Organic production, sustainable farming methods, and agroecological practices.
At Sister Yanping’s Baicao Garden in Guigang, Guangxi, from handling courier after-sales past midnight and hauling waste with a carrying pole each day, to spending three to five years rebuilding soil ravaged by agrochemicals, Natural Farming is far from the effortless “relying on heaven’s bounty.”
Sister Yanping is trialling Natural Farming across over 50 mu of orchard in Guigang, Guangxi: leaving ripe fruit on the branches to pick slowly, leaving waist-high grass around the trees, dropping unsellable fruit back beneath them – an orchard becoming a living composting ground.
In 2015, a couple born in the 1990s – Yingying and Zhiqiang – returned to their hometown of Pingquan, Chengde, Hebei, and set up Lianxiang Farm. Over eight years, they have grappled time and again with pests, weeds, extreme heat and hiring difficulties – yet they persevere.
Kouzi arrived alone in Villain’s Valley two years ago to farm. Of over a thousand saplings, most were tuition fees; fruit flies spare barely one pumpkin in ten. Every mouthful, then, must be savoured and treasured.
At Letian Bay Farm, consumers rent plots in the countryside not for organic certification or environmental ideals, but for a sense of ease so scarce in the city: seeing how vegetables grow, recognising one’s neighbours, eating cucumbers without peeling.
After over three years in Wicked Valley, Fujian, farmer Kōuzi has reaped an entire paddy crop by hand for the first time, from transplanting to final cut. The harvest was treated as a festival: harvest meals prepared three days ahead, the first block of paddy cut between downpours.
From 300 mu in Bashang to 9 in Huailai, Baxia: Huang Lifeng and Li Yuxia let Eurasian magpies peck their tomatoes, save 60 per cent of water with drip irrigation, and sell home-grown veg at the Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market at weekends — enough for a family of four.
Wayina’s Banong and Guilin musician Shiba returned to farm and sing. Pesticides have nearly emptied the fields of fish and frogs, heirloom rice is all but extinct, and schooled young people can no longer tell herbs, catch insects and frogs, or reclaim old ways of singing while working.
Barcelona’s Mercat de la Terra replaces organic certification with Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS), enabling small-scale producers to bypass cumbersome paperwork and fees, sell local seasonal produce through direct trust with consumers, and sustain a community network from farm to table.
Chen Ziyu of Wo Cui Yuan farm, Baoding, and Liu Gang of Xiao Liushu Farm, Shunyi, face total crop failure in maize, drowned vegetables, compacted soil. All they can do: turn the land, sun the soil, rush to plant cabbages. Who bears the cost of climate adaptation? Unanswered.
