At the end of 2017, I joined again Chinese CSA conference. I feel lucky enough to attend this wonderful event 3 years in a row since the Beijing one in 2015, paralleled with International CSA conference by URGENCI, where I met awesome people from all over the world. Moreover, I could arrange 9 Korean people to be with me there this time. Yes, we were the 2nd biggest population after about 600 Chinese attendees and invitees.
This is not a coincidence given I’m now living in China and bridging Chinese organic/ homestead farmers, alternative food activists and scholars to Koreans, Japanese and plus. For example, I invited Professor WEN Tiejun to Korea and organized series of lectures, collaborating with several parties in Autumn, 2017. Professor WEN plays a symbolic leadership of “New Rural Regeneration” (or NRR) movement in China, which also contributes to a core group of Chinese CSA alliance. As a matter of fact, his visit to Korea and reflection inspired conference organizing committee to invite Hansalim coop and also Hongdong community from Korea, as key note speakers because Professor WEN highly spoke of them after return to China. They are actually, two Meccas when we talk about the history of organic farming and rural community movement in Korea.
This year’s event was held in Tongren city, Guizhou province of China. Guizhou is one of the poorest, mountainous but also beautiful and indigenous area and they suggested the theme of this years event as 乡村振兴 Vitalization of rural village and 生态扶贫 Ecological antipoverty. The former word is from the President Xi’s presentation at the 19th Chinese communist party (CCP)’s meeting and become the buzzword for the NRR practitioners. Antipoverty campaign certainly targets to improve the situation in Guizhou and very well resonated with CCP’s highlight on building ecological civilization.
Photo 1 Dr. SHI Yan and Korean attendees
Photo 2 Professor WEN Tiejun and also Korean attendees
Addressing the request from Korean participants, I also coordinated the field trip before and after the conference. So, the group actually went on 8 days journey starting from Chongqing, to Guizhou and finally Chengdu, Sichuan where they returned to Korea.
Chongqing is one of the most important spot in terms of 100 years of NRR history because many of their early leadership gathered there during Japanese invasion, world war II, collaborating with her home grown NRR hero Mr. LU zuofu (1893-1952) who is often claimed as the first social entrepreneur in China. The city established Rural Reconstruction (RR) school in Xinan universtiy to commemorate them and we decided to visit RR school on our arrival day.
They organized a useful discussion with local NRR practitioners such as an anthropologist working in rural village and also the founder of Chongqing farmer’s market, but heated discussion was not as hot as Chongqing hotpot dinner followed. Yes, we are Koreans and still might not be easily beaten by the hot food in China.
Photo 3 Hotpot dinner among Koreans and locals in Chongqing
We also visited one of the marquee project in Chongqing, 合初人Hechuren farm on the next day. This farm has been established in suburban area of Chongqing by a renowned local intellectual and an activist, Miss ZHU Yi. She is one of prominent opinion leader of NRR group, too. They have established the vegetable plots run by natural farming practice since 2005. They have referred both of local farmer’s knowledge who did organic farming almost 30 years and also a technique from overseas countries like Japan. But in the end, they are building their own skill fitting their environment. Although not huge output, they are maintaining to deliver the healthy vegetables every week to urban consumers and also put an effort to grow consumer group as a proper supporter of local organic farmers.
Photo 4 We helped the young farmer to package the vegetables to be delivered before nice vegan lunch.
When we arrived the Tongren city, Guizhou province over the night train, it was early morning and very much welcomed by local authorities to give us a ride to the hotel. We felt the local government was very eager to adopt CSA to vitalize the district.
The next day opening ceremony was held at the large district assembly hall and the place was full of attendees not only from outside but also from most of the villages around. Yes, it was quite authority-driven but not necessarily one-sided mobilization. They must be full of curiosity how ecological farming could tackle their poverty issue and guarantee the sustainable and prosperous future.
Photo 5 The youth representative from Hongdong rural community and Poolmu School of South Korea introduces their history started from 1958 as a key note speaker
The one of key topic for this conference is about building consumer-producer coop in China because they need to grow supportive and dedicated pool of consumers for homestead organic farmers to establish strong and reliable sales channel and market. It is no wonder why Chinese CSA folks are eager to learn the process given the proven record of neighboring countries including Japan, Taiwan and Korea.
The meeting room reserved for the session was full of attendees and they were paying very much attention to the speech of Mr YOON Hyeonggeun, the COO of the Hansalim consumer coop from Korea and also the following presentation by Dr. SHI Yan about the situation in China. After several more speeches from Chinese practitioners, the small group discussion workshop followed about the subject. Until the final summaries from each group, most of the people in the room kept the seat to see if any right direction for their future progress.
