Fresh, Delicious and Safe

Chemical-free produce helps an organic food fair in Beijing win over consumers By Yuan Yuan

Fresh, Delicious and Safe

Chemical-free produce helps an organic food fair in Beijing win over consumers By Yuan Yuan

Groups of people carrying shopping bags gathered near the east gate of Chaoyang Park in downtown Beijing’s Chaoyang District on February 11, a chilly winter Saturday morning, and waited for a fair to open its doors.

At 10 a.m., they entered the premises, an enormous warehouse-like space, which was so dark that vendors whose stalls were located away from the entrance had to use flashlights to illuminate their goods.

But the cold and darkness didn’t dent costumers’ enthusiasm. Just two hours after opening the goods available were almost sold out.

Such was the demand for the produce sold at the Organic Farmers’ Fair (OFF), which opens every Saturday morning. The fair has no fixed location and all the vendors present are individual organic food producers from Beijing’s suburbs who promise that their produce is free of chemical additives, fertilizers and pesticides.

Usually about 20 vendors attend the fair and they sell an enormous range of produce: vegetables, fruits, meat, home-made bread, cheese, soap, honey, jam, dairy products, tofu and even rice wine. None of the producers involved own large-scale farms so only relatively small quantities are available at the fair each week.

New life

Chen Yanhong is a villager in Jugou Village in north Beijing’s Shunyi District. Her husband works in a factory near the village and Chen looks after her children and father-in-law at home. They have a courtyard with 200 square meters of land. In 2006, Chen began planting vegetables and raising chickens in the courtyard.

“I used to plant the vegetables just for my own family and I don’t know that much about professional farming,” Chen said. “I don’t use fertilizer at all and feed the chickens corn and vegetable leaves.”

Occasionally, urban residents who went fishing in the suburbs and passed Chen’s house would stop and purchase vegetables and eggs. Gradually as more and more people began asking for her produce, Chen enlarged the courtyard and increased her flock of chickens to 50.

With the help of a nephew, Chen began attending the OFF last year. Each time she attends the fair, Chen is able to bring back more than 1,000 yuan ($158).

“I know urban residents attach great importance to food safety and was sure the vegetables I grow would be very popular. But I didn’t have a channel to sell my produce until I started attending the Organic Farmers’Fair,” she said.

Li Yan, Director of Phoenix Community, another fair participant, echoed Chen’s sentiments about the difficulty of setting up marketing channels that connect individual organic farmers to consumers.

“In order to really make a field appropriate for organic farming, farmers need to stop planting anything in the field for four years, this is very costly and many people don’t understand this,” Li said.

According to Li, a large number of farmers really want to do organic farming, but it requires a large investment and a lot of effort.“It is crucial that farmers have a means of selling organic produce and this fair is a wonderful opportunity for us,” she added.

Growing popularity

Initiated by Emi Uemura, a Japanese artist, the OFF first started in September 2010. But at the very beginning, it was only held once every two months.

Uemura had been working on community-supported agriculture (CSA) projects in China for almost a year before she started this fair. The CSA’s operating model allows farmers and consumers to share the risks and benefits of food production. Consumers pay for the anticipated harvest up-front, and they receive weekly shares of vegetables, fruit and other farm produce after harvesting begins.

The Little Donkey Farm, a CSA farm in west Beijing, is one of a handful of farms Uemura has been working with in China. The farm went into operation in 2009 and has been very influential in popularizing the CSA model amongst Beijing’s organic community.

“In big cities like Beijing, about 60-70 percent of the vegetables on sale travel huge distances from other provinces—this is very bad for the environment,” said Shi Yan, founder of the Little Donkey Farm. “So we are encouraging people to eat local.”

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Shi encourages consumers to first visit her producers face to face. Customers were even allowed to cook food on site using the ingredients provided by vendors.

“Most customers at the first two fairs were foreigners and we only held fairs once every two months,” said Shi.

From the third fair onward more and more Chinese consumers began attending, including some celebrities such as Hong Huang, a famous publisher. With more than 4 million followers on twitter-like micro-blogging service Weibo, Hong’s recommendation played an important role in boosting the fair’s recognition.

Soon the fair had more than 20,000 followers on Weibo. So far, all vendors attending the fair have opened their own micro-blogs, showing pictures of their production process and answering questions.

Wang Xiaorao is a regular at the fair. “I learned about it online,”Wang said. “One time I found it opened near my apartment so I went there and bought some vegetables.”

Wang then made a salad with the vegetables and was amazed by the flavor.“The cucumber was so fresh and delicious. I haven’t tasted such delicious cucumber since my childhood,” said Wang, who now visits the fair almost every weekend.

Bernd Koser and his wife, both from Germany, spend two months each year in China, and during those two months they are regulars at this fair.

The Kosers were so impressed with the quality of produce at the fair that before their return to Germany in 2011 they purchased some tomato seeds from China to plant in their garden at home.

“Farmers’ fairs are a centuries-old tradition in China, where people can buy food and farm, to see the facilities and crops and to chat with local farmers about how it works.

According to Shi, her farm sets strict rules for its farmers. “They must obey the principles of organic farming, including not using any synthetic fertilizer or pesticides,” Shi said.“Livestock should be fed using the farm’s own grass and vegetables and not commercially produced animal feed.”

In September 2010, with a growing number of urban residents joining the Little Donkey Farm, Uemura and Shi initiated the OFF as a platform for more customers to communicate with individual organic food vegetables and also meet people and make friends,” said Chang Tianle, one of the OFF organizers.

The fair is currently run in a non-profit mode with a group of volunteers coming every week to help. “Some consumers, after tasting the food here, like this fair so much that they become volunteers,” Chang said.

Credibility concerns

Some people, though, think the prices charged in the OFF are excessive. For example, the tofu made by the Phoenix Community sells for 20 yuan ($3.17) per kg at the fair. For the same weight of tofu, the price in a regular supermarket is about 3 yuan ($0.48).

“We use the most traditional method of making tofu,” said Li, who carries a picture of the stone mill they use to grind the beans. “That’s why it’s so expensive.”

However, Sun Dewei, Director of Feicuiwan Farmland in Beijing, doubted this explanation. Sun, who is known online as Iron Bird, revealed that he once went to the Phoenix Community to learn how to make traditional tofu but found out that the farm didn’t actually use a stone mill.

Worse still, some customers complained that sometimes the tofu for sale at the fair had already gone sour.

Sun refused to participate in the fair because of these scandals. “They have no right to use the word organic in the name of this fair,” said Sun, who has studied organic farming techniques for a long time. “I spoke to vendors at the fair, and almost nobody had an idea of what organic food really is. None of the vendors have received organic certification so far.”

Actually, three farmers were found to be selling fake organic eggs at the fair last year.

“The regulations for organic certification in China currently only apply to larger farms. Although we cannot get officially certified, we encourage consumers to visit the farm and certify us themselves. They will see what we are doing, which makes for a more participatory guarantee system,” Chang said.

But Sun warned that supervision mostly based on mutual trust between consumers and organic food producers doesn’t always work.

Despite these disputes, the OFF continues to receive more visitors.

“I only believe in my tongue,” said a consumer surnamed Wu. “I don’t mind whether it is exactly organic or not, it is delicious as far as I’ve tasted. I hope we can have more fairs like this in Beijing.”