International organic advocates visit Xingjian Village in Yilan, witnessing a moving journey of the organic dream
Photography / Xiao Hei
In the quiet little village of Xingjian in Sanxing Township, Yilan County, China, nestled between the Annong River and the Xingjian River, villagers and farming friends work hand in hand to promote organic agriculture, hoping to build the entire village into an organic farming village. On October 12, three friends from abroad - Elizabeth Henderson, a promoter of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) in the United States, Daycha Sirpatra, founder of Thailand's Khao Kwan Foundation, and Dorji Wangchhuk, chief scientist at Bhutan's Ministry of Agriculture and Forests - came to Yilan to explore the Xingjian organic dream village and talk with local farmers.
At the start, the three experts each shared their experience and beliefs in organic farming, and discussed them with the farmers on site. The audience responded enthusiastically, prompting the host to keep reminding everyone that time was up!
In her remarks, Zhang Mei said, "Farmers don't make much money, but they're happy when the rice is sold." Promoting organic agriculture is not a picture of calm and sunshine, but a process of solving one problem after another. The growing process is doubly arduous. How can each precious grain of rice be packaged and delivered to consumers? Zhang Mei and her partners overcame each obstacle one by one. Through a multi-employment program, the cooperative hired professional managers, allowing different specialties to divide the work, so that the farmers' hard-earned results need only be fully sold, warming consumers' bellies.
Changing Farmers' Thinking Through Education
Zhang Mei had visited Thailand's Khao Kwan Foundation a few years ago. Daycha recognized her, making the scene even more lively. Daycha briefly introduced the mission of the Khao Kwan Foundation and its achievements over the past decade or so. Having witnessed the poverty of Thai farmers, the foundation aims to help farmers escape from poverty and debt. It studied the reasons for farmers' indebtedness and found that it was precisely the government-encouraged conventional agriculture based on chemical fertilizers and farming, where rice prices seemed cheap compared with expensive pesticides and fertilizers.
Over 15 years, the number of farming friends willing to join organic cultivation has stalled. He believes that the reason farmers are unwilling to give up chemical fertilizers and pesticides is the result of merchants constantly brainwashing them through massive advertising. Therefore, the Khao Kwan Foundation promotes field schools, starting with education to change farmers' way of thinking.
Although Khao Kwan's farmer schools in Thailand have obtained government certification, what puzzles Daycha is that the government-run farmer schools remain unmoved and still teach conventional farming methods using chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Therefore, Khao Kwan keeps condensing its courses to make them easy for Thai farmers to access and learn, countering this farming method that traps Thai farmers in a cycle of poverty.
Daycha could hardly conceal his disgust for chemical use on farmland. He said applying pesticides destroys the land. Just by teaching farmers to leave the harvested rice straw in the fields, Khao Kwan can already nourish the soil, without even needing compost. And when Daycha teaches farmers to switch from conventional to organic, he only uses rice straw fermented with microorganisms, and one application is enough to revitalize the land. He also gave an example of a piece of land that had used conventional farming for 30 years, which everyone thought was beyond saving. Yet after one treatment, the land's yields have grown better and better for 6 years now.
