A fool farmer grows natural fields in Nan'ao, just to protect clean land
In the afternoon a sudden downpour drummed on the tin roof. Farmer A-Jiang was neither sheltering from the rain nor rushing to save his crops; instead, in the "lecture hall" of his farmhouse, he set up a computer, pulled down a screen, and began a presentation with slides. This "lecture hall" was in fact a Buddhist shrine hung with photos of his ancestors. A Buddhist shrine paired with slides? It felt very odd.
Halfway through the presentation, something even stranger happened. A girl, soaked to the bone, rode a 50cc scooter from Taipei along the Suhua Highway, where rocks were falling constantly, to reach Nan'ao. She "risked her life" and spent 6 hours just to experience A-Jiang's natural farming. Just what is the appeal of farmer A-Jiang?
A-Jiang, 45, whose real name is Chen Changjiang, is the second generation of a traditional farming family. With study and work experience at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology and the Industrial Technology Research Institute, he took early retirement from a managerial post at a tech company and turned around to become a farmer, and has since become a Don Quixote of the rice paddies. For 3 years, A-Jiang has settled in Nan'ao, Yilan, cultivating "Nan'ao Natural Farm."
A-Jiang grew up beside the Dadu River in Taichung. In the past, every time he returned home, he was always startled to find that the fish and shrimp of the Dadu River were gone, and that the water grew blacker and more foul-smelling by the day. Later, he took a course and tested the nitrate content in vegetables himself, which surprised him even more: even the vegetables his mother, who had farmed all her life, grew with her own hands exceeded the safe level. Only then did he understand that much of the land in Taiwan is now severely polluted by water sources and the environment.
Therefore, A-Jiang resolved to use no fertilizer, no pesticides, and no herbicides, relying on the power of nature to grow rice, so that the water flowing out of this Nan'ao field would be as clean as when it flowed in.
It takes fields as big as 12 soccer fields to make a "natural village" possible
To realize this dream, the "natural village" must be large enough. Only then can the water flowing out from the mountain fields reach the Nan'ao town area and other fields clean and unpolluted.
So A-Jiang's first challenge was to go door to door asking for help, in order to obtain dozens of land lease consent forms. Here in Nan'ao, most of the landowners are indigenous people. At first they did not believe this stranger from elsewhere; often they would say yes, yes, yes verbally, but when it came time to sign, the person would vanish.
Later, A-Jiang took the landowners straight to the farmers' association and, with the association director guaranteeing it emphatically, these landowners gradually set aside their doubts and were willing to lease him land. It took nearly half a year, with A-Jiang sorting field records until midnight every day, before he gradually leased about 12 jia of land, as big as 20 soccer fields.
However, the challenge was not over. These irregular, scattered hillside fields made farming even harder; the manpower needed for transplanting rice, patrolling the paddies, and harvesting was 3 to 5 times that of ordinary flatland fields. A-Jiang also named many of the scattered, irregular plots "walk-only zones," meaning they could be reached only on foot; some fields even required carrying seedlings in bamboo baskets and transplanting rice by hand.
Golden apple snails as weeders, and good rice still grows
Although farmland using conventional farming methods looks clean, tidy, and weed-free, behind it is a heavy spraying of pesticides that makes it impossible for living things to survive; by contrast, the fertilizer-free, pesticide-free Nan'ao Natural Farm is full of life everywhere. Not only do egrets glide among the fields, but even the army of golden apple snails that gives every farmer a headache swims freely in great numbers in the natural fields.
Facing this army of golden apple snails, A-Jiang gave up the common practice of killing them with pesticides. After the hard wait for the seedlings to grow strong, he transplanted them into the fields one by one. The golden apple snails, fond of tender shoots, found the mature seedlings no longer to their taste and instead ate the tender weeds in the paddies. The golden apple snails had transformed into the most natural weeders!
In addition, natural farming requires a great deal of manpower. With a creative eye, A-Jiang set up a "work-exchange inn," inviting everyone to plant both feet in the embrace of the earth in exchange for food, lodging, and a supply of labor.
People from all walks of life were at the work-exchange inn: the girl soaked to the bone, a young man who had quit his job to walk around the island picking up trash, business owners who came to transplant and harvest rice themselves, and even a 14-year-old out-of-school boy who set his ambition here to become a farmer. A-Jiang lets everyone here get close to the land and create an acre of pure soil and clean food.
Contract farming and cultivation by proxy, making consumers the owners of their food
To make everyone the "true owner of their food," A-Jiang's dream is "contract farming and cultivation by proxy." In Nan'ao Natural Village, consumers can pay in advance to pre-order crops from a farmer for a certain area of land, becoming the "owners" bearing the harvest amount, while the farmer is the "proxy cultivator" of these crops. Through contract farming and cultivation by proxy, both sides have a certain guarantee of income and yield, and because the owners genuinely want clean food, farmers also do not need to apply pesticides and fertilizers for appearance and excessive production.
After the heavy rain in Nan'ao, the warm sun had just shown its face. Looking at this Don Quixote in the rice paddy wearing his shirt backward, it was as if one could also see that bowl of natural rice on the dining table, already giving off the fragrance of rice.
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