Air Farmer Cao Mengyang: Farming Life in the City of Dongguan
Tender green leaf lettuce, yellow-and-green Swiss chard, emerald bitter melon, cucumbers hanging all over the trellises, chili peppers, eggplants, tomatoes, taro, watermelon... The rooftop of the Xinjidi Science and Technology Park in Nancheng, Dongguan, is the rooftop farm of an ecological agriculture technology company. In the sunlight, as a breeze blows, the distinctive fragrance of vegetables and fruits is intoxicating. At a glance, dozens of kinds of vegetables are growing vigorously in nearly a thousand planting boxes. The more than 2,000 sq m rooftop is lush and green, just like a rural idyll. The owner of the rooftop farm is named Cao Mengyang, and this is his tenth year in Dongguan. He once had a stable job at a public institution, but now he has become an urban farmer, promoting the model of rooftop vegetable growing. He says he wants to let all city people realize the rural dream of going downstairs to the countryside.
A "Risky Attempt" Beneath the Boundless Business Opportunities of the Rural Dream
Cao Mengyang's rooftop vegetable growing all began with a chance occurrence. Once, while on a business trip, he looked out the airplane window at the city below and suddenly had a whimsical idea: "If only the city's rooftops were green too!" Cao Mengyang thought that since there were so many idle rooftops in the city, why not grow organic vegetables on the rooftops, so that everyone could have a private vegetable garden of their own.
After research, Cao Mengyang found that city dwellers live at a fast pace, and many of them long to return to nature and have a vegetable garden of their own. In addition, many places across the country have already introduced subsidy systems for rooftop greening, among which Beijing's subsidy is 100-150 yuan/sq m, and cities such as Wuhan, Jinan and Xi'an have already begun promoting rooftop greening. The rooftop farm is precisely the boundless business opportunity created by combining the two. These facts further strengthened his idea. He decided to act at once, and in early 2014 Cao Mengyang resigned from his stable job and began his entrepreneurial journey. Renting an office, registering a company, building a team - after a month of busy work, the company was finally set up.
In order to promote and sell the rooftop vegetable-growing model, Cao Mengyang kept seeking out discussions and also gained his own clients. Everything developed along the planned track, but no one expected that a few months later, client feedback would plunge him to rock bottom.
Once, Cao Mengyang went to a client's rooftop, but what greeted him was a pile of complaints from the client: "The seedlings turned yellow and died within a few days of planting, and the ones that survived were sickly and wilted. If they weren't watered for two or three days, the growing medium dried out, and watering took up too much time..." Faced with such feedback, Cao Mengyang began to realize that this path would not work. In fact, in just one year his losses reached more than 300,000 yuan, and the modular planting boxes and growing medium he had produced became waste overnight.
Seeking Change, He Threw Himself into a University Research Base
After painful reflection, before Chinese New Year's Eve in 2015, Cao Mengyang decided to suspend the company's operations. Almost all his friends advised him to stop and find a job again. Should he keep pursuing his dream or face reality? Cao Mengyang went several days and nights without sleep, and his conclusion after reflection was: the modular planting boxes, the growing medium and the agricultural techniques still needed improvement, but the project itself had no problem.
The next day, he went to the research base of South China Agricultural University in Zengcheng and spent the Spring Festival together with the technicians staying behind at the base. Just after the Spring Festival, the base became busy. Eager to learn, he turned soil, leveled ridges, watered, sowed, raised seedlings, weeded, removed pests, and trained trellises... He rushed to do the hardest work and humbly asked the teachers and technicians for advice, never forgetting to record every detail.
He remembers that one night, a teacher researching plant extract biological pest control technology asked the trainees to go to the vegetable plot to conduct an insect-killing experiment. The teacher required the trainees to stay in the vegetable plot and wait until the time when the insects were most active before spraying the extract. At night, the mosquitoes in the vegetable plot bit people until they were sore and itchy, and several trainees could not stand it and sprayed a little casually before leaving. But Cao Mengyang crouched there holding a flashlight until 3 a.m., until the insects appeared frequently, and his body was covered with many big bites. That time, among the trainees, only his data records were the most detailed.
Later, whenever he had time, Cao Mengyang would go ask the teacher for advice, and through these repeated exchanges, the teacher taught him a great deal of technique. The "pesticide" he learned to prepare was made from decoctions of plants such as neem, derris, mint and Sophora flavescens, which both prevented pests and was healthy. Through nearly a year of study, Cao Mengyang joked that he seemed to have become an expert, and he said that only after going deep into it did he realize the importance of agricultural planting techniques. "That earlier set of methods now looks too childish, especially rooftop agricultural planting techniques. Rooftop growing is not like field growing; it is far from the natural form and has strict requirements for growing facilities, soil formulas, irrigation systems and the selection of various vegetables according to their habits." Cao Mengyang deeply felt how immature his vegetable growing had been at the beginning.
Fully Automatic: One Water Intake Pipe Can Irrigate the Vegetables
Cao Mengyang says that he only needs two hours a day to take care of the more than 2,000 sq m rooftop farm.
Seeing that the reporter was somewhat surprised, he pointed to the planting boxes and said that the currently independently developed planting boxes use lightweight imported plastic materials, introduce the design principle of automatic water intake and drainage, and combine it with reverse osmosis technology, so that the planting boxes and the growing medium after formula improvement are organically combined. In this way, the vegetables being grown drink exactly as much water as they need, fully automatically, and one water intake pipe can automatically irrigate the vegetables across the entire rooftop farm.
Of course, if you want to experience the labor, you only need to turn off the water intake pipe and can directly use an external hose to water the vegetables. Add practical vegetable growing and management techniques, and one person can easily handle it.
Using internet technology, Cao Mengyang's rooftop farm has also achieved remote control. No matter where you are, as long as there is a network, you can control the irrigation system in real time through a mobile phone, and video can monitor the growth of the vegetables.
Setting Out Again for the Dream of Rural Life
After mastering certain techniques, Cao Mengyang restarted his "rooftop farm plan." In his view, across the country there are hundreds of thousands of primary and secondary schools and kindergartens alone, and campus rooftop farms are the best second classroom for students, where they can learn agricultural knowledge, experience labor, get to know nature, and feel the process of plant growth. In addition, 90% of urban rooftops nationwide are idle. Cao Mengyang says he is working hard to replicate the successful rooftop farm for thousands of households. Whether it is balcony vegetable growing or rooftop farms, they now have the ability to provide a complete set of solutions, so that every city person who loves rural life can realize the rural dream of going downstairs to the countryside.