Gentleman farmer

He was the first youth out of the village to make good in academia, but he also chose to return home, complete with a wife, chickens and a garden of rose bushes. Han Bingbin talks to Mr Lohas.

Every village has its young bright, white hope. WangShenfu was the first boy wonder to step out of his village in Miyun in the Beijing countryside. He bore much expectation on his young shoulders, and he shouldered it well. But to everyone's surprise, he decided to come home and announced his intention to farm.

That was about a decade ago, and in his own words, he is now "among the few villagers who still make a living purely through farming".

On the Chinese microblog Weibo, Wang's moniker is Mr Lohas and it is a platform he uses actively to share his insights on organic farming and advocate a return to the dignity of working on the land. It is an increasingly charming prospect for some young people disillusioned with the attractions of urban life.

Wang's little farm, Lohas Village, is a regular participant at the Beijing Country Fair, a weekly organic farmers' market rapidly gaining recognition among Beijing's widening strata of middle-class consumers willing to pay more for safe and natural food.

Wang's organic produce also enjoys a good reputation on Taobao, China's largest retail website where he receives about 100 orders a week. His farm also benefits from the regular patronage of 500 registered members, and the number is increasing, as the farm gets better known.

All these combine to make a relatively sizable income for Lohas Village, but Wang insists money is not and never will be his sole motivation.

His teaching experience at the China Agricultural University and a later tenure with an agricultural company exposed him to some major problems in China's agricultural practices, like the over-use of pesticides.

"It's a very serious problem in either the breeding or growing. I wanted some real practice so I could help find ways to reduce the use of pesticide," he says.

One key value of agriculture is its diversity, Wang says, and every piece of land has its different nature, everyone has different tastes. In the pursuit of greater output and production, standardized agriculture is killing its own diversity, something that is against nature and the consumer's eating habits.

"I really cannot agree with some experts who say nutrition is all the same. Judging from lab results, they are the same, just like water from whatever sources is still H2O.

"Still you have different tastes, and people may prefer water from Evian, Nongfu Spring, and Robust. You drink different water. Why should you expect the whole country to eat the same eggs?" he argues.

"Many people take nutrition from purely the physical or chemical definition. That's outdated."

Free-range chickens and eggs are currently the main products from Lohas Village. The birds are fed with locally grown corn and soybean cakes that the farm produces, up until they are three months old. Then they are let loose to forage naturally in the surrounding hills.

A couple of years ago, Wang planted 200 rose trees as a gift to his wife, and they have turned into an attractive supplementary source of income - rose essence and rose jams made when the flowers are in season.

The rose bushes are fertilized by chicken manure, and in return, they provide shade for the roosting birds. The chickens also help to remove pests from the roses and the roses provide them with rose hips.

It all sounds quite idyllic, and some farmers may be tempted to offer farm stay vacations. But not Wang.

"The more people come, the more things they want to order. To meet their needs, which may be beyond the farm's capabilities, they may need to start outsourcing," he says. "I've seen a number of farms abandon their farming origins and become purely countryside resorts, which is possibly more profitable."

The balance between making a living and advocating organic farming is what concerns Wang.

Even if he may consider starting a resort in the future, Wang says visitors will be restricted to current members and more importantly, his farm produce will remain strictly natural and seasonal.

For Wang, the only concrete plan now is to spread his farming ideas and slowly grow his rose and chicken business.

By next year, he says, he hopes to be able to raise 5,000 chickens to provide for about a thousand families in Beijing. By mechanizing the farming operation, Wang plans to make it so much cleaner and labor-saving that "any college graduate would want to work here".

"Traditional farming doesn't negate modern technology. Farmers these days do not necessarily appear disheveled or dirty. Farming must be an integrated part of the modern lifestyle, something that is accepted and willingly adopted by the young."

Contact the writer at hanbingbin@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 12/06/2013 page22)