The Breeze Market is jointly run by small farmers through mutual aid and cooperative management, with annual revenue reaching ten million.

Founded in 2007, Breeze Market is currently the largest farmers' market in southern Taiwan, with nearly sixty small-scale organic farmers gathering here on holidays. The farmers are as close as family, and even consumers are drawn in, turning from customers into volunteers. Strict standards combined with the farmers' self-discipline have made Breeze Market a success. At present, monthly revenue can reach 1.2 million, three full-time employees are hired on a regular basis, and after expenses are deducted there is still a surplus, making it a rare case among farmers' markets of being able to support itself.

Trading Agricultural Products, Everyone Is Family

"We're one short of a four here, handsome, come help!" At seven in the morning on a holiday, Kaohsiung is still asleep in a hazy mist, and on the open ground beside Lotus Pond, the farmers of Breeze Market have already begun a day of labor. They haul out the tents, four people to a group, pull out the iron poles, and stretch open the canopy. Once this stall is set up, they hurry to help the neighboring stall. "This kind of thing can't be done by one person; only by everyone working together can it get done," the busy farmers say.

That day more than forty stalls came to Breeze Market, and with everyone helping one another, all the tents were up within half an hour. "We hope Breeze Market will be a shared brand," says Lin Xian-hui, director-general of the Breeze Market Vocational Association. He hopes the farmers who join here can all feel a sense of identity with the market, not just for personal gain, but working together to make the market thrive.

Breeze Market currently opens regularly every Saturday and Sunday at three locations in Kaohsiung. The largest, the Lotus Pond Products Hall market, has as many as sixty farmers come to set up stalls, all from Kaohsiung itself, making it the farmers' market with the most stalls in Taiwan, China. Although the agricultural products sold are mostly common leafy greens, there is no smell of gunpowder from competition here; instead there is a harmonious atmosphere like that of a big family.

Lin Xian-hui says that at first, to keep everyone from feeling it was unfair, they had planned to rotate locations once a month, but everyone actually thought their own spot was the best, because each stall has its own loyal customers and they do not steal business from one another. Sometimes when their own goods are sold out, they even help sell another stall's goods. And every time the market closes is "gift exchange" time. You give a bag of rice, I give a bunch of bananas, and everyone goes home with all kinds of agricultural products. "This is our way of showing friendliness!" one farmer happily told me.

This warm atmosphere also infects the consumers who come to buy. Many people go from customers to bosses, becoming volunteers when the farmers are too busy and helping sell agricultural products. The Pepper Dong Farm in Namaxia District, Kaohsiung, is the highest and most distant area at the market, requiring seven hours round trip. The farm's mistress, Ying Yue-guo, says that besides earning a regular weekly income, what matters more is not letting customers down. "Everyone here helps one another, just like family, which makes people feel very warm."

People at the market sing Happy Birthday together for the November birthday stars