Wei Te-Sheng and Jiang Shen-Feng's Agricultural Dream: Bringing Taiwan, China's Agriculture to the World with Film
Introduction: Agriculture, film, and baseball meet in KANO
Following the film ⟨⟨Seediq Bale⟩⟩, the next new film ⟨⟨KANO⟩⟩, written and produced by Wei Te-sheng and directed by Ma Chih-hsiang, is set to begin shooting this September. "KANO" is the abbreviation for "Taiwan Public Kagi Agriculture and Forestry School" (predecessor of National Chiayi University) in the 1930s, and the film ⟨⟨KANO⟩⟩ tells the inspirational story of the then-unknown Taiwan Kagi Agricultural and Forestry baseball team as they fought their way through the rounds, made it into the Japanese national secondary school championship baseball tournament "Koshien," and won second place.
Wei Te-sheng said his interest in the story of the Kagi Agricultural and Forestry baseball team came from seeing that, during the period of Japanese rule, in an era of stark racial distinctions and class antagonism, the team was still able to create a "three-race republic" team culture of Indigenous peoples, Han Chinese, and Japanese. In order to advance to Japan's Koshien tournament, they practiced desperately and played ball, creating a beautiful story of "ethnic groups jointly creating glory."
Although it uses baseball to tell of ethnic integration, behind ⟨⟨KANO⟩⟩ is in fact a testament to the takeoff of Taiwan's agriculture. Wei Te-sheng said that in the year the Kagi Agricultural and Forestry baseball team went to Japan to compete, the Chianan Canal was also completed, effectively resolving the long-standing problem of violent disputes over water in Taiwan's rural villages. Because of the Chianan Canal, agriculture on the Chianan Plain advanced by leaps and bounds and became Taiwan's granary, and the agricultural elites it produced were the backbone of the Kagi Agricultural and Forestry baseball team that made it into Japan's Koshien.
Agriculture and photography are Johnson's two great callings. (Image source: Chiang Shen-feng's Facebook)
Returning home to farm, Johnson hopes everyone stays healthy
Q: What made Johnson return to the countryside to farm?
Chiang: My switch to chemical-free agriculture came about because of a certain Dr. Gong. He was himself a doctor, and promoted organic agriculture in Guanshan. After getting it going in Guanshan, he believed that since the west is a major agricultural center, promoting organic agriculture there was even more necessary.
He said that if a person breaks a bone, Western medicine can still set it, but in Taiwan today someone dies of a chronic disease every few minutes, and these chronic diseases all accumulate over many years from harmful substances in food and daily-use products.
So why do I make handmade soap? Because I am very wary of the surfactants produced by the petrochemical industry. Many household goods today are produced quickly by the petrochemical industry, and the petrochemical industry pollutes the environment.
In the past I couldn't bear to buy handmade soap and would use it little by little, so later I thought I might as well make handmade soap myself, and teach everyone how to make handmade soap from recycled oil at home, gradually encouraging people to change their living habits and avoid petrochemical products as much as possible. First take good care of your family's health, then slowly spread it outward, benefiting many people's health.
Likewise, our rice does not chase yield; we would rather let the insects eat what is left, and then let people eat it.
Refined agriculture should be done like this: making both the environment and plant growth friendly, not like raising animals now, with no range of movement and just eating feed.
Actually, my family's farmland is not large. It is all relatives, friends, and old farmers who transferred their land to my father for contract cultivation, so this year I already have three and a half jia of land. My family itself has only seven fen of land. Taking care of seven fen is easy, but taking care of three and a half jia is a bit difficult.
Although it is three and a half jia, it still cannot all be made organic and chemical-free, because neighboring fields use very unfriendly cultivation methods that have an impact, so the rice I can truly grow chemical-free is only one jia.
In doing chemical-free agriculture, I could only try to persuade my father to let me do it myself. The hardest thing in Taiwan's agriculture is persuading older farmers, because they would rather eat cheap food than eat organic. I could not persuade my father to farm organically, and I could not just farm with talk, so I had no choice but to roll up my pant legs and jump in myself.
There are too many people with chronic diseases in Taiwan. We need to educate consumers to avoid coming into contact with these environmental hormones as much as possible. We must leave clean soil to the next generation, not leave pollution to the next generation.
Wei: Logically, the more you farm, the more fertile the land should become, rather than using chemical fertilizers and herbicides to make the land worse and worse and grow bad things to eat. If people treat the land well, the land will treat people well. (This series of articles is to be continued)