Whether organic agriculture can only be a "personal way of life"

In 2000, an Jinlei, a farmer from Dongzilong Village, Matun Town, Zaoqiang County, Hebei Province, contracted 40 mu of land in the village and began to practice his organic cultivation of "no pesticides, no chemical fertilizers, no herbicides", trying to pick up the traditional farming methods. An Jinlei uses fertilizer bags to collect poultry and livestock manure everywhere, applies poultry and livestock manure to more than 40 mu of land, and adopts intercropping of cotton, soybean and sesame. Over the past ten years, there has not been a single serious pest on his farmland. In early 2013, an Jinlei was also named "person of the year moved Hebei in 2012" and became the star of "organic agriculture experiment".

In 2005, a similar "organic agriculture experiment" began quietly in Liufang Village, Liping County, Guizhou Province. Farmer Wu Shixian took the lead in guiding the villagers to return to the traditional farming methods of the Dong nationality. They used 30 mu of paddy fields as an experiment-no longer planting hybrid rice, but planting traditional rice seeds retained by themselves or retained by the local agricultural science, and no longer using pesticides and chemical fertilizers. and partially restored the Dong "rice, fish and duck" farming tradition. In the second year, 700 mu of paddy fields belonging to 164 households in the village began to be planted organically. Because the agricultural products produced are green and environmentally friendly, they once attracted procurement delegations from Hong Kong, Chengdu, Guiyang and other big cities.

However, there seems to be a contradiction between the ecological pursuit of organic agriculture and the efficient increase of income. In the sound of praise, the organic agriculture experiment in Liufang village has little economic benefits, coupled with the outflow of rural labor, fewer and fewer people in the village adhere to organic agriculture. An Jinlei's experiment is more regarded as a personal way of life and is evaluated as a "pastoral philosopher".

More importantly, this attempt to build a food safety firewall with traditional farming methods seems to be an isolated case, and it is difficult to promote it in China, which has a large population and little land. "under the limited area of arable land, if modern science and technology are completely excluded, according to the mode of production of organic agriculture, it will not be possible to support China's 1.36 billion people." Ye Xingqing, director of the Rural Economic Research Department of the Development Research Center of the State Council, said at the forum on "Ecological Agriculture and Food Safety" on July 11.