Dongshi Has Plenty of Fruit: A Parent-Child Food Education Camp Takes You on a Little Food-and-Farming Trip

Editor's note:

Dongshi, a famous hometown of fruit. Local farming friends use "co-cultivation with grass and trees" to turn weeds into natural organic fertilizer and grow all kinds of fruit trees. As May arrives, why not take the children on a trip to Dongshi, personally put kraft paper bags on the grafted pears, and experience and learn about the growth of grafted pears together with your children? [Dongshi, so much fruit] Parent-child food education experience camp starts this weekend, for the itinerary and registration link please see the text. This article is for the "Food and Farming Mini Trip" column jointly produced by Parenting magazine and NewsMarket, and is published simultaneously in the May issue.

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Text/Peng Wanling Photography/Huang Jianbin

Taichung Dongshi is Taiwan, China's hometown of fruit, and even more the birthplace of grafted pears. From pears, sweet persimmons, bananas, Murcott mandarins, tankan oranges, tomatoes, grapes, to peaches, plums, Japanese apricots, passion fruit, and dragon fruit, every season there are different crops here, and the lives of the farmers here are closely interwoven with the rhythm of the crops, and they are richly endowed with knowledge of following heaven and earth and working the mountains and farming.

And among these farmers, there is another group of farmers who pay special attention to the balance of production, life, and ecology, and they try, in an environment where industrial conditions are deteriorating day by day, to forge a path of environmental friendliness and fair trade. Therefore, we established the "Guoben Mountain Farmers Group" hoping to gather everyone's strength and introduce our efforts to more urban friends. We believe: when producers begin to communicate with consumers; when young children are able to know food and come into contact with agriculture, our future will have hope. The Food and Farming Mini Trip is an attempt born of exactly this way of thinking.

• Food and Farming Mini Trip: Visit Dongshi and Make Friends with Grafted Pears