From the heart of Beijing to the edges of the global stage, you're at Roundtable.
I'm Niu Honglin.
Imagine being able to grow your own vegetables without owning farmland.
You don't have to wake up early to farm or even live the city during the week.
In China, that idea is becoming surprisingly common.
With shared garden plots and cloud farming platforms, people can manage crop through an app, harvest on weekends or even have fresh produce delivered directly to their doors.
For today's show, I'm joined by Fei-Fei and Yishan.
Now pull up a chair and join the conversation.
What if farming can work like a subscription service from shared vegetable plots in cities like Jinan that get snapped up overnight to adopt a chicken programs where you can manage on your phone?
Agriculture is being moved onto the cloud.
You don't need to own land, wake up at dawn, or even leave the city.
You can farm remotely, digitally, and on your own terms.
Would you choose this shareable and sometimes clickable way of farming?
I think it is a fair question to answer, but we need to know what we're asking, because we need to know what exactly is this on-air farming is about.
Well, on air, or in practical, like in the touching of the land.
They're both doable nowadays, because previously we said that Chinese people like to play Vegetable growing games in the virtual world.
But now you mentioned Jinan just now.
That's happening where you just mentioned, in Jinan, the capital city of East China's Shandong province, where there is this shared vegetable garden that's located right there in the Longgushan Park in Jinan.
So this shared garden idea covers over nine mu or roughly 6,000 square meter in total.
And it is divided into 204 plots.
There's 200 of which are 30 square meters each and four are bigger, like 50 square meters each.
And every plot is equipped with a water hose, a small fence and a a number sign indicating what's grown here or who rented quote unquote this piece of land.
And some plots have already been planted with vegetables with tender green shoots emerging already.
And some have small plastic greenhouse set up and others have just been carefully tilled.
And I guess at this point At least, I can tell from Honglin's very keen interest in planting that you already want to book one.
But the sad news is that you can't anymore because it's already been booked out.
As of late in March.
All 204 plows were fully rented out and handed over as soon as they were made available.
So how does it work when I rent a spot?
Do I go take care of my land every day or occasionally or I don't take care of it?
I just cherish and also enjoy the fruitful results, literally fruitful results of MyLand.
Well, it depends.
They offer like different levels of services there.
For example, you can choose to plant from sowing the soil and planting the seeds, and also harvesting yourself.
And you can also choose this semi-managed mode, meaning that you visit From time to time but there are someone else that can help you managing the farmlands on the plots on a daily basis, or you can turn to the full management, meaning cloud they're calling it the cloud mode.
That means, if you just are too busy to actually visit this plot, you can just allow the farm to handle the entire process, from seeding to harvesting, and you just receive the harvest, the produce, on your doorstep.
By the end of the season, well, depending on what you decide to, you know, farm there.
Yeah, and depending on which tiered mode planting mode that you're choosing, the price, the rental fee, is actually varying, based on that too.
It ranges from 899 yuan to 16,000 yuan.
That's roughly 100 yuan.
30 us dollars to 2,300 us dollars per year.
And, to be honest, I don't think that's a really cheap price.
But if you look at the years booking, when we look at that, It makes sense because you can have people looking after things for you.
And you also have the digital tools such as the more for more advanced options.
There's digital monitoring and 24 hours live stream.
So you can literally track your investment in some way.
And also you can get the harvest like freshly delivered to your door instead of going there to pick it up in person.
But of course, if you choose to pick it up in person or go with a family to spend the weekend there, that's also an option and yeah, 899 as the lowest price.
Sounds fair enough.
So I'm basically a spoiled farmer with a secret genie out there.
I can do the work if I want to as a way of playing because I don't know how to farm.
But apparently in these farmlands they even have experts teaching me how to farm, teaching me exactly what to do at that stage of that plant.
But if I'm busy, if I do not want to do it, the secret genie would take care of the land for me and by the end of the year,
I can, well, probably during autumn days, I can get my harvest.
Yeah.
And also they provide the equipment, the farming equipment thinking, you know, you don't have to buy the full gear.
You know, from the plow to you know the gloves.
They provide that.
Jinan, you were talking about, that's the place I'm moving to, to enjoy this.
Do I have to move to that province?
Of course not.
There are a number of very similar shared farmlands or shared gardens, you know, depending how you want to call it.
For example in Beijing.
