Apples, Matsutake and Yaks: How Are They Benefiting the Environment, Farmers and Consumers Alike? | Food Talk Vol. 48

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This episode of Food Talk welcomes the social enterprise Muyunpo, as they share how they and the villagers are exploring fairer, more sustainable ways of producing food—ways that protect nature while carrying the village’s finest produce to markets far beyond the hills, helping farmers earn a better living.

Xiaojin County, in Aba Prefecture, Sichuan, lies in the Jiarong Tibetan region, a five- or six-hour drive from Chengdu. The dramatic range in altitude and the diverse terrain give this corner of the world an abundance of rich, high-quality produce. Over a decade ago, the non-profit Chengdu Shuguang Community Development Capacity Building Centre arrived here. Like many organisations, after years of running poverty-alleviation and development programmes, Shuguang set out on a path of helping mountain farmers sell their goods. In the end, however, they forged an entirely different road.

To run a produce-sales operation, Muyunpo was established in 2017. As a social enterprise, it was never born to turn a profit—it exists to serve the interests of the community. By organising villagers to forage, cultivate and graze together, life in the village has come alive again. Sales surpluses are returned to the villagers’ groups at year’s end, channelling common funds back into the community. Unlike the traditional “farmer–trader” relationship, riddled with mutual haggling and farmers at the mercy of the market, Muyunpo places trust and collaboration at its heart: the villagers’ groups make their own decisions and set their own standards, while the social enterprise supports from behind the scenes.

Years of this work have borne fruit in the form of products that are healthier, better in quality, and produced in a way that sustains the environment: sustainably foraged matsutake and morels, ecologically grown apples and cherries, Sichuan pepper and Sichuan pepper oil, heirloom grain varieties, free-range yak meat … In this episode, Yunhui and Xixi from Muyunpo will share with us the vivid stories behind each of these products.

This episode, we’ll be talking about:

  • How hard is it to cut out the middlemen and earn a fair price for matsutake and morels?
  • How can a group of mothers in the Tibetan hills “pick mushrooms” while still protecting the land?
  • What efforts must villagers make to keep yaks grazing the traditional free-range way?
  • How can the strength of a community build trust in the chain from field to table and uphold production standards?
  • With sales surplus flowing back to the community, how do villagers put it to use?

This Episode’s Guests

This Episode’s Hosts

Timeline

00:52 What is a social enterprise? The birth and mission of “Muyunpo”: a non-profit enters the village, discovers that farmers grow well but can’t make money—how do they break the deadlock?

07:00 Did you know that the many grades of matsutake are actually a trade secret? How do Muyunpo’s team members go from complete novices to market insiders?

15:51 Even the most delicious morels can be picked to exhaustion. How can the “tragedy of the commons” be overcome, and how do you persuade villagers not to deplete the resource?

28:37 How has sustainable foraging of morels given the village’s mothers a stronger voice?

31:58 Free-range grazing vs. pen-raised fattening: as yak-keeping practices change, the traditions of Xiaojin’s Tibetan region are disappearing with them

38:39 Sichuan pepper, apples, heirloom grains … other produce Muyunpo works with

41:08 In an era lacking trust, why are ordinary people willing to follow Muyunpo in changing how they grow?

42:46 How precious are the heirloom apple varieties? Villagers pick from their own orchards to send to children far from home

48:18 If you’d like to support sustainable farming too, what can you do?

The women of the morel-foraging group.
The sustainable foraging team sorting and weighing the day’s matsutake harvest.
What is sustainable foraging? The morel-foraging group’s consensus: don’t forage morels shorter than 3 cm, don’t take the soil from around the morels’ roots, and take back any rubbish generated during foraging.
The muddy stems of morels are very low quality and not typically used for eating. But when villagers sell to middlemen, they often pick up the muddy stems too to earn a bit more—this has become an unspoken rule in the trade. The consequence, however, is that the morels can no longer continue to grow.
The morel cooperative group uses the set-aside community funds to give every resident over 65 in the village a crate of milk.
Muyunpo’s fruit-growing group organising pruning skills training.
Villager Brother Yang giving his yaks supplementary feeding in winter. Time constraints mean this episode can’t cover everything about yaks. If you’re interested, you can search for more on Muyunpo’s WeChat account.
Xixi and Yunhui at the 2024 Guangzhou Harvest Festival—their produce was a hit at the market.

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Unless otherwise stated

all images are courtesy of Muyunpo

Music: Banong

Production: Xiaojing

Editing: Wang Hao

Contact email: xiaojing@foodthink.cn

Published by Foodthink