World's Largest CSA Farm Company Builds a New Food Supply and Distribution System

Part I Special Report / Chen Huhu

Thomas Harttung was one of TIME magazine's 100 most influential people in the world in 2009. Fifteen years ago he resolutely abandoned the existing farm management model and refused to be controlled by large agricultural suppliers. The company he founded, Aarstiderne, is the world's largest community-supported agriculture company. Through organic farming, he expanded his customer network by 15,000 times and created more than 40 times as many new jobs.

What Thomas mainly shared with everyone today were ideas of the spirit: why we should do this kind of thing. Science, relatively speaking, only lets us further choose among these ideas which one is good or a feasible method.

Thomas said at the very start that he thanked the organizers for using a photo of himself with trees as the promotional poster for this lecture. Although Thomas is a farmer, his studies came from forestry. Thomas believes that forests and trees are very important and can teach people humility, because when people walk into a forest, they feel how tiny they are. Thomas said that this process of feeling one's own smallness is very similar in spirit to organic farming: "We must maintain reverence for the land."

Today, more than 50 percent of people live in metropolitan areas, and by 2050 this may grow to 80 percent. We usually treat this as a problem, but why don't we treat such a problem as an opportunity and a challenge, rediscover some methods, and combine this problem with organic farming?

In his presentation, Harttung cited scientific data from authoritative international institutions to emphasize that the traditional agricultural systems of Asia and Latin America are not outdated relics that are "backward and inefficient." By contrast, the over-industrialized modern agriculture of the West no longer conforms to the spirit of sustainable development, which pursues low energy and resource inputs. Drawing on more than ten years of experience running farms, he pointed out that under the modern agricultural system, adopting conventional farming methods is dull, tedious, uninteresting work and cannot build an interesting and admirable career. That is why, 15 years ago, he resolutely abandoned the existing farm management model and refused to be controlled by large agricultural suppliers. Through organic farming, he expanded his customer network by 15,000 times and created more than 40 times as many new jobs. At the end of the talk, Harttung also expressed the hope that Taiwanese students would pay more attention to the wisdom contained in nature and avoid working overtime, so that in a balanced life they can think fully and let the spirit and soul flourish.

Urban and Peri-urban food system

Under conditions of ongoing urbanization and population growth, how should we create a new food supply model?
Today more than 50% of the world's population lives in cities, and by 2050 the proportion of urban population is estimated
to rise to 80%. High urbanization is usually seen as a problem, but behind the problem lies a huge opportunity!

Industrialized agriculture is very bad at transporting plant products, but it would rather use fossil fuels to replace human labor. How smart is that, really?
1. We are about to run out of oil
2. The population keeps growing

How should these problems be solved? Growing food around cities is a smart approach.

Usually when cities are built, development takes place on arable land, and today about 50 times the size of New York in arable land is lost every year. For example, New York City:

Learning from Ants

Human civilization is about 8,000-10,000 years old, but ants have existed in the world for 500,000 years already. Ants also have cities and agriculture (growing fungi and raising animals), and the structure of their urban organization is very complex. If human technology today is likened to the human brain, then an ant's brain is roughly comparable to the first-generation Apple computer, so if ants can figure out ways to solve problems, Thomas believes humans can too. He is not worried about what will happen if the population becomes 10 billion; he believes humans are smarter and more organized than ants and will certainly find a way to produce enough food.

For young people, designing a system in this generation that beats ants is an excellent opportunity. But if industrialized agriculture is the approach taken, Thomas would not encourage young people to enter it, because constantly investing that way is not interesting. On the contrary, if you begin to become part of an emerging alternative, this work is absolutely not boring or dull. The agricultural model that can save us is quite different from the model that exists today. Thomas understands this because he had a "dark past."

A Dark Past and a Bright Present

In his first ten years in agriculture (1984-1994), he was a conventional farmer, growing grains, grass seeds and so on. At that time he had only 3 employees managing 300 hectares of farmland and 2 to 3 customers. If he had continued operating that way to this day, with technological progress, he estimates he might have only 0.7 employees, who would also have to take side jobs to maintain their income, but this is the current situation of ordinary agriculture in Europe.

Now he is a grower and promoter of organic vegetables, and the situation is very different. He now grows on three farms, turnover is 45 times what it was before (45 million USD), employees are 43 times what they were before (130 times), and customers are directly every household, with a total of 45,000 customers now.

Under the old way of operating, he might have had only one buyer left, and he would have had to obey that sole customer on how to farm. By contrast, now he can tell 45,000 customers what to eat! Most of the employees he now hires are graduate students. Thomas offers his own case as a reference for people who want to go into agriculture.

A few ideas to take home with you:

1. Learn from our ancestors: their farming methods, their use of more human labor, and so on, to raise yields.
2. Learn from the ants.
3. We need to design and create a new and efficient food system: including how crops are produced and how they are delivered to urban households.
4. We must equip ourselves and the next generation with the above skills, so schools and research institutions are very important for passing on these skills.

Finally, Thomas shared some ideas that inspired him: the three principles of Mr. Trauger Groh, a Swiss practitioner of biodynamic farming:

1. Do not spend too much time working. If you work too long, thinking you want to control this system, you neglect the humility with which we should learn from this system. If you only think about carrying out your own plans, you have no time to observe the environment and this system. Do not be the master of the forest; when you enter the forest, feel humble.
2. Do not buy too many external inputs from outside the system.
3. Follow the driving force of the soul and want to do this from the heart.

We should live a little more like ants and a little less like 21st-century humans. The most important goal is to find a way to live humbly with the natural world.

And our ultimate goal is to coexist harmoniously with nature.