My Hometown in My Heart: A Second-Generation Farm Kid's First Taste of Farming

Text and photography by Chi I-lin

So far, my life has been a smooth path of advancing through school. My parents told us to study hard so that we would not have to toil as they do.

I live in Dongshi Township, Taichung County, a place everyone knows as a fruit-growing hometown. The image Dongshi has long cultivated is that of an agricultural region with good mountains, good water and good fruit. Farming households make up as much as 70% of Dongshi's population, and the cultivation of top-grafted pears (jijie li) is the mainstay.

My father began learning and exploring how to grow top-grafted pears in his twenties, and it has now been nearly 30 years. I still remember that during the busy farming seasons of my childhood, I would be taken up to the mountain to be "set loose," going up with the adults; they worked while I played nearby. After I started school, I gradually went up the mountain with the adults less and less, and gradually I also came to dislike going up there more and more -- too hot, too dirty, too hard. My parents stopped asking us to help in the fields, and the words always on their lips became "study hard," and even other elders said the same.

In a family that constantly fostered this atmosphere of putting study above all else, my consciousness was indeed deeply "colonized."

Recognizing the importance of agriculture and reflecting on Taiwan's distorted industrial development

Since I became old enough to understand, I have known how hard my family works, been clear about how high the harvest risk is for a crop like the Asian pear, which yields only once a year, understood how my father sought advice everywhere and threw himself into farming, and known how my mother agonized every year over calculating the next year's expenses. I saw that the entire year's harvest had no choice but to be sold to wholesalers at extremely low prices, exploited layer by layer, and I saw my family's sense of powerlessness over always spending more than they earned from farming and having almost no future.

I took all of this in bit by bit from childhood, and of course it shaped my impression of agriculture: an industry with no prospects, one that can barely make a living.

My thinking went only as far as the imbalance between market prices and costs, and the exploitation by wholesalers, and I did not think more deeply about the hand pulling the strings behind it all -- the political problem. Nowadays, whenever something touches on "politics," people tend to face it with passivity, resistance and avoidance. At first, I had the same mindset. That environment was too complex, too dark, with too many facts you could not see clearly; by not touching it, you saved yourself the risk of being deceived and hurt. But my focus here is not politics; it merely brings out the fact that I did not see the crux of the crisis facing farming, that I was ignorant and completely unaware.

It was not until I came up to Taipei, began to care about environmental issues and then joined the Taiwan Rural Front that I began to wake up and recognize the importance of agriculture to Taiwan.

Starting with the Suhua Highway Improvement Project and opposition to the Kuo Kuang Petrochemical project, I first began to pay attention to environmental issues. Then, after joining the Taiwan Rural Front and learning about the dire situation of land being recklessly expropriated again and again, I gained more tenderness and respect for local agriculture. Farmers produce food, which is the source of our survival. Shortsighted expropriation of farmland, insatiable development everywhere, and the illusion and deception of putting the economy first constantly ride roughshod over the general public's ideology.

I remember an old farmer once said: no matter how much money you have, you cannot dip it in soy sauce and eat it. That is indeed true, especially since Taiwan's wealth gap is now constantly widening.

Guarding the orchard, never leaving it behind

With a growing understanding of agriculture, I began to reflect on my family's pear growing. I watched my parents go to the orchard from time to time to look things over, pay attention to the changing seasons, calculate the timing of each farming step, and invest bit by bit -- and that has accumulated over 30 years.

Is farming so difficult that it has no merits at all? Is there no reason in cultivation that keeps farmers on the land? If that were really so, why could my parents persist for 30 years, and why are there so many farming friends (whatever the crop) willing to walk this hard road?

Some might say "because all they know how to do is farm." Is that really all there is to it? Since joining the Rural Front, I have taken part in several protests and visited several farming households in person, trying to listen more closely to farmers' voices. Because of this, I have become more concerned and more often discuss the family's work affairs with my parents.

Summing up these experiences, I have arrived at a small reflection: I would not presume to say they farm in order to feed the people of Taiwan, but what is certain is that their feelings for the land are beyond what ordinary people can imagine. It is a deeply rooted love, a care for one's own land, tending it like a child. Whether rice, vegetables, fruit, or pear trees... in every kind of farming, from planting seedlings to harvesting rice, from sowing to harvest, from grafting to picking, every step along the way brings not only hardship but also many more complicated emotions hidden within.

My parents still guard the orchard, never leaving it behind. When there are difficulties, they face them together; when there is joy, they share it together.

Farming has many advantages that so-called "stable jobs" do not have. They do not need to clock in and out every day, and they have highly flexible working hours. Although during busy farming periods they may be stretched thin, when farming is slack they can go out to relax and spend a few days emptying their minds. There is no boss or performance pressure; they are their own bosses. The market price at harvest may not be very stable and they may not earn much, but they do not scramble and scheme to calculate every year's income and expenses.

This "we'll see as we go" attitude of not sweating the small stuff, this easygoing philosophy of life, is probably why they can live so freely and happily!

Of course, growing pears also carries many risks. Every farming friend's fatal weakness is depending on the heavens for a living. For example: when grafting flower buds, if a cold snap comes and the weather is too cold, the buds will not open and the grafting must be redone; or when harvest is near but rain keeps falling, it may cause the pears' sweetness to drop or the fruit to rot; or when a typhoon hits, the miserable sight of fallen fruit all over the ground is not something we have never seen. There are also all kinds of known and unknown factors that affect a year's income.

Although the advantages and disadvantages are hard to measure with data, judging from how my parents are willing to keep farming and from the fact that they are content to exchange it for the basic necessities of life each year, it is the attraction of the advantages that is the irresistible addiction!

A second-generation farm kid learns to farm

Because I began to pay attention to agricultural issues, to care about my own family's produce, and to be willing to learn the many precious farming skills in my family, I came to appreciate the sweetness and bitterness of farming even more.

Many city kids who want to care but have no one to turn to have no choice but to join camps as a way into the countryside. As a country kid already on the front line, with a field right in my own family, how could I fail to cherish this rare innate advantage even more! It happens that it is harvest season again recently, and whenever I have time I am very willing to go home and help.

Every sweltering summer is our family's big occasion. The harvest from about half a month to a month is the whole family's expenses for the coming year.

There are many varieties of top-grafted pears, distinguished by the variety of flower bud grafted. The varieties our family grafted this year include Hosui pear, Shinseiki pear and Qiushui pear, and this year there is also a new variety called Mixiang pear. To ensure the safety of the fruit for eating, my father absolutely follows the regulations on the safe harvest period, and to maintain the quality of the pears, he refuses to use hormone ointments (growth hormones), letting the pears grow naturally. Although the ripening time is relatively longer, the sweetness is also higher.

The pears our family grows every year are all of high-standard, good quality. Yet for me, a second-generation farm kid who is still not familiar with pears, although I feel a little ashamed in my heart, I also feel boundless pride and happiness.