An agricultural revolution is quietly taking place. Are you aware of it?
At a talk organized by Taipei Permaculture, I heard Jian-Tai share for the first time the results he had accumulated at Qianjia Farm, and I was quite moved. What moved me was seeing that there are always people in Taiwan quietly using their love for this land, carrying a sense of mission as they selflessly share and exchange ideas.
When I have had the chance to chat with different small farmers, I have often seen similar passion in them, but Jian-Tai chose a harder path.
"I want to change Taiwan's food supply problem, starting from Hsinchu, by making full use of vacant land on the urban-rural fringe. We can achieve self-sufficiency. Find 50 families to support one farmer, and then replicate this model. Bring families and small farmers closer, shorten the food transport mileage, stabilize food prices, and be kind to the surrounding land. Share healthy and safe food with communities and families….."
I had heard Jian-Tai say this passage at least five times, and we had only met for the second time.
That day, I joined Jian-Tai and his family at the green market held on Saturday morning at National Tsing Hua University. He also had a talk that day, preparing to share what he had seen and heard about permaculture in Australia. From morning to afternoon, I saw small farmers from various districts of Hsinchu at the market greeting one another familiarly, occasionally exchanging each other's crops or handmade goods. I had only ever seen that kind of atmosphere at relatives' homes in the south.
During that time, when several small farmers dropped by to chat, some looked for Jian-Tai to talk about problems they had encountered in farming the land, while others discussed issues in Taiwan's agricultural development. Some were full of hope, while others were deeply worried about the future.
A smiling mother told me that the support the government can provide to farmers is really not much, so the personal networks among small farmers and mutual help become very important. Perhaps under the challenges of the larger environment, it makes people who grow together on this land work even harder to find a sustainable agricultural path between commerce and being kind to the land.
In my conversation with Jian-Tai, I also came to better understand the farm blueprint in his mind. It includes community-supported agriculture, effective use of the urban-rural interface land in the city, small-scale sustainable agriculture, and integration of the traditional wisdom of Indigenous peoples.
Permaculture, in turn, provides a systematic way of thinking and a systematic design method for sustainable agriculture. I felt inwardly that this was no longer just a matter of one farm, but a dream for Taiwan's agriculture as a whole, and an arduous revolution.
While sitting in the car, I asked Jian-Tai, "Persistence on a path that few people understand - do you ever feel lonely?"
As he drove while looking at the road ahead, he was silent for a moment, then answered, "I still do! I hope I can have more time to explain more clearly everything Qianjia Farm is doing, and the discourse and structure within it, so that more people know what we are working hard for. But I really do not have enough time…"
He defined the beautiful blueprint this way: When food producers + food consumers + annual mutual commitment = community-supported farms and infinite opportunities
Its characteristics are decentralization, the independence and autonomy of small-scale farms, and the future interconnection of more seed farms. At the same time, ecological farms can give rise to ecological service functions, including collecting fallen leaves or wood discarded by the community to compost or reuse, and providing ecological education to communities or schools, among others.
