Can the Village Party Secretary’s push for ecological farming succeed? | Grandma Kouzi
I. An Unexpected Village Party Secretary
I was slightly surprised.
It was 23 February 2022. I remember it so clearly because since I entered E-Ren Valley in 2021, he has been the only person to respond to me in this way.
Since I’d acquired E-Ren Valley, my interest in the outside world had plummeted. I focused only on my own small patch of land, mentioning to them that the most important thing was ecological farming—rejecting chemical fertilisers, pesticides, and herbicides…
Just then, out of nowhere, a ‘Cheng Yaojin’ appeared. One of the neighbour’s guests, who had been facing away from us, suddenly turned and interrupted: “Ecological farming? I want to try it.”
He joined our table with his teacup in hand, and that was how we met Fan Hanquan.
I was surprised again when he introduced himself: he was actually a village party secretary.
By then, I had been in E-Ren Valley for less than a year, and my mindset had shifted significantly. Regarding ecological farming, I used to tell everyone that clean land, air, and water don’t exist in isolation and require collective effort. But soon, I stopped. Not because I had changed, but because I was exhausted; speaking was pointless, so I might as well stay silent.
Sure enough, in the course of our conversation, Fan Hanquan soon uttered the word “but”. Hearing this, I felt the familiar wave of disappointment; “but” usually precedes bad news: “Ecological farming is all well and good, but we can’t do it.”
But Fan Hanquan was different. He mentioned some of the difficulties first, then said: “But, I still want to give it a try.”
II. The Vanishing Village
I was willing to go because he was willing to try ecological farming; my old friends wanted to settle there because Meicuntou promised support and legal guarantees for outsiders; and another friend from Xiamen was attracted by Fan Hanquan’s suggestion to adopt the ‘Gu-dong’ system used by Taiwanese farmers—using a ‘buy rice to lease land’ model to implement ecological farming.
Fan Hanquan himself didn’t farm, nor did he know how. He had left home after junior high school and later established his career and family elsewhere. The reason he became a ‘flying secretary’ (2005–2009; 2015 to present), rarely residing in the village, was because there was ‘no one’—not just no one to be the secretary, but no one even willing to stay in the village.
Meicuntou is the furthest administrative village from Liancheng county town and the largest in area. It has over a thousand registered residents, but fewer than four hundred permanent ones. Opportunities are scarce deep in the mountains, leaving only the elderly, the last generation of farmers. As the elderly pass away, the hometown may vanish; Fan Hanquan described it as ‘village extinction’.
Most of the traditional Hakka wooden houses stood empty. The small village had a disproportionately large village committee building—a two-storey block with a large playground, once a school. The closure and merging of village schools had accelerated the village’s decline. The quiet mountain village was indeed beautiful, but it clearly lacked appeal for my old friends who spent their time between Yunnan and Hainan, or wandering from Xining to Tibet.
The partners interested in ecological farming and the ‘buy rice to lease land’ model were worried about the pesticide bottles by the fields, pointing out that the model had strict requirements for the total elimination of chemical fertilisers, pesticides, and herbicides. Fan Hanquan was visibly disappointed, yet he still said: “Even if the buy-rice-lease-land model doesn’t work, I still want to try. I’ll use my own family’s land and let my father farm it.”
But Father Fan worried that “without chemical fertilisers, pesticides, and herbicides, the rice won’t grow”. I have heard these words too often, especially from this generation of farmers. They were the first to witness the arrival of chemical fertilisers and pesticides, the introduction of hybrid varieties, and the widespread use of herbicides. Yields increased and living standards rose; they lived better than the previous generation and sent their children, like Fan Hanquan, away to seek even better lives. Their labour was steeped in chemicals, and their meals lost themselves in MSG, chicken powder, and seasoning packets, building a blind faith in chemicals—which is perhaps more terrifying than the physical harm they cause.
Humans have farmed for ten thousand years, yet chemical fertilisers and pesticides have only been in China for fifty. How could crops fail to grow without them? It is one thing for those who don’t farm to claim they don’t know the hardship; I farm myself, and I support myself through the land.
When it was mentioned that current high-yield varieties are unsuitable for ecological farming, I introduced him to Jin Yan from the Jinboyuan Farm in Shanghang. Jin Yan has practised ecological farming for ten years. Since both are mountain villages at an altitude of a thousand metres in the Meihua Mountains, whatever Jinboyuan can achieve, Meicuntou surely can too.
Father Fan smiled without speaking; I knew this was merely Hakka courtesy towards a guest. Fan Hanquan said, “I’ll contact him immediately,” and I smiled without speaking, suspecting it was likely just talk.