Here we have like districts in Changping or Daxing, where is about one or two hours drive away from the central city area, that you can also have this shared farming experiences.
And also down south in, for example, in provinces like Fujian.
They also offer shared garden programs in cities like Zhangzhou and Fuzhou, where just families just love this shared farming programs.
And also in Sichuan.
They also offer a smart farm in Qionglai, where you can even track your crop through 24-hour live streams.
I wonder what they plant there.
Chili peppers?
I think mostly vegetables.
I don't think you can plant.
You will be planting trees because you need to wait for several years to harvest.
And actually, this kind of model has taken root here in China ever since 2009.
So it has developed into the stage to today that is very comprehensive.
It provides different types of produce.
It provides different types of services.
Back in 2009 I think it was Initially because a lot of city dwellers would like to get in touch with nature a bit more often and also get their hands dirty literally into the soil, to have that again connection with nature.
And that was the initial idea, but it has soon developed to today's stage where, like Fei-Fei said, you can whichever model you choose.
There are people supporting that possibility, making sure you can enjoy as much as you want and also as less as you want, work as less as you want.
But now it's already becoming this kind of industry that is providing different layers and different types of services and experiences.
Yeah.
And speaking of when it comes back to less than two decades ago, I think a lot of the design here.
Yeah, you mentioned tourism and exploring the countryside, but there's also this reconnecting with people's relationship, with how lands are being used.
Quickly back to the Jinan example.
Back in, I think, a few years ago, it was due to regional development project and other reasons that this piece of land that's nowadays shared vegetable farm or garden has been left idle for over 10 years.
They say with a dirt, with like a dirty and messy environment, left there unattended.
And then in 2024, it's driven by the local officials where the land was planned for a full land circulation via third party operation, in order to explore a new model integrating agriculture and with commercial operations.
So after it was taken over Sometime last year, a part of it was developed into what we see today like it's a rentable place for people to enjoy.
And there are other pieces or parts of that land that's used, based on its own quality and conditions, for other purposes and under other classifications too.
So it's really an exploration locally, and we see that it's happening all over the country too, that now people are actively seeking out solutions to, to reconnect and reimagine people's relationship with lands.
And also it's been having these spillover effects when it comes to these kind of farmlands.
It's normally located a little further away from the city's central areas.
And you know, if you decide to drive one or two hours to that area, you know checking on your plots, your vegetable plots, and then you probably decide to dine in a nearby place.
And that is helping to encourage a lot of restaurants, local restaurants or convenience markets or even, you know, BB homestays in villages as well.
So it's helping to sort of revitalizing that neighboring area, neighboring communities at the same time.
And also in recent years, I've also seen study tours being organized to visit this kind of farms.
And so, even though, as somebody who is not renting a plot in this kind of farm, I can still send my kids, or even organized as a family groups, to visit these farms, get my hands dirty, learn and touch about where our food is coming from.
Yeah, and you spoke of being the homestays.
I remember going on a lot of these tours.
In Chinese, we call them nong jia le.
And the best part is they serve fresh stir-fried, they call it the rural chicken eggs.
That's like the best egg I've ever tasted, especially stir-fried, you know, with their local oil and the way they cook in that huge giant iron pot.
It's just amazing magical yeah, and we see some of the gardens can be volunteer run spaces where the harvest is donated to empty nesters, to the kind of families that are in rural area where their kids are working in the cities.
So the relatively um elder generation in the um, in the villages, are being taken care of by local people or sometimes be local government, village governments.
So these are more like the side effect of the fact that some, many of these um lands, many of these farmers um farmlands, are shareable and they started to develop into different sub theme category of this industry.
But back to the fact that this is possible and this is popular among city dwellers.
There must be many factors allowing this industry to take off ever since 2009 to today, and I think it has increased by over 40.
So how come this is becoming a trend here in China, to be a weekend farmer, or a cloud farmer, so to speak?
Well, I think first of all, just for city dwellers, we just want to get close to nature.
It's within even the human nature itself that you want to touch the soil, even though sometimes it's considered dirty.
But that's the point of this kind of work.
And also when it comes to family, when it comes to education to children.
It is also very important for them to get close to nature.
We talked about this a number of times on Roundtable, but I think a more important thing here in China is also about the source of food.
