei.

However, CSA in China is still at an experimental stage. Even at Dondon, there remain issues that require urgent attention.

Cheng Cunwang, a supervisor, says: "We need to provide working share subscribers with at least sunshades and seats. We also need to figure out better ways to preserve the easy-to-rot leafy vegetables, since we have already received complaints from non-working share subscribers."

Some people dismiss CSA, saying it is too small-scale to emerge as a viable alternative to mass food production.

But Shi and her fellow supporters point out that CSA gives growers security, ensures food safety and promotes fair trade between the two.

"Through CSA and Dondon Farm, we want to establish a harmonious relationship between man and man, and man and earth," she says.