Yilan's BD farming CSA is flourishing, with 58 members supporting one farmer

General News Jan 1, 1970 0 views

58 members support one farmer! Yilan's BD farming community is thriving, as CSA and farmers savor the taste of the land together

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(Continued from previous article) In Yilan, there is also a group of BD farmers who draw on the power of the stars and moon on their own farmland to grow BD crops full of energy. At the same time, they want to rebuild the relationship of commitment between producers and consumers: the farm feeds people, people support the farm, and both sides share the harvest and share the risks. This is what is known as CSA, Community Supported Agriculture.

This close connection between farmers and consumers in Yilan fully demonstrates that consumer support not only encourages environmentally friendly farming, but also protects the soil, water quality, and our own health.

"The Taichung case is also wonderful, don't miss it: How do you keep soil from getting sick? BD farming gathers cosmic energy"

Members of Triodos Life CSA have forged a path of "community supported agriculture" in Dongshan, Yilan. (Photo / Yang Yuyun)

Sun Chengxuan steps off the fashion stage and onto the path of farming

Sun Chengxuan was one of the earliest people in Taiwan, China to encounter anthroposophy. She majored in German at university. While studying Goethe, she found an article about Steiner. Although she found it interesting, she did not read it carefully. After graduation, she worked in marketing in the apparel and jewelry industry. Earning a high salary, she lived at a fast pace, every day in fine clothes and makeup, glamorous and radiant.

In 2007, her father had just passed away, and then Sun Chengxuan became pregnant. Life and death suddenly burst into her life and became an issue she could not avoid confronting. She reread Steiner's writings and found that they were all guiding lights for life. Believing that learning should not be mere armchair theorizing, and constantly pondering issues such as her child's educational environment and food safety, she ultimately made up her mind to move her whole family to Yilan, wash off the glamour, rent land, and become a farmer.

You can't spend all of the Earth's savings

Giving up a high salary of 300,000 per month in Taipei and moving to Yilan to farm, Sun Chengxuan said it was because "all the change you want to see must begin with yourself." The soil on the farmland she rented was very poor. Even after sowing 18 kinds of green manure seeds, not a single one grew. Only later, after using BD preparations, did the situation improve greatly.

For Sun Chengxuan, making BD preparations is like making medicine. The process of making medicine inherently contains many puzzling aspects that we do not fully understand, and moreover, after long immersion in scientific empiricism, we have forgotten our connection with nature. "I don't think it's mysterious at all. It is right there in my breathing."

Sun Chengxuan said she loves the exhilaration of sweating all over, and the frustration of cultivating without necessarily harvesting has also benefited her greatly. BD allows her to treat the land with mindfulness and also lets her children eat vegetables they grew themselves. "We are all consuming the Earth, but remember that you cannot drain the Earth's account dry."

In addition to hands-on practice, Sun Chengxuan also travels around Taiwan, China giving lectures, holding workshops, and teaching BD preparations. At the same time, the "Triodos Life Practice Association" she founded has translated many important works on anthroposophy, benefiting people around the world.

Sun Chengxuan (wearing blue in the center) often demonstrates the making of the cow manure and cow horn preparation wherever she goes. (Provided by Sun Chengxuan)

Supporting farmers with the strength of the whole village: CSA shares risks together with farmers

There is a saying in education that it takes a village to raise a child. But a village can also raise a farmer.

Like Sun Chengxuan, in Dongshan, Yilan, there is a group of families who "move from school to school" for their children's education. Their children attend the Ci-Xin Waldorf Experimental Education Institution, and the parents thereby came into contact with the concepts of anthroposophy. Many of them took up a half-farming, half-something-else life, practicing BD farming and building their homes. After members of the reading group led by Sun Chengxuan read the book "Farms of Tomorrow," everyone felt strongly about the CSA concept in the book. "We thought we could give it a try."

CSA is based on trusting that farmers will farm on the premise of treating farmland well and providing high-quality crops. A group of consumers supports farmers in producing food for them by paying first and receiving goods later. The book "Farms of Tomorrow" contains nine CSA cases in total. Building on those cases, Triodos Life Practice Association forged its own path in Dongshan, Yilan.

58 members support one farmer and jointly bear the risks of farming

Triodos Life CSA supports Zhang Wuquan, a full-time farmer, in practicing BD farming on the farm. They recruit members on a one-year basis. Zhang Wuquan estimates how many households' daily vegetable needs the farm's annual output can supply, and thereby sets a cap on the number of members. At the same time, he also estimates the farm's expenses and the household's basic income, and all members support these financial needs.

Taking 2020 as an example, Triodos Life CSA had 58 members in total. Sun Chengxuan said they do not define each other's roles with rigid thinking about rights and obligations. "We are one family, with a feeling of filling in for one another." Therefore members can freely decide how much membership fee to pay according to their own ability, and the farmer can also decide the planting plan according to his own judgment. In addition to picking up vegetables at the pickup point every week during harvest season, as well as processed agricultural products such as soy milk and soy sauce, members can also occasionally go to the farm to take part in farm work and receive the healing of the land.

At the first meeting to establish the CSA, half the people were strangers to Zhang Wuquan, yet everyone was willing to support and believe in him, which moved him very much. "When growing green manure, leaving land fallow, or suffering crop failure from heavy rain, members even bring me vegetables," Zhang Wuquan said. "Recently it rained continuously in Yilan for two months, and all the vegetable seedlings were lost. In the past, farmers had to absorb this kind of loss themselves, but because of CSA's support, my risks are shared by everyone."

After coming into contact with BD farming, Zhang Wuquan became gentler and more cheerful. (Photo: Yang Yuyun)

After paying off the card debt, the crops became full of energy

Zhang Wuquan and his wife take care of a farm of more than one jia. Because one of the rented farms had previously used conventional farming methods, which is what Taichung BD farmer Wu Jianwang calls "soil that owes card debt," for a long time they could only pay off the debt first and could not produce.

However, after the soil improved, its energy increased, and the crops naturally grew well. Zhang Wuquan said that after using the cow manure and cow horn preparation, the soil's beneficial bacteria and organic matter increased, and the soil became loose yet crumbly, and the crops produced were delicious and healthy.

Zhang Wuquan's farm has planned 8.5 fen for growing vegetables and 4 fen for rice paddies. There is a wide variety of vegetables: leafy greens, root and stem vegetables, melons and fruits, and even miscellaneous grains such as black beans, in order to comply with the diverse planting emphasized by BD farming. He also planted sunflowers so members can come cut flowers themselves, providing another kind of spiritual food. "I don't want to give members only an equivalent amount of vegetables. I also want members to have more contact with the soil," he said.