Like most of these farms are organic farming, following more organic farming methods and you are you can sort of get the sense of tracking the process of how your vegetables or your fruits are being run and being harvested and how you know when it comes to the watering of this plant, when it comes to even if you decide to use fertilizers or what kind of fertilizers will be used.
You sort of have this sense of security and feeling that your food is perfectly safe and organic and healthy.
And I think that's one of the primary reasons for a lot of city dwellers that decide to pay I don't know 2000 a year for this kind of vegetable harvest.
Yeah, and there's that side, the health and the enjoyment, but also there is the huge sense of accomplishments, especially if you are there yourself and planting, plowing and harvesting.
Because we value nowadays, especially among younger generations, the experience economy.
It's something really big.
It's something that's going on.
And really the value of the land has, we're really standing in front of that piece of a plot.
It has shifted from just Producing food or growing vegetable to supplying this whole holistic experience and carrying the emotion in the meantime, like you feel, like you are doing something really down to earth, like literally, and you're harvesting from it afterwards and it's your own work.
Speaking of the experiences, I do have this story about a chicken farm in Shijiazhuang that's following a very similar cloud farming business model, so to speak, is that you can adopt quote unquote, adopt a chicken from that farm.
And of course you need to pay a fee for raising this farm and you get a sort of set numbers of eggs every month.
And the interesting detail in this story is that there is a mini app, there is a program on your mobile phone that you can check on these chickens every day 24-7, as well.
And by paying a fee of 10 yuan, you can choose to water or feed this chicken or to water the plants.
And after you made that payment of 10 kuai, the workers on that farm will go directly to conduct this task of feeding the chicken or watering the plants.
It feels like having a game, but it's happening in real life.
The biggest challenge for me would be I would not recognize my chicken.
So I won't know whether or not the staff is feeding my chicken or some other chicken, some friends of my chicken.
Do you name them?
Like, this is my chicken.
Her name is Lily.
No, I can't.
I can't name them.
If I name them and I eat their eggs, it's just weird.
Well, but in practice, for example in this chicken farm in Shijiazhuang, when you are quote unquote a dapp, a chicken in that farm, it doesn't mean you adopt one particular chicken this chicken is yours.
And also it doesn't mean they're promising 30 eggs every month delivered to your door.
From one chicken, from my chicken.
It doesn't mean this chicken must produce 30 eggs every month.
That sounds healthier.
Because that's not how chickens...
So the notion is more about having an online game allowing you to click and having someone go to a chicken and water them and feed them not necessarily yours.
And back to farming, because I have friends enjoying these kind of farming experience quite so much, and ask them And they said the first try was merely something they had.
You know, try out, have fun, pass time.
But later they feel addicted.
And we did some research and realized that it is possible.
One theory is that it's not that you that really enjoys it.
It's you. the kind of microorganisms in you that enjoys it.
They suggest that there is a gut-brain axis that have found that certain beneficial microorganisms in soil can stimulate the production of serotonin and it is a kind of a link to emotional well-being.
And also it's kind of like.
Some experts also suggest that exposure to these microbes may produce effects similar to mild antidepressants.
So it really makes you feel better.
It's like the tiny, tiny creatures in your body living with you is making you feel better.
So gardening often involves direct contact with soil and it is important speculated that the sense of calm and happiness is not only a feeling of a psychological feeling.
It's the real feeling resulted from the chemical generated in your body because of the touch of soil.
I think I watched a video sometime before that science proves that if you walk barefooted on either grass or a piece of soil like actual soil, not like a well paved road then it's actually going to enhance your happiness, depending on how long you do this practice.
Every day.
That's the microbes in your body encouraging you to do that.
I think there are also some other activities like hugging a tree for a period of time.
Maybe it's falling, like a similar biology theory.
I have to ask do you think it's well from that level, the biological level?
Of course, humans are the same.
We all enjoy these kind of experiences.
But do you feel like Chinese people really really like farming, like growing things?
Well like culturally, I do believe there is this urge.
I'm not really sure where this urge is from, maybe from our ancestors?
I'm not really sure.
But I do check about this shared farming models.
They do exist in other countries as well, like in Europe.
They have shared gardens in communities and also maybe in a village nearby of that city areas.
But they grew flowers.
And my first reaction to seeing that story, seeing the photo of the shared garden growing flowers, would be that's a waste of land.
I know, right?
It's beautiful.
It's decorating the world.
I was in the UK and you know they're older style Victorian people style of traditional buildings.
They all have