III. Ecological Tribute Rice: What Can the Yield Be?
In autumn, Fan Hanquan sent me his rice. It was indeed delicious, though the yield was on the lower side. Fan Hanquan had specifically bought a high-tech land-measurement tool to accurately calculate the yield: 296 jin of rice per mu. The yield was indeed not high, but it was enough to convince Father Fan and the curious onlookers.
Later, E-Ren Valley also planted the same variety of tribute rice. From an area of 190 square metres, we harvested 154 jin of grain. Based on a 70% milling rate, the yield was 370 jin of rice per mu. Including the second-crop rice three months later, it would comfortably exceed 400. It seems I truly have a talent for growing rice.
What impressed me even more about Meicuntou’s first attempt at ecological farming was Fan Hanquan’s “integrity mechanism”.
In Taiwan, they rely on “consumer trust + producer self-discipline”. However, Fan Hanquan came up with a new idea: using the wifi coverage to install cameras by the fields, allowing those who leased the land to monitor them 24 hours a day via their phones. This is a “trust mechanism based on the premise of distrust”.
Regrettably, the ‘buy rice to lease land’ model wasn’t realised in 2022, and I worried Fan Hanquan might lose motivation. Fortunately, the trials continued, and the area even expanded. In 2023, although the model still hadn’t been implemented, the village collective leased 50 mu of terraced fields from scattered households, carrying out concentrated reclamation and remediation. They publicly welcomed supervision, pledging no use of chemical fertilisers, pesticides, or herbicides. Fan Hanquan used the phone monitoring system to demonstrate the fields being remediated—the stretch right behind the village committee building.
This time, it was an investment by the village collective; they paid people to farm, but the management was crude, and the rice yield per mu was only a bit over a hundred jin.
IV. There is no turning back from ecological farming
Although he initially knew nothing about farming, he gradually began to discuss soil improvement, enzymes, and EM bacteria, comparing permaculture with the Shumei farming method… he had become truly invested.
Unfortunately, luck was not on the side of Fan Hanquan or Meicuntou, and various attempts fell short of expectations. In 2023, the village organised a rather bustling “Thousand-Person Hiking Festival”. I have always been sceptical of such large-scale events; they are often designed just to make a splash, bringing in almost no actual income for the village at the time and attracting no repeat visitors afterwards.
Fan Hanquan often speaks of cases where “characteristic tourism sparks a mountain boom” or “outsiders revitalise ancient towns”, longing for an immense windfall to fall upon Meicuntou. I am familiar with many of these cases and have visited some; aside from genuine scenery and unpredictable luck, there is one crucial factor: people. It is precisely people that Meicuntou lacks most—no people, no money, no content, and no opportunity: a vicious cycle.
Meicuntou’s distance from educational and industrial resources has “forced” the locals away. Fan Hanquan is a prime example; his business and family are in Pengkou Town, which is closer to the county seat and served by a high-speed railway station. The village’s natural advantages remain hidden in the deep mountains, unknown to all, while the geography itself “blocks” outsiders from entering.
The revitalisation of old villages always begins with outsiders creating a unique identity, which then attracts more outsiders and eventually draws locals back, forming a virtuous cycle. The key lies in that first wave of outsiders.
What does Meicuntou have to attract them? By rejecting chemical fertilisers, pesticides, and herbicides to create a terrestrial paradise, it might just attract more like-minded ecological farmers.
In 2024, those few dozen mu of detoxified and reclaimed land were abandoned once more. The affairs of the village collective cannot be decided by the party secretary alone, especially when continued planting means continued losses. Leasing the land only to leave it fallow is still a loss, albeit a smaller one, and is ultimately no long-term solution. Yet, if the lease is not renewed, chemical fertilisers, pesticides, and herbicides will make a comeback. It can be said that for Meicuntou, there is no turning back from ecological farming.
V. Can an ecological village break the “meso-environmental” deadlock?
My experience at Erren Valley represents the smallest possible sample of a “micro-environment”. It is a lifestyle farm with no commercial pressure and the smallest possible scale—just a tiny patch of land. Currently, everything is going well; I live self-sufficiently, keep my gates closed to the world, and can peacefully await the harvest. Yet, herbicides are an omnipresent threat. They are sprayed on the adjacent road and in neighbouring fields; even land that has been derelict for over a decade is still being sprayed.
