Lianxiang Farm: Eight Years of Overcoming Challenges and Scaling Ecological Farming
Leaving from Beijing Chaoyang Station, we took a little over an hour on the high-speed rail to Pingquan North Station in Chengde, Hebei Province. Yingying Ren, the matriarch of Lianxiang Farm, was already waiting for us outside the station. Yingying is petite, with her hair swept back in a neat, practical style. She carries an air of quiet competence and a relaxed, easy smile. This was a PGS visit organised earlier in September by the Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market. Lianxiang’s produce – vegetables, maize, and peanuts – has become a firm favourite at the market. Their tomatoes, in particular, are sweet and succulent, perfectly suited to be eaten like fruit, savoured in big, juicy bites. Our group of over twenty, comprising market regulars, fellow ecological farmers, and agriculture students, made the special trip to learn about Lianxiang’s farming methods.
The farm is just under an hour’s drive from the high-speed rail station. Driving past the county town’s gleaming new apartment blocks, a timber processing plant nestled at the foot of the hills, and sprawling fields of maize turning from green to gold, we finally arrived at Lianxiang. Leaving behind Beijing’s haze and summer heat, the air here is crisp and cool, with blue skies and white clouds hovering over the farm at the base of the green hills. Greeted by the clucking of free-range chickens, Wen Zhiqiang – the farm’s husband, sporting a buzz cut, a sun-kissed complexion, and a lean, athletic frame – welcomed us and gave an update on the farm’s progress. Meanwhile, Yingying disappeared into the kitchen; there were still two dishes left to stir-fry.
It was actually Yingying who first suggested running a farm. The couple, both born in the 1990s, met while studying at an agricultural university. Their families were initially opposed to the idea. But Yingying believed that “no matter what, people will always need to eat. If we farm and grow our own food, we’ll always have something to put on the table, regardless of how the wider world changes.” It was no easy decision for the young couple. Elders and neighbours in the village still hoped their children would leave the countryside for stable, well-paid jobs in the city. In their eyes, following in the footsteps of Zhiqiang’s female cousins – working as software engineers or teaching at top-tier high schools in the city – would be a far better path. Yet, once Yingying set her heart on farming, Zhiqiang committed to supporting her fully. He resolved to “pursue a form of agriculture that was fundamentally different from what the older generation did.”
I. Pests: The First Hurdle in Ecological Farming
What troubles Zhiqiang, Yingying, and every ecological farmer the most, however, are crop pests.
In the farm’s early days, limited capital meant investments had to be made incrementally, so they chose to grow shiitake mushrooms. Lianxiang’s mushrooms quickly became a firm favourite at the Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market. Even during this visit, market visitors asked after them with fond nostalgia. Yet, within just two or three years of cultivation, a beetle infestation struck. Harvested mushrooms would be crawling with tiny beetles. The pests proved remarkably tenacious, surviving even drying and freezing. After numerous failed attempts at pest control, they were ultimately forced to give up on shiitakes.
Visitors have also wondered about Lianxiang’s other signature crop—the tomatoes—and why they have been absent recently. After lunch, Zhiqiang and Yingying took us out to the fields. It turns out that alongside the usual seasonal threat of bollworms, this spring the tomato beds suffered an invasion by an introduced species: the American leafminer. These flies lay their eggs on the leaves, and once hatched, the larvae burrow into the tomato foliage and fruit. As the larvae feed, they leave black puncture marks on the fruit’s skin. This not only mars their appearance but also invites pathogens, leading to rot. Walking into the greenhouse, we saw that while one side of the ripe tomatoes appeared flawless, the other was speckled with black nibble marks.
Zhiqiang casually plucked a few of the blemished tomatoes for us to try. Broken open, they burst with juice, offering a refreshing sweet-and-sour taste. The black spots were purely superficial, leaving the fruit’s flavour entirely unaffected. Alas, such tomatoes cannot be sold as commercial produce. From a full basket harvested by the farm’s workers, barely half could be salvaged as grade-A fruit. The remainder was swiftly bundled by Zhiqiang, carried to the poultry shed, and tossed to a flock of over a thousand chickens.
II. Weeds and Herbicides: A Dual Challenge
Fortunately, the heavy weeding workload is confined to the crops’ seedling stage. Once the vegetables tower over the weeds, the threat passes. “To put it simply,” Zhiqiang explains, “in an orchard, the trees are the elder siblings. Weeds cannot outgrow them, so they can be left to their own devices. Vegetable beds are a different story.” He continues, “Weeds grow faster than crops. Right after sowing carrots, the seedlings are fragile. You must keep a close watch on the weather. The moment rain arrives, weeds surge forward. The day after it clears, you’re up before dawn in the fields pulling them by hand. You’ll need to go over the beds three or four times before the carrot seedlings take hold and you can finally catch your breath.”
Another hazard to guard against is herbicide drift from neighbouring farmland. As aerial pesticide spraying becomes more widespread, ecological farms are increasingly falling victim to cross-contamination. In our PGS visit questionnaire, it is a mandatory question: “If the farm is bordered by conventional agriculture, what buffer zones are in place, and how is pesticide drift mitigated?”
