China’s new farmers reap online harvest
Print Edition
FENG Xiaoyan calls herself a new farmer despite being 53 years old.
“I’m not young, but I have Internet thinking like many young people,” Feng said at the 2016 China Yangling Agricultural Hi-Tech Fair in Xianyang, a city 70 kilometers west of Xi’an, capital of northwest China’s Shaanxi Province.
She has a contract to plant organic potatoes in her hometown, and established her “Sister Potato” brand in 2009.
With China’s food safety in question due to the overuse of pesticides, fertilizers and chemical additives, Feng decided to plant eco-friendly potatoes to international standards.
She says new farmers are those who have knowledge, capital and marketing experience, as well as land.
Feng was a teacher for eight years in her hometown of Zizhou County in the city of Yulin before she worked as a government official in Tongchuan from 1990 to 1994.
Feng said the high quality of the potatoes she grows is the main reason for her success. From the beginning, she brought in the best varieties and employed experts from home and abroad to ensure the most sophisticated planting techniques.
Feng also takes advantage of social media to promote her products, though she had resisted at first.
“I did not realize microblogs could bring so many fans and orders within just two weeks,” she said. “Using microblogs as a free advertising platform helps us attract more customers.”
For new farmers, it is vital to establish their own brands and win customers’ trust, Feng said.
China has roughly 2 million new farmers who run businesses on popular online platforms such as Taobao, Weibo and WeChat, according to a Ministry of Agriculture report.
Compared with traditional farmers, they are generally well-educated. Some have even been educated overseas.
Wang Xiaotie, a graduate from China’s Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University, is one such new farmer.
In 2012, he gave up his job as general manager of a vegetable export company in Beijing and went back to Yangling, a testing ground for new agricultural technology.
“Organic agriculture and circular agriculture are not new terms, but are inherited from the wisdom of our ancestors. We only have to observe the laws of nature to plant high-quality fruit,” Wang said.
He grows organic kiwi fruit.
“We use organic fertilizer — cow dung and sheep manure — from Inner Mongolia in our orchard,” Wang said.
Last month, his fruit won organic certification from the United States, the European Union, Japan and China.
Wang said he was aware that customers were concerned about food safety. “It is our hope to provide safe agricultural produce for consumers,” he said.
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