I introduced Zou Jinyan to Fan Hanquan. With sixty or seventy mu of woodland and twenty-odd mu of farmland, Jinyan’s hundred-mu family farm is gradually improving in both environment and operation. Jinyan’s headache is the large-scale vegetable plots nearby. The summers in Fujian are scorching, and the hottest months are the off-season for vegetables. Because of his high altitude, Jinyan’s land avoids the extreme heat, but the large vegetable gardens in the surrounding areas employ the full suite of chemical fertilisers, pesticides, and herbicides.
Another friend, Sister Huang, is at Xianren Valley in Shanghang. She has over a hundred mu of farmland and several hundred mu of woodland. She bought a full set of heavy machinery—a suspended tiller, a bulldozer, and a shredder—turning the vast valley into a sovereign kingdom. However, every time I visit, I encounter conflict. It is not that Sister Huang is combative, but that people are always turning up to “shake her down”. Many locals see her farm as a fat piece of meat and want a bite… from personal disputes over renewing vehicle tyres to the village and town administration using her as a pawn. If Sister Huang weren’t naturally strong-willed and knowledgeable about the law, she would have been driven away long ago.
Erren Valley is a pocket farm with a land investment in the hundreds of thousands; Jinbo Garden is in the millions, and Xianren Valley in the tens of millions. All are operationally sustainable. But regardless of how good the micro-environment is behind closed doors, they all face their own “mid-environment deadlock”.
I hold no illusions about the macro-environment; industrialised agriculture is an unstoppable force. However, not everyone wants to be on the fast track of the era—people like Sister Huang, Jinyan, and myself. A good era should allow everyone to have a choice and find a “mid-environment” where they can truly settle.
In Fan Hanquan’s words, Meicuntou is perfect in every way, though he is clearly seeing it through a familial lens. To me, it is mediocre. But if we can create the “mid-environment” that small-scale ecological farmers need—hardware-wise, a place free of fertilisers, pesticides, and herbicides; software-wise, a Village Party Secretary like Fan Hanquan—then this mediocre place would become extraordinary.
At the similarly situated Jinbo Garden, ecological farming didn’t just attract guests to the farm; it attracted people capable of driving change in the village. Many guests who initially came for a short summer break gradually became regulars who return every year. From a “farm-to-table” picking experience, they developed a series of events from Rice Planting Festivals to Harvest Festivals, alongside birdwatching, botanical specimens, environmental education, and miniature bonsai… new guests are increasing, and old guests are becoming more loyal. Later, Jinyan attracted the “Da Wu Academy”, which focuses on rural construction, and the “Small and Beautiful Action School” from Xiamen, bringing in more content. They, in turn, attracted more people, and the villagers began building B&Bs and offering hospitality services.
The reason I suggested that Fan Hanquan build an “ecological village” was to find people to co-construct Meicuntou. Only with people will there be future possibilities.
VI. Offering Personal Land to “Build a Nest for the Phoenix”
Why didn’t I come across Meicuntou when I was searching for land everywhere?
To be frank, Fan Hanquan is the only Village Party Secretary among my friends. I have always kept such figures at arm’s length. Having spent decades navigating the grassroots for public welfare and social research, I am grateful whenever the local authorities leave me alone. It is not that I have a prejudice against Village Party Secretaries, but rather that grassroots organisations, seeking only stability, aim for no mistakes rather than great achievements. I can understand their mentality of “the less trouble, the better”.
“I am not afraid of trouble. As long as you are willing to practice ecological farming, I am willing to provide the service; as long as you meet the subsidy criteria, we will help you navigate the government departments.” Fan Hanquan repeatedly affirmed that he would fully support newcomers, ensuring they enjoy the treatment of locals and receive state subsidies. “If the service is good, the village will be vibrant, and it won’t fade away.”
– Meicuntou Village –
2. Each family will receive one mu of land and one room, free of charge for three years. The land is from Fan Hanquan’s own holdings; the housing consists of rooms in the village committee building, fully equipped with a communal kitchen, bathroom, toilet, broadband, water, and electricity.
3. Those requiring more land may rent the prepared terraced and paddy fields behind the primary school, which have water and road access, at a rent not exceeding 100 yuan per mu.
4. After three years, the land rent will be capped at 100 yuan per mu, and the rent for vacant courtyards will range from 3 yuan to a maximum of 30 yuan per square metre per year.
5. Others wishing to rent houses or land for ecological farming in Meicuntou will enjoy the same capped pricing.
Finally, a direct recruitment ad
The first new villager attracted by this initiative, Dr Qin Guoxin, who has over ten years of farming experience, has already moved into Meicuntou. There are two spots remaining for free land and housing. We look forward to welcoming like-minded people with dreams of ecological farming to help build this ecological village. If interested, you can contact him directly at 18959029392 (phone or WeChat).
Editor: Wang Hao