Selling Rice to Raise Funds: Small Farm Machinery Procurement and Training Program Launches Fundraising
**Origin and explanation of the plan:
Peng-lai rice Kaohsiung 145 is grown in Sansheng Field, a field born of three forms of life. Nestled against the mountains and beside a lake, Sansheng Field lay fallow for more than ten years, becoming a paradise for birds, beasts, insects and fish, nurturing a diversity of grasses. It drinks from the natural springs of Nansei Mountain in the Snow Mountain Range, and grows under the joint guardianship of good friends such as leeches, pointed-scaled pit vipers, emerald dragonflies, fireflies, the 72 ranks of egrets, painted snipes and water pipits.
Yuejian Rice hopes to overturn the current situation in which non-toxic, healthy food is often priced out of reach for ordinary people, and does its utmost to supply everyday staple grain at cost. That is why it created the "tiered pricing" rule, applied to the hybrid rice "Taichung Sen 10", which is both delicious, stable in yield and resistant to pests and diseases. As for the delicate, low-yielding "Kaohsiung 145", it is fragrant and tasty - even insects love to eat it - so the proportion of damaged grains is naturally on the high side. Applying the original rule of "starting at 50 yuan per jin of edible rice" would therefore fail to cover costs.
Moreover, since farming with sesbania and tea, I have felt to the bone the entanglement in which small-farmer partners and contract-tillage operators both depend on each other and are constrained by others. On deep reflection, if we want to practise non-toxic farming for the long haul, we must learn to reclaim the capabilities at every stage of the rice production process (from land preparation to rice seedling raising to transplanting to harvesting to drying to milling). But we do not want to become a large-scale agribusiness (and our finances would not allow it either). That being so, the direction of "making farm machinery public" is inevitably a goal that must be realised in the next stage, so that the overall capabilities of full-time small farmers can be raised, with mutual support and labour exchange, grain quality improved and cash outlay reduced. When we operate the machinery ourselves, the labour cost can relatively be returned to the small farmers themselves.
We warmly invite good friends to respond to the fundraising for the small farm machinery procurement and capacity-building plan. The target is a drive of1000 packs, accumulating a fund of100,000 per year; going slowly gets you there faster.
*Progress of the 1000-pack drive, updated weekly: https://www.facebook.com/OVANH/posts/291918747671997
**Ordering information
[Place of origin] Beautiful mountains and waters, Sansheng Field, Dahu, Yuanshan, Yilan
[Variety] Round rice (japonica rice Kaohsiung No. 145); its fragrant, chewy grain quality is on a par with the Japanese premium rice variety "Koshihikari", and even after the cooked rice cools it keeps its fragrant, chewy character, making it the best material for making sushi.
[Method] Ecologically natural farming methods (completely free of pesticides, chemical fertilisers and herbicides / manual weeding / hand-picking of apple snails / homemade microbial inoculants to improve the soil)
[Degree of milling] Whole-nutrient brown rice / 70% milled rice / white rice, 3 choices.
[Packaging] 2 kg packs (about 3.33 jin), freshly milled to order, deoxygenated packaging (near-vacuum inside the bag, will not break or leak air when knocked)
[Price] 300 yuan per pack (of which 100 yuan goes into the farm machinery purchase fund)
[Shipping] Shipping is charged extra. For a single order of 3 packs or more (inclusive) to the same delivery address, shipping for that order is 110 yuan, with Tianjing absorbing any excess. For 2 packs or fewer (inclusive), shipping is 80 yuan.
[Dispatch] Orders are consolidated and shipped on the 10th of each month, so payment must be settled before the 10th of the month, with delivery in about 3 working days; if an order is placed and paid for after the 10th, it will be shipped on the 10th of the following month.
[Grower] Li Yujing (Tianjing) / Tel 0953-125257 / Email [email protected]
[Blog] Yuejian Learning Farm http://ovanh.pixnet.net/blog
FB fan page https://www.facebook.com/ovanh
[Post office account] 0111031-0176113 Li Yujing
[Simple formula for estimating rice consumption: 1 jin of rice = 4 cups of rice = 8 bowls of cooked rice.]
**Round rice145 order form link: http://goo.gl/ho2kJu
**In addition, the order form link for the tiered-priced long-grain Taichung Sen 10 is here: http://goo.gl/SGajXr
You are welcome to try the different textures.