Urban youth go to the countryside to become farmers, promoting organic farming in search of health and happiness
Text: Chen Xiping/Su Ruifan Photos: Provided by Huixiang Organic Farm, Tongluo
Putting ecological farming into practice in a simple little village in Tongluo
The farmers at Huixiang Organic Farm in Tongluo Township, Miaoli County are uniformly energetic young people between 30 and 40 years old, and all of them grew up in the city with no farming experience at all! What kind of belief is this?
In 2003, 31 young people, whose average age at the time was under 30, came together. They gave up tempting high-paying jobs and convenient, comfortable lives in the city to follow founder Li Xuqing and become farmers, starting in Zhushan, Nantou, and settling in Tongluo, Miaoli. They rise at sunrise and rest at sunset, perfectly content. Why do they still insist on farming in the most primitive way, making their own compost, practicing fallow rotation, and planting on bare ground, even though the organic rice, vegetables, and fruit they grow are poor in yield and appearance? Shen Junliang, chairman of the Miaoli County Organic Agriculture Production and Marketing Cooperative, who leads them, says: "To live in symbiosis with nature, to recover the simple, happy, and healthy life of childhood, and to leave a ray of vitality and hope for the Earth that nurtures us; this is our original intention and also our vision."
No pesticides, no chemical fertilizers, no herbicides, no insecticides, and not even biological control methods. Respecting all living things in nature, since Huixiang Organic Farm came to the simple little village of Xinjilong section in Tongluo Township in 2005, it has put the ideal of harmonious, symbiotic ecological farming into practice on land bought or rented after Shen Junliang built close ties with elderly Hakka farmers.
They use mountain spring water and stream water for irrigation; planting on bare ground lets crops get full sunlight; they make their own compost from weeds, rice straw, and the like to avoid environmental hormones produced by chemical agents entering organisms through the food chain, causing endocrine disruption, the blurring of male and female, and species extinction; they do not weed, instead using weeds with excellent coverage to retain moisture and prevent soil erosion, and after they rot they return to the field and enrich the soil. Although, compared with rice, vegetables, and fruit grown by the conventional farming methods common on the market using pesticides and chemical fertilizers, their yield and appearance are not as good and their prices are relatively higher, leaving them less competitive, after vigorous promotion they have gained the recognition and support of more than 1,000 home-delivery households.
For a map to Huixiang Organic Farm and the farmers' market, please click here
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