Ma Yu-an and the Adjacent Farming Project: Starting from Nine Centimeters

Q: What work did you do before farming, and what was your educational background?

It was probably because I watched too many Discovery and National Geographic programs in university. Back then I suddenly felt that if my future work could involve interacting with nature and living things, it would be a rather interesting and enviable job. At the time I was actually majoring in electronic engineering, so switching from an engineering discipline to agriculture was indeed a very big turn.

I began planning my path back to farming in 2007, first by transferring to a graduate institute combining engineering and agriculture, then by reading extensively, taking related courses, and slowly persuading my family.

So in 2009, I first grew small tomatoes in pots on the rooftop at home, and in 2010 we began rice production on the nine-li paddy field left by my grandfather. By 2011 it had expanded to 7 fen of land, two fen of which was joined by another young farmer friend.

Q: What was the decisive factor that made you choose farming?

From my perspective, farming is less about seeing its unequal returns and hard labor under the sun, and more about seeing "opportunity."

I remember that when I was little, my grandfather would always say, "If you don't study, come back and farm." In that context of the time, annual per capita rice consumption was about 80kg/year, most people in Taiwan, China also made a living from farming, and studying created employment opportunities other than farming.

Thirty years bring changes, thirty years take them away. In recent years annual per capita rice consumption has fallen to 48kg/year, and the average age of the agricultural working population is 60. Conversely, the job market in industry and commerce constantly needs a large young labor force. Simply put, if an industry has friends of your age group successively entering it, as is now the case with electronics, manufacturing, and optoelectronics, intense competition is inevitable. At the same time, if you want to start a business in it, the cost of starting up grows larger and larger and becomes harder and harder.

According to statistics from the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, the proportion of people aged 20-30 entering agricultural work is extremely low, and the space in the agricultural job market is indeed broader than in other fields, with relatively more opportunities; "opportunity" also comes from the development of online information, multicultural thinking, the rise of slow food, health concepts, food security, natural ecology, and other issues. All of these may create space friendly to agriculture; objectively speaking, these opportunities exist, but subjectively determining whether this "opportunity" exists and seizing the "opportunity," and linking these opportunities together, is where some thought is required.

Q: Why is it named the "Adjacent Farming Project"?

From the very beginning, we first conceived the organizational structure, named the "Adjacent Farming Project." The original meaning of "adjacent" is to help, assist, and so on, while "farmer" refers to people engaged in agricultural production. The core value of "farmers have adjacent support" lies in creating friendly space for "farmers," and "farmers" also become help to other "farmers."

In fact, we all benefit from nature and consumers. We are farmers, and consumers benefit from farmers providing safe, reasonably priced, and meaningful agricultural products, while the land also benefits from farmers' conscience and friendly management. It is a mutually beneficial structure.