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KLMNO THE WORLD Sowing seeds for an organic revolution In China, some young professionals are giving up their high-paying city jobs to be part of a fledgling movement: sustainable farming BY WILLIAMWAN IN CHONGMING ISLAND, CHINA T he small-scale farmer


is a dying breed in China,made upmostly of the elderly left be- hind in the mass exo-


dus of migrant workers to much higher-paying jobs in industrial cities. But on an island called Chong-


ming, a two-hour drive east of Shanghai, a group of young ur- ban professionals has begun to buck the trend. They are giving up high-paying salaries in the city and applying their business and Internet savvy to once-aban- doned properties. They are try- ing to teach customers concepts such as eating locally and sus- tainability. And they are spear- heading a fledgling movement that has long existed in the Western world but is only begin- ning to emerge inmodern China: green living. “What we are trying to create


is like a dream for us,” said Chen Shuaijun, a young banker who, with his wife, has rented eight acres on Chongming. “But it is simply bizarre to


everyone else,” he added, with a sigh. Sipping coffee recently at a


Shanghai Starbucks, dressed in polished black shoes and a crisp- ly starched shirt, Chen, 30, fully embodied the success andwealth China’s new generation has found in this industrial, corpo- rate age. Farming runs in his family,


Chen explained, going back at least seven generations, includ- ing his parents. Chenwas the first in his family


to go to college. He majored in computer science, got married and began climbing the ladder in Shanghai’s banking industry. Then, one day last year, his


wife, Shen Hui, pitched him a wild idea. Unlike Chen, she had grown


up in the city andwas tired of the smoggy air, the unnaturally green and almost tasteless gro- cery store broccoli and the fast- paced, high-pressure life in a cubicle. To her and a growing number


of Chinese of her generation, the countryside represented a sim- pler paradise. But the biggest draw for her was food safety. In recent years,China has seen


an unending string of food scan- dals: melamine-injected milk, counterfeit baby formula, bacte- ria-infected vegetables, pollu- tion-poisoned fish and even cooking oil recycled from sew- age. Imagine, Shen told Chen, knowing exactlywhere your food came fromandwhatwent into it. Having spent his childhood


lugging heavy buckets of water by shoulder to water his parents’ fields, Chen thought he had a more realistic view of country life. But even to him, the idea held a certain appeal. Time and distance — along with several years as an office drone — lent the countryside a touch of nos-


WILLIAM WAN/THE WASHINGTON POST College-educated JiaRuiming has returned to his rural roots to start an organic farm.He worked for many years as a teacher before deciding to give farming a try.


pesticides and fertilizers. Not using either has meant


catching insects at times by hand, endless weeding in the fields and hauling in smelly, dirty “natural” fertilizers from nearby livestock. The family lost their entire


crop of corn three times to insects; only a handful of cucum- bers survived the most recent season. And because the organic produce has more flaws, scars and uneven shapes than ordi- nary grocery-store vegetables, it has been hard to sell the little they’ve produced.


Varied success They are not alone in encoun-


talgia. Chen’s neighbors ridiculed


him to his face when the couple announced that they wanted to leave Shanghai and become or- ganic farmers. Co-workers ex- pressed shock. And Chen’s par- ents, who had toiled on farms just so he could study and go to college, became enraged. “There were some angry phone calls,” Chen admitted. Not that it got any easier once


he launched his farm. Chen and his wife till their rented land on the weekends. But most of the peasants he hired to tend it during the week had never even heard the term “organic” and derided the organic methods he developed aftermonths of online research. His parents, who eventually


agreed to work the farm, and the hired peasants have even come close to mutinying at times against Chen’s strict rule against


tering problems. Lying in the mouth of the


Yangtze River, Chongming Is- land has become a haven of sorts for China’s new breed of eco- friendly hipster entrepreneurs, but oftenwith varying degrees of success. Even when their methods are


sound, the water and soil such farmers use often are not be- cause of rampant pollution. This summer, the government report- ed that 43 percent of state-moni- tored rivers are so polluted, they are unsuitable for human con- tact. The industry the farmers are


