The rice can't be sold off, and farmers bluntly say more people are growing rice while the number of people eating it hasn't increased.

Editor's note: The boom of young farmers joining agriculture has brought a lively new force to rural villages and drawn public attention. Compared with the smooth start, they now face ups and downs, and sales are one of the biggest pressures. Wu Jialing, a young female farmer who devoted herself full-time to farming in Yilan starting in 2013, faces the biggest challenge since she began farming this year. How can she hold fast to the farming path? What advice does she have for other young people who want to farm?

A Young Farmer's Heartfelt Words: More People Grow Rice, but Not More People Eat It

Text/Wu Jialing

A while ago I fell into the biggest low point since I began farming: I cannot sell all the rice!

Last year's rice harvest was abundant. This should have been something to be happy about, except that the amount of rice to be sold increased greatly while sales did not increase along with it. So this year's rice has all been harvested, and there is still a pile of last year's rice that has not been sold out. We had no choice but to give quite a lot of rice to the distillery for brewing, and also donate it to migrant workers' shelter centers and temples. In the end, the remaining rice could only be sold cheaply to grain merchants. Faced with this difficult reality, I had to stop and think about my farming life. Should I make adjustments?

More People Grow Rice, but the Number of Rice Eaters Has Not Increased

The carousel of farming brings us to 2012, when I went with friends to farm in Shengou, Yilan. In 2014 I founded my own brand, Youtian Youmi (Fields and Rice). Because the rice from 2012 and 2013 all sold smoothly, and because I had set up independently, reckless as I was, I was eager to prove myself: girls can farm well too! So I rashly expanded the cultivated area. Almost whenever there was a field, I wanted to plant it, and I also increased the amount of rice purchased from elderly farmers. The area sold reached more than five jia. That same year, I got many opportunities for media exposure, and the path of youth farming looked smooth sailing.

But this matter is not as simple as a fool imagines. That was also the year when signs of unsold rice began to appear, but fortunately, nearby small farmers' output could not keep up with sales, so they bought quite a lot of rice from us. In addition, we tried for the first time asking a distillery to brew rice wine on our behalf, which just happened to solve the predicament of unsold rice. Plus sales the following year decreased, so naive me did not truly face the predicament of selling rice.

However, in 2016 the number of grain buyers decreased sharply, forcing us to think seriously: exactly which link had a problem? It could be that our service quality needed adjustment, and it could also be that the quality of the rice needed strengthening. But no matter how I thought about it, I felt the more important reason was: more people grow rice, but not more people eat rice.

We Must Bravely Take the Step into Processing

In recent years, youth farming and half-farming-half-X have been discussed enthusiastically. The media also very often reports stories of people giving up a million-yuan annual salary to farm. So the number of people rolling up their sleeves and stepping into the land increased. Rice, as a food crop, is easy to grow and easy to care for, making it the first choice for those newly entering agriculture. More and more people grow rice, and many self-produced, self-sold rice brands have appeared online. Therefore, in sparsely populated rural villages, there are many new faces. Conservative rural villages have been stirred. This is originally a good thing, except that production on the production side has increased. What about the consumption side?

The domestic rice consumption market seems not to have expanded. Obviously this industry has hit a bottleneck. Some people suggested that I should not grow a single variety and could do processing! But if I want to change the planted variety, the area must be at least five fen so that the machines at the grain drying yard can be used for drying, and the downstream processing flow must operate independently. Also, doing processing requires investing quite a lot of funds. I originally did not dare and did not want to, but this year's predicament also forced Jingguo and me to take the first step of change.

Stumbling All the Way, Still Deeply in Love with Rural Villages

Having grown up in a rural village, I carried on the childhood habit of interacting with village elders and easily submitted to top-down relationships, unable to grow into my own shape. That was both good and not good. Indeed, as a young girl, I could get along very well in the rural village, but I was also eager to become an adult and did not want people to look down on me. In addition, I wanted my parents to approve of my choice to farm. The inner conflict always weighed on me so much that I could hardly breathe. Add to that the transition from student identity to farmer, with no workplace experience, and my way of doing things was almost established through stumbling. So I am especially grateful to the elders around me who were willing to accompany me as I grew.

Of course, if you make mistake after mistake, others are not obliged to keep playing along with you. There will always be times when blame outweighs affection. At such times, you can only be strong, stronger still, and even with a broken arm bone, turn around and be brave again. Recite your original intention silently in your heart. If, because of these attacks, you lightly give up and think: I am not playing with you anymore! Packing up and going home feels better! Perhaps it feels good in the moment, but years later you will certainly regret it, regret your own cowardice and fear of battle. After months of heartbreak and pain, my little inner drama started, and in dialogue with my inner self, I understood that my original intention had never changed. I still deeply love agriculture and deeply love rural villages.

Strong Advice: Young People Who Want to Farm Must Have Savings

The sentence "I want to farm for a lifetime" is not simple at all for the children of farming families! When I think that when I say this sentence, my dear Haijin and Jinju will look at me with such cherished and sorrowful eyes, my heart aches just thinking about it. Young people's dreams are very precious and must not be trampled on lightly.

Finally, by the way, in order to prevent young people who take farming as their vocation from having their dreams shattered after encountering cruel reality and then gloomily leaving the rural village, I strongly suggest that if young people want to farm, they must have savings, must have savings, must have savings. This is too important, so I have to say it three times. Having savings to burn through is the most important thing. In the first year of farming, your skills and experience are still not up to standard, and if you want to make money, really, don't be silly!

At the beginning, you must spend one to two years accumulating skills, experience, and customers, and through this heavy and repetitive work confirm whether you are suited to agriculture, while also finding a business model that can sustain a living (although I, living so miserably, am not qualified to say this!). However, my advice is limited to the rice industry. I have not touched other industries, so I dare not make assertions.

Buy Rice Directly from a Young Farmer──

The 2016 Youtian Youmi rice subscription agreement, subscription deadline extended to 8/20!https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScWpf9Hh_j9lGwXNnEmGMlPfQxeZWDdYPpfvbzLGO00lPY8qw/viewform

The 2016 Youtian Youmi retail form. Friends who cannot eat that much rice, look here, look here!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScqjdAd09PShB4uQgm5prOn4L5rguhMNQYufuWXZZnUmLAxRw/viewform