China is going for organic food product.
A farm called Fruit Garden, Fragrant Pig an organic farm about 15 miles south of the city of Chengdu, and in China’s southern part of Sichuan province. Lou Yu is a 37 year old and owner of Fruit Garden, Fragrant Pig farm, he used to be a stockbroker earning several thousand U.S. dollars a month. When he heard about organic farming from Taiwanese friends and was intrigued by reading some books about organic farming. He spent six months driving around China, looking at conventional farms.
Luo is running his own organic farm with fruit trees, vegetables and pigs. In his farm you see plastic bottles hanging of peach and plum trees, they each have hole cut out and filled with sugar water to attract and trap bugs and insect. He expects to lose one third of his crops to bugs and another third to birds, leaving him just one third for him to sell Luo said. Luo also said that “Those bugs have the right to stay here. They are part of the food chain. If we kill them, then there will be no birds of the farm.” “Eventually, there will be only human beings on the planet and it will be a silent spring.”

Luo’s parents were surprised when he told them that he was leaving the job and going “back to the land” his parents said he was “crazy” and “going back to ancient time,” but Luo sees it differently. The economics of organic food in China don’t work in Luo Yu’s favor, there is the lower yield and in the market, organic food costs two to three times more than a conventional food which is hard to sell. Luo has about 50 buyers for his weekly market baskets. Luo used to make most of his money serving organic lunches to visitors. After the May earthquake his business plummeted and same with the restaurant who buys organic food from him. He sells about 10 percent of what he used to sell to them and even before the earthquake. Luo Yu managed to stay afloat with the help of some local investors. Luo is still committed to bring more farmers into organic and promoting organic food to the public.

Bookemark: