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How to bring the country to the city and city to the country
By Wang Yong |
March 11, 2013, Monday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
LAST Monday I brought my colleague at work a small bag of fresh veggies I had bought on Sunday from the farm near my home in suburban Shanghai.
He cooked the veggies and found them exceptionally delicious. His wife and daughter loved them and two vegetable dishes were devoured.
No wonder. Veggies freshly picked from the soil are rare in most downtown food markets in Shanghai. There you'll find most greens sprayed with water to look fresh. The small bag of Chinese cabbages I brought to my colleague cost only 2 yuan (32 US cents), but they were dry and sweet like no watered counterparts could possibly be.
Dress well, eat poorly
Local fresh vegetables are a real luxury these days, as urbanization has driven farmland out of the view and reach of most urban dwellers. If you look at what young white collars wear and eat every day, you'll probably find that many of them dress well but eat poorly.
LV bags and Burberry scarves are common accessories, but seldom do these people eat "safe" food, since they are often exposed to dishes made with swill oil or vegetables transported to the city from afar and tainted with chemical pesticides and fertilizer.
I am fortunate to live near vast farm fields that belong to Fengbang Village and Shenjingtang Village in Zhaoxiang Town, Qingpu District, western Shanghai.
But there's a risk to my new-found "fortune" of fresh food. Construction on a new subway line may begin late this year and the section passing Zhaoxiang Town is designed to run above ground. While that will definitely improve our transportation, the elevated rail may well eat into nearby farmland.
I wonder whether I will still be able to buy fresh vegetables - naturally raised chicken and ducks for that matter - at my doorstep in three years' time, when the subway line is expected to be completed.
Uncle Shi, the 70-year-old farmer who owns the small plot where I buy my fresh vegetables, told me last week that he may lose his home and land to make way for the subway. But he expected to be relocated, since farming cannot make him rich, while compensation for his home and land can.
Uncle Shi loves working in the fields. "I am poor, but I have fresh air and fresh food," he told me two weeks ago. But last week he entertained the idea of being relocated and compensated once and for all, even if it means he will leave the land forever.
After all, the one and a half mu (0.1 hectares) of farmland he owns brings his family a mere 20,000 yuan (US$3,226) in annual income. In most seasons he uses human fertilizer only, which guarantees safer food than chemical fertilizer, although the latter helps crops grow faster.
As I chatted with him last week, I saw another small piece of land adjacent to Shi's. It was uncultivated. Uncle Shi and a garbage collector near that plot told me the owner had abandoned farming and found a city job. The wasted land will probably be used for consruction.
It's not in the blood of all peasants to rebel against the land. In many cases of urbanization across China, farmers migrate to cities not because they love city life - expensive, noisy and polluted - but because working the land alone cannot feed a family.
Shanghai point the way to a new path of economic growth that stops the one-way hemorrhage of peasants. Take Uncle Shi and his likes for example.
When the new subway line is completed, possibly by the end of 2016, it will take at most 15 minutes to travel from the Hongqiao Airport Station to Zhaoxiang Station, which means much easier access of urban dwellers to the farmland of farmers like Shi.
Win-win growth model
It could be a win-win growth model: Urbanites get more fresh food more easily and peasants get more income more quickly.
You don't have to shovel peasants off the land to enrich them. Getting more people from the city to the farmland will be in the best interests of farmers long separated from urban customers.
Imagine traveling on an elevated rail flanked by rolling fields of grass and crops. Few surface routes can offer such a view. What meets the eye instead are high-rises after high-rises, planted between factories and even next to trash dumps.
If Shanghai finally builds that subway line (with above-ground sections) flanked by vast stretches of farmland, we will all have a better city, better life that comes from fresh food, fresh air and fresh mood.
He cooked the veggies and found them exceptionally delicious. His wife and daughter loved them and two vegetable dishes were devoured.
No wonder. Veggies freshly picked from the soil are rare in most downtown food markets in Shanghai. There you'll find most greens sprayed with water to look fresh. The small bag of Chinese cabbages I brought to my colleague cost only 2 yuan (32 US cents), but they were dry and sweet like no watered counterparts could possibly be.
Dress well, eat poorly
Local fresh vegetables are a real luxury these days, as urbanization has driven farmland out of the view and reach of most urban dwellers. If you look at what young white collars wear and eat every day, you'll probably find that many of them dress well but eat poorly.
LV bags and Burberry scarves are common accessories, but seldom do these people eat "safe" food, since they are often exposed to dishes made with swill oil or vegetables transported to the city from afar and tainted with chemical pesticides and fertilizer.
I am fortunate to live near vast farm fields that belong to Fengbang Village and Shenjingtang Village in Zhaoxiang Town, Qingpu District, western Shanghai.
But there's a risk to my new-found "fortune" of fresh food. Construction on a new subway line may begin late this year and the section passing Zhaoxiang Town is designed to run above ground. While that will definitely improve our transportation, the elevated rail may well eat into nearby farmland.
I wonder whether I will still be able to buy fresh vegetables - naturally raised chicken and ducks for that matter - at my doorstep in three years' time, when the subway line is expected to be completed.
Uncle Shi, the 70-year-old farmer who owns the small plot where I buy my fresh vegetables, told me last week that he may lose his home and land to make way for the subway. But he expected to be relocated, since farming cannot make him rich, while compensation for his home and land can.
Uncle Shi loves working in the fields. "I am poor, but I have fresh air and fresh food," he told me two weeks ago. But last week he entertained the idea of being relocated and compensated once and for all, even if it means he will leave the land forever.
After all, the one and a half mu (0.1 hectares) of farmland he owns brings his family a mere 20,000 yuan (US$3,226) in annual income. In most seasons he uses human fertilizer only, which guarantees safer food than chemical fertilizer, although the latter helps crops grow faster.
As I chatted with him last week, I saw another small piece of land adjacent to Shi's. It was uncultivated. Uncle Shi and a garbage collector near that plot told me the owner had abandoned farming and found a city job. The wasted land will probably be used for consruction.
It's not in the blood of all peasants to rebel against the land. In many cases of urbanization across China, farmers migrate to cities not because they love city life - expensive, noisy and polluted - but because working the land alone cannot feed a family.
Shanghai point the way to a new path of economic growth that stops the one-way hemorrhage of peasants. Take Uncle Shi and his likes for example.
When the new subway line is completed, possibly by the end of 2016, it will take at most 15 minutes to travel from the Hongqiao Airport Station to Zhaoxiang Station, which means much easier access of urban dwellers to the farmland of farmers like Shi.
Win-win growth model
It could be a win-win growth model: Urbanites get more fresh food more easily and peasants get more income more quickly.
You don't have to shovel peasants off the land to enrich them. Getting more people from the city to the farmland will be in the best interests of farmers long separated from urban customers.
Imagine traveling on an elevated rail flanked by rolling fields of grass and crops. Few surface routes can offer such a view. What meets the eye instead are high-rises after high-rises, planted between factories and even next to trash dumps.
If Shanghai finally builds that subway line (with above-ground sections) flanked by vast stretches of farmland, we will all have a better city, better life that comes from fresh food, fresh air and fresh mood.
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