Community Practice of Food and Farming Education: Peng Zhenglong on Spreading the Web of Land

"The teacher gives you a plot of land, and what you want to do with it is up to you!"

"I want a hoe."

"The teacher gives you the hoe because I believe in you."

And so, a little boy who could never sit still in the classroom and who threatened to hurt his classmates with a craft knife followed Peng Zhenglong out into the field and sat through an entire lesson...

Peng Zhenglong, a graduate of the Department of Social Work at National Taiwan University, chose to continue his graduate studies at National Tsing Hua University, with the very aim of returning to his hometown - Hsinchu - to work. Carrying the multiple identities of elementary school project teacher, community worker and graduate student, he takes "food and farming education design" as his community practice, leading us to rethink the relationship between people and the land.

The food and farming education design that Peng Zhenglong promotes in the community has drawn many people from elsewhere to join in one after another. He says with a smile: "We're not like work-exchange for lodging. People from outside come here to do rural hands-on work, and through the backgrounds and knowledge of different fields they find opportunities to solve rural problems. That's our social design!" His educational philosophy not only reconnects people with the land, but also brings together people from all sides, as everyone joins in building this ever-renewing web of land in the community.

(This article was originally published in "Food-Nourished Cities. Humanistic Farming Innovation", under the original title [Food-Nourishment Lecture] Spreading the Web of Land: Peng Zhenglong on the Community Practice of Food and Farming Education; the original author is Chen Yijie, and the executive editor is Lin Yuexian.)