trying to nurture also is — like most markets in China — plagued with fakes. Regulation on organic goods remains weak. Competing agencies offer vary- ing degrees of certification, and some, farmers say, will certify even the most pesticide- or hor- mone-injected goods for the right price.As a result,many new


farmers like Chen bypass the organic certification and simply call their goods “natural.” There are also harsh economic


realities. The idea of paying up to 10 times more for organic pro- duce remains foreign, not to mention out of reach, formost in China. Despite the odds against


them, almost a dozen neworgan- ic farms have popped up on the island in recent years. Many, however, have yet to turn a profit. Han Guojie, 38, another new


farmer, gave up a high-paying job as a water-quality engineer last year to start his operation. And he expects to be in the red for a while longer because the soil needs to recover from years of heavy chemicals and pesticides. AdevoutBuddhistwho carries


prayer beads wherever he goes, Han says the motivation for him and other new farmers tran- scends thematerial. “For years, humans have tried


to conquer nature, but in doing so, they themselves became con- quered. They lost their connec- tion with the earth. They de- stroyed the land they were till- ing,” Han said. “In Buddhist belief, there are no pesticides, no bad insects, no good ones. There is only imbalance in the world. Wemust restore that balance.” Most young farmers on the


island had similarly lofty mo- tives. Jia Ruiming, a former school-


teacher, began his organic rice farm after seeing the poverty of China’s rural farmers. Most are in their 60s or older and unable to compete in the state-regulated


DIGEST CHINA


Ban doesn’t raise Nobel casewithHu U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-


moon asked China to play a great- er role in solving African crises during a meeting Monday with the president, but did not discuss the country’shumanrights record or the imprisonment of Nobel Peace laureateLiuXiaobo. Banmetwith PresidentHu Jin-


tao at theGreatHall of the People in the heart of Beijing, one day after attending a summit in Shanghai with Chinese Premier WenJiabao andother leaders. “Since taking office, you have


done a great deal of effectivework to promote thework of theUnited Nations, improve the U.N.’s work, improve international coopera- tion, promote world peace and stability,”HutoldBan. Rights advocateshaveurgedBan


tojoinotherworldleadersinpublic- ly expressing concern over Liu’s im- prisonment,aswellasthetreatment of his wife, Liu Xia, who has been under house arrest since the award wasannouncedlastmonth. Liu Xiaobo, a 54-year-old liter-


ary critic, is serving an 11-year sentence for subversion imposed inDecember after he co-authored aboldappealknownasCharter08 callingfor reforms tothecountry’s single-party communist political system.


—AssociatedPress IRAN


Trial ofAmerican hikers is delayed Iranian authorities have post-


poned the trial of two American hikers accused of spying and ille- gally enteringthe Islamic republic because a third hiker released on bail has not been summoned to court, a judiciary spokesman said Monday. Shane Bauer and Joshua Fattal


remained in a Tehran prison after SarahShourdwas releasedinSep- temberon$500,000bail.Themen were scheduled to appear before a judge Saturday. No new date has beenset. The delay couldmean that Iran


will demand that Shourd return from the United States to face trial. “It is better that the accused


released on bail would return to Iran because all three had com- mitteda joint crime andshouldbe tried together,” judiciary spokes- man Gholam Hossein Mohseni- Ejei, who also acts as national prosecutor general, told Iranian state media. “Now whether Ms. Shourd comes back or not is an- other question.” The three Americans, arrested


in July 2009, say theywere hiking in northern Iraq and were not aware they had crossed into Iran. President Mahmoud Ahmadine- jad is said to have requested Shourd’s release in September,


only to be snubbed by Iran’s judi- ciary. It did ultimately release her, but weeks after the government’s request.