Photo 6 Mr. YOON’s presentation about Hansalim’s development and consumer’s contribution.
Even after dinner, the evening sessions were resumed until midnight because there were plenty of subjects (15 sub tracks and 8 key tracks) till next morning. Thus, such a long haul trip to Guizhou province should not be wasted, especially at the end of year.
Some of the subjects include organic farming technologies, urban farming and food education, PGS practices, survival story of homestead farms, local seeds, sustainable development and vitalization of rural village etc.
On the last day of the event, which is also the last day of the year, the final tracks had continued till lunch time, with being most of the meeting rooms, still full of attendees, especially, the key tracks by Senior scholars who led the movement as pioneers like professor WEN Tiejun and professor ZHANG Xiaode.
Although most of the Chinese attendees were rush to return home to spend the last day with their families after the closing session, we’re supposed to spend several more days in China and counted the last minute of the year with toast to celebrate the new year at the hotel room. And very early morning of the new year, we’ve left for a small mountainous village in Guizhou because we’re lucky enough to meet a young man from this neighboring village during the conference. Mr. XU Xiaoling is one of the 返乡青年 Fanxiangqingnian (return-rural home youth) who once worked at Shenzhen and Guiyang but now run village projects at his hometown. He’d been employed as a brand manager for a large corporate and decided to go back when he was diagnosed as neurosis after hard time in big cities.
His project site, Heba village is very unique in a way the minority tribe (called Laojia) reside there is not even officially classified into one of the 56 formal races by Chinese government and keeps her own tradition as a dog hunter. However, on the other hand, the village is also a typical one holding all the problematic situations happening in rural area of China such as decreasing population, poverty, garbage handling and farming pollution etc. What Mr. XU and his friends do there is to address the most of these issues. He has established several workshops for traditional local hand craft masters, organic farming practices and community activities around these. After the tour, we’re treated local delicacy of Suantang'yu (Sour soup fish) at one of wooden village house with home made wine. So, most of the ingredients were organically grown there and enjoyably 'local local' after being a bit bored with series of hotel foods during the conference.
Photo 7 a brave hunting dog
Photo 8 a rural treat from Guizhou village
Photo 9 a typical rice terrace in Guizhou village
After a day’s trip in Guizhou, we flew to the last destination, Chengdu. We spent two more nights there and visited another famous projects like GAO family farm. Chengdu is actually a pioneering city of organic farming and CSA practice in China. For example, GAO family farm has started the organic farming from 2005 as part of the clean river project, targeting to reduce the amount of pesticides and herbicides causing pollution of the river, as a source of tab water for Chengdu city. They also started the vegetable box delivery to urban consumers from 2007, which is actually earlier than the little donkey farm in Beijing, claimed as the first CSA farm in China. I did WOOFER at this farm 2 years ago for a week and the whole family, including 77 year old uncle GAO who was healthy enough to keep working in the field everyday, welcomed us, treating nice Vegan hotpot lunch. We also visited the neighboring organic farm run by Mr. WANG who is one of the key member of CSA alliance. He and his wife, who was a former Yoga teacher from the city have run their farm already for 12 years and, now, wish to upgrade their operation to more consumer-enaged one. A short discussion and consultation could not shed a light to them for the solution, but, obviously, what is necessary for them is to collaborate with other 7 organic farmers in the village, including GAOs to build a producer’s coop in pursuit of synergy.
Photo 10 GAO’s family farm
Photo 11 Doubanjiang, the Chinese Chili bean sauce is actually originated from Chengdu, Pixian and the WANG’s farm in Pixian is making organic Doubanjiang, what a great place to order it if you like !
We also visited a social enterprise selling organic products to Chengdu consumers, called TIAN’AN LIFE, which has a thousand customer base and 20 current acting producers. This 3 years-old small business with 3 full time employees and 2 part time volunteers could not be compared to the other more commercial organic businesses with larger capital but they have a very quick and clear answer to the question of what is the differentiator. “Our consumers well understand who are producers and how they grow and that is why we do this while ordinary consumers choose larger organic business to see only the brand of the seller”. Our long discussion finished with blessing from Mr YOON of Hansalim. “We started from the smaller place than yours 30 years ago but now we have 600 thousands consumer base. If you are persistent, you will make it happen, too."
Photo 12 Miss ZHANG Xiaomao, one of the founder of TIAN’AN LIFE introduces their products
Our 8 days journey of south western China seemed to be fruitful for the Korean group because it was the first time for many of them to visit rural area of China and organic farming producers as well as NRR activists. They realized the big shift here and appreciate it. So, the solidarity extends !