While neighbouring farmers do apply herbicides to their large-scale maize fields, two factors mitigate the risk. First, to minimise waste and drift, they typically apply chemicals on calm, windless days. Second, Lianxiang Farm has clearly defined boundaries, separated from the adjacent conventional maize fields by a road and a drainage ditch, offering a degree of protection. Nevertheless, Zhiqiang notes that even these precautions are not foolproof. After a torrential downpour earlier this year, runoff from the fields overflowed into the ditch and spilled across the road. The threat of chemical drift, therefore, remains ever-present.
III. Extreme Heat, Sunburnt Tomatoes, and Chickens That Stop Laying
According to a report in Southern Weekly, in mid-June, the day before the scheduled harvest, temperatures in Chengde soared past 40°C. Within just a few hours, the sun had already scorched Lianxiang’s tomatoes, rendering them unsellable. Those that somehow endured the heat then succumbed to blossom-end rot: deprived of water, their roots could no longer draw up calcium from the soil, leaving the fruit speckled with black patches and mould-like blemishes.
Tomatoes are Lianxiang’s flagship crop, accounting for a third of the farm’s profits. Yet, as Zhiqiang points out, pest infestations were never uncommon; in the past, high yields meant they could still sell a decent amount despite the bugs. This year, however, the pests have been far more aggressive, while the extreme heat and drought have taken a heavy toll on yields.
Even the hens have cut back on laying eggs in the excessive heat. Under normal conditions, the farm’s flock of over a thousand hens would yield more than 300 eggs a day. During those scorching stretches, however, Yingying could barely collect more than fifty.
IV. The Recruitment Dilemma
Recruiting staff has proven even tougher this year than in previous years, and the culprit is surprisingly the steadily rising price of wild jujube berries. Used in traditional Chinese medicine, they are said to calm the nerves and improve sleep.In recent years, the market buy-in price for wild jujube berries on the hills hovered around 2 to 3 yuan per 500g. This year, it has rocketed to 15 yuan per 500g. Picking these berries on the slopes can yield a daily income of up to 2,000–3,000 yuan per person, drawing locals in droves. With buy-in prices fluctuating daily, and driven by the desire to maximise earnings, many have resorted to felling the trees and shaking the branches bare to harvest everything at once—a classic tragedy of the commons.
V. Eight Years After Returning Home
Their daughter, Ke’er, who was born on the farm in 2018, has now reached primary school age. To secure a more stable schooling environment for her, the couple reshuffled their roles: Zhiqiang remains based at the farm, while Yingying rents a flat in the nearby county town of Pingquan to oversee Ke’er’s education. Each morning, after dropping Ke’er off at school, Yingying makes the forty-minute bus journey back to the farm. In the afternoon, she returns to the town to collect Ke’er and spends the night. Yingying’s routine has effectively become a nine-to-five commute. With Ke’er only home for weekends, and Yingying needing more time to care for her, the day-to-day running of the farm has largely fallen to Zhiqiang.
Lianxiang Farm now spans just over 50 mu (approx. 3.3 hectares), with 26 mu dedicated to cultivation. Given the harsh northern winters, open-field growing is restricted to the May–October window. Yingying has devised detailed seasonal crop rotations, enabling the farm to supply between 20 and 30 varieties of vegetables throughout the year. Take maize, for instance: they grow sweetcorn, waxy corn and traditional dry maize, followed by maize flour and grits in November and December. Similarly, peanuts are offered fresh, dried, shelled, and as cold-pressed oil. To ensure Ke’er enjoys fresh produce year-round, the couple rented three earth-walled solar greenhouses near the farm this year. Built with thick loess walls for excellent thermal retention, they allow the cultivation of fruiting vegetables like tomatoes even through the winter.
Beyond crop cultivation, Zhiqiang manages the livestock: a free-range flock of native, Silkie and speckled chickens roaming the maize fields, a stately gaggle of geese, and plump pigs kept for the Lunar New Year. The birds and insects take care of the rest, turning blemished or windfall produce into a diverse, nutrient-rich diet that might well outshine the average city dweller’s fare. The farm is also home to two dogs that patrol the livestock, alongside nine free-roaming cats, each with a personality of its own.
Having moved from supplying schools and other organic farms to partnering with Beijing’s Organic Farmers’ Market, Yingying and Zhiqiang decided to take the next step. Since 2019, Lianxiang has been working to build deeper, trust-based partnerships with a dedicated group of customers through a bespoke customisation model: “Tell us what you’d like to eat, and we’ll grow it just for you.” This flips the traditional Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) script on its head, moving away from “we grow what we can, you eat what we have” to a truly customer-led approach.
Nearly eight years on since their return, Yingying and Zhiqiang have faced challenges of one form or another each year, yet they have persevered and kept experimenting. As Zhiqiang puts it: “Despite the frequent crop losses and the fact that every stage of farming brings its own set of problems, we keep trying our hand at new varieties. Because we grow such a diverse range of crops, we always walk away with some kind of harvest by year’s end.”
Family together, living off the land, rooted in the soil, working steadily and meeting an unpredictable world with optimism—could there be a more secure and fulfilling way to live?
Unless otherwise noted, all images in this article
are courtesy of Foodthink’s Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market.
Edited by Ling Yu