—ThomasErdbrink TURKEY


Kurdish rebels deny suicide bombing Kurdish rebels on Monday de-


nied any involvement in the sui- cide bombing in a crowded Istan- bul square that wounded 32 peo- ple—halfof thempoliceofficers— and announced the extension of a unilateral cease-fire in hope of opening talks with Turkish lead- ers. Interior Minister Besir Atalay


said the government has informa- tion about the group behind Sun- day’s bombing but will not com- ment onthatpointuntil the inves- tigation is complete. The suicide bomber, who has not been identi- fied, blew himself up near riot police stationedatTaksimSquare, apopular locationincentral Istan- bul for shoppers, tourists and demonstrators. Kurdish rebels, Islamist mili-


tants and leftist extremists have all carried out attacks in Turkey. But Sunday’s bombing coincided with the end of the rebels’ previ- ous cease-fire, leading to suspi- cions that the autonomy-seeking Kurdistan Workers’ Party may have beenbehindthe attack. —AssociatedPress


chinaorganic PROOF1


Topic: Foreign


Run Date: 11 / 2 / 2010 Size: 11p0 x 4.25” Artist: Name


FPO EDUARDO MUNOZ/REUTERS


AHaitian voodoo practitioner walks on tombs during an AllHallows ceremony at a cemetery in Port- au-Prince.Meanwhile, the nation prepared for a possible strike by a resurgent Tropical Storm Tomas.


HAITI


Tropical stormcould bring newemergency Government officials and aid


partners in earthquake- and chol- era-ravagedHaiti scrambledMon- day to prepare quake-survivor camps and coastal towns for a possiblehit by ahurricane. Tropical StormTomas,which is


headingwestwardacross the east- ern Caribbean Sea, is expected to turn north toward Haiti and the


DominicanRepublic by the end of the week and restrengthen as a hurricane, the U.S. National Hur- ricaneCenter said. Tomas now threatens another


humanitarian emergency forHai- ti, the Western Hemisphere’s poorest state.


—Reuters


Athens bomb plot thwarted: Greek police on Monday foiled four attempted parcel bomb at- tacks—allegedlytargetingFrench President Nicolas Sarkozy and


three embassies inAthens—after one device exploded at a delivery service, injuring a worker. Police later arrestedtwoGreekmennear the blast site incentralAthens.


Taliban takes district headquar- ters:TheTalibanbriefly overrana district seat in eastern Afghani- stan and torched government buildings, officials said. Afghan troops regained control ofGhazni province’sKhogyanidistricthead- quarters a fewhours later. —Fromnews services


system that produces most of China’s food. He hopes to teach the older farmers he has hired that organic rice can sell for many times more than regular rice andwants to showthemhow tomarket it in Shanghai. There are signs that themove-


ment is catching on. Among China’s new echelon of super- rich, organic food has become a luxury fad in high-end supermar- kets in recent years — a status symbol like the latest Gucci purse. Some organic farmers, howev-


er, are leery of becoming the latest trend. “We want to create a new


market, but this isn’t just about pushing consumption,” said Sun Yanghuan, an accounting execu- tive who, in her spare time, spearheads a communal farm that relies on Shanghai residents who pay to be members and pitch in to produce each season’s crops. “This movement is about adopting a sustainable lifestyle, finding balance between rural and urban.”


Joy exceeds pain For Chen and wife Shen, find-


ing that balance this first year on their farm has driven them to exhaustion at times. Shen, who began as the more idealistic of the two, has found herself physi- cally unable to get up some weekends after hours of weed- ing. She admits that her original


plan for them to one day quit their jobs and work full time in the country may not be the best idea. “It gets boring in the coun- try, because there isn’t thatmuch


Leaving the farm China’s industrial boom has drawn people away from farm towns and into large urban centers. Urban Chinese probably will outnumber the rural population within five years.


100%


20 40 60 80


Rural


TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2010


Urban


1990


’95


’00


’05 ’08


SOURCE: China National Bureau of Statistics THE WASHINGTON POST


to do,” she said. But the joys have outweighed


the pains, she adds. This summer, she harvested


their first tomato of the season. And she described the pleasure of biting into the red fruit and realizing for the first timewhat a real, unadulterated tomato tast- ed like. “There’s nothing like that,” she


said, “in the city.” wanw@washpost.com


Staff researcher Wang Juan contributed to this report.


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