In Guangxi, China’s Best Food Province, What Has Kept This Farmers’ Market Going for 11 Years?

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From Foodthink

How many people can commit to one thing for a decade? The Nanning Urban Farmers’ Market is one such example. Since it first held its market in 2013, 2024 marks its eleventh year. The market, held once every two months, attracts dozens of stallholders selling locally sourced ecological produce from Guangxi, the vast majority of whom are ecological smallholders, cooperatives, or local artisans. The market also organises a variety of hands-on experiential activities.

Who exactly are the people behind this small community? In late April this year, Foodthink colleagues Qi Boshi and Zhou Xuan took a deep dive into the two-and-a-half-day annual gathering of the Nanning Urban Farmers’ Market and met this remarkable group of farmers and volunteers — people who love life and respect nature. This article is a record of that journey.

From 27–29 December, the Nanning Urban Farmers’ Market will also host its year-end flagship event, the Na Wu Life Festival. Partners from across Guangxi are warmly invited to join.

● Head to the market! Market friends chatting at the stall.

“Please bring your own bowls and chopsticks, and if you can, your own tent. Here’s the chain sign-up for produce …”

Go back to April this year, and in the Nanning Urban Farmers’ Market group chat, such an announcement appeared. It was a preview of a very special annual gathering — like a get-together among friends, where everyone brings their own.

But we two “uninvited guests” who had travelled all the way from Beijing could hardly lug tents and meat and vegetables on our backs, so we had to be a little shameless and rely on the market volunteers to sort out everything from food and accommodation to transport. We soon blended in, though: the volunteer Wei Wei drove out to pick us up, and just as we were carefully squeezing ourselves into the back seat, we found the car already loaded to the brim with supplies — and enthusiasm.

Heading east out of the city, the buildings beyond the window gave way to rows of slender, straight fast-growing eucalyptus. An hour later, when the view was replaced by wide-open stretches of maize, chilli, paddy, and jasmine fields, we had arrived at the venue for the annual gathering — the Ecological Farm in Zhongtuan Village, Xiaoyi Town, Hengzhou City. The two and a half days that followed gave us the privilege of meeting a group of companions bound by a shared cause and shared values, and witnessing their uncertainty and effort in the face of external challenges.

I. A Self-Sufficient Annual Gathering

The market’s annual gathering was determined to keep simplicity and warmth to the very end. No accommodation? Bring your own tent and pitch camp on the farm. No meeting room? The cultural centre’s tent was transformed into a discussion area; a few strokes of red paper and ink lettering and it instantly felt like a proper get-together. No set catering? The farmers and volunteers brought home-grown ecological produce from their own farms, and with the addition of us out-of-town guests, everyone was divided into groups responsible for cooking over the three days.

● Everyone took turns cooking in groups; the author also joined in the kitchen (far right).

Farmers, volunteers, and consumers alike — anyone who regularly comes to the market — are all affectionately called “market friends”. We only found out later that this is also how people eat on regular market days: each stall contributes a few ingredients to the pot, and the market friends share a meal right there at the stall.

The market friends do get together often, but this special annual gathering on the ten-year milestone was something different. The farm was, of course, the perfect setting for a sense of ritual: gathered beneath the banyan tree, everyone sat in stillness, soaking in the energy of nature, reconnecting with a love and empathy for all the living things around them; a pre-meal ceremony saw everyone cradling their bowls and chopsticks, murmuring words of gratitude for nature and for the beauty of the present moment — a little awkward, perhaps, but the chance to let adults express love and thanks without reservation is a gift in itself; for the ice-breaker team-building, banana circles were constructed — how could a permaculture course go without hands-on practice; and in the evening, as conversations drifted on, a child or a firefly would occasionally wander in, cricket-song and dog-barking in the air, a gentle night breeze rising — everything one might romanticise about country life.

● A pre-meal ceremony, expressing love and gratitude without reservation.
● Working together to build a banana circle — a chance to put freshly learned permaculture theory into practice.
When the workshops were over, this community that champions “sustainable living” proved it meant it by leading by example: food waste was composted, and market friends brought along black soldier fly larvae to give hands-on demonstrations of how to handle kitchen scraps; zero-waste circular practices meant single-use items were almost nowhere to be seen at the gathering.

“No forcing, no judging, simply flow with what is here and now” … every activity at the market’s annual gathering had no spectators — everything was created by the market friends themselves, with understanding freely given. The connections between them grew not only through the shared work of the market, but also through a shared way of life.

II. Small Yet Moving Sparks of Light

There was no rain outdoors. The fallen leaves were swept from beneath the banyan tree, the outdoor tent was set up, and picnic mats were spread out. One by one, the farmers began to tell their own “ecological path”.

Like ecological farmers across the country, the market’s companions come from wildly different backgrounds: traditional farmers whose families have tended the fields for generations, university graduates who returned to their hometowns to start businesses, and new-generation farmers who came home from overseas; there are also artists and professionals from all walks of life. The moment each one found their way into ecological farming differs, but every one of them holds the same founding belief: “Revere nature and simply do good.” Their life choices carry a streak of idealism, yet when it comes to running a farm they work with steady hands and step-by-step care.

● Under the banyan tree, eating and chatting, sharing stories. If the day’s talk ran out of time, they kept the lanterns burning into the night.
Farming carries the romance of a retreat into the hills, yet it also faces harsh, real-world pressures. Caught between a market economy and industrialised agriculture, even conventional smallholders struggle to survive. Those who choose ecological farming face an even heavier burden. In rural areas they are the minority, the outliers — always having to shoulder pressure, anxiety, and self-doubt on their own. One person’s effort is so small; how can a single spark set the whole grassland alight? It is the great family of the market that lets them huddle together for warmth. Only at the gathering of like-minded companions during the annual meeting do all those bitter, aching sorrows finally find some solace.

III. What to Do When You’re Short on People and Money

So it is a “decade” — how does the market evaluate its journey so far? The core volunteers took stock of the market’s situation over the past few years.

Meng Fang, who served as the 2023 market convener, gave a thorough overview — from stallholders’ participation to the development of new market products, and from there to expanding the consumer base. Although the market still relies primarily on volunteers and has no large payroll to sustain, the costs of opening the market, farmer site visits, volunteer exchanges, and materials are all very real. Subtract the income from annual membership fees and the market’s per-event commission, and without external sponsorship, a growing funding gap is plain to see.

To break even, the market has had to watch every penny and seek new avenues. Every expense involved in opening the market or running an event must therefore be handled with meticulous care.

Faced with these costs, how do you raise more revenue? Increase stallholders’ annual fees, develop market-branded products, generate income through market events … discussion ebbed and flowed. For all the ideas, the market friends could not help feeling helpless: “We’re still short on people, short on money.”

● Core volunteers joining in the discussion at the annual gathering.
The many challenges the market faces are well-worn topics, and the volunteer team acknowledges that just keeping up with day-to-day work leaves them stretched too thin to find the energy or time to solve them. Everyone is a practical, hard-working doer, and they know full well that every attempt at earning new revenue is fraught with difficulty — but “someone has to feel the way forward.”

In fact, the market has been exploring its own paths for several years. To make each market day more engaging, since 2022 every bi-monthly opening has featured a zero-waste group, an Old Friends’ Living Room, and a children’s education group, among other activities. The richness of content and format has left even the most regular companions astonished.

Each time the market opens, farmers and volunteers travel from far and wide with great enthusiasm; once they arrive, they immediately get down to hauling materials and setting up the stalls. Tiring as it is, they never tire of it.

The harder things get, the more one needs to kindle hope. At the close of the meeting, having agreed on the year’s KPIs, the market friends encouraged one another: “A group of brilliant people like us surely has what it takes to accomplish brilliant things.”

IV. Ten Years of Standing by One Another

Reflections at the annual gathering inevitably drift towards “talking values.” What is the market’s true value and meaning? This is a soul-searching question that volunteers and stallholders ponder often, too.

After dinner, with nothing pressing, a casual chat with the farmers revealed that over the years, stallholders have come and gone, and market friends, too, have met and parted. To us onlookers it is clear that keeping the market going is no small feat, and that the companions press on, quite literally, to preserve this window linking urban and rural life — a showcase for sustainable living, and a platform that connects small everyday actions such as cutting down on plastic or composting to “distant” issues like climate change and biodiversity. It is also about holding on to this warm, family-like community.

● Awards presented between dumpling-making sessions, with gifts and good wishes exchanged.

Ten years of searching and trying have brought their own transformations: from an initiative initially supported by social organisations, to running things like a business, and after hitting walls, finally evolving into today’s model of collaboration between farmers and volunteers. Under this model, trade, conversation, and co-creation all unfold at once, and deep bonds of gratitude quietly take root among the market friends.

As the annual gathering wrapped up, we rode back into the city in volunteer Wei Wei’s car. It turned out that many volunteers have full-time jobs of their own, yet in their spare time — helping to run the market, organising the annual gathering — each of them was positively buzzing with energy.

A decade ago, farmers’ markets sprang up in cities all across the country, but like sand scoured by great tides, not every one of them endured. We asked ourselves, too: what has kept the Nanning Urban Farmers’ Market going all this while? Even as we departed, the answer seemed just out of reach: perhaps it was “passion” — though that word always feels trite and intangible. Perhaps, when the sky is clear, the earth is firm beneath your feet, and warm, familiar faces gather close, a wellspring of courage simply rises of its own accord. Market friends, leaning on one another, use their small sparks to light each other’s path ahead.

● Market friends gathering for a group photo at the annual meeting.

Foodthink Author

Qi Boshi

Programme officer at Foodthink. An agricultural science student rediscovering the land.

 

 

 

 

About the Nanning Urban Farmers’ Market

Founded in 2013, the Nanning Urban Farmers’ Market was initiated by organisations and volunteers dedicated to ecological agriculture and sustainable living. It aims to support local smallholders’ ecological production through regular market gatherings, build a platform for urban–rural exchange on sustainable living, foster trust among people, and encourage harmony between people and nature.

Photos: qiqi, Zhou Xuan; core volunteers, Nanning Urban Farmers’ Market

Editor: Wang Hao

Published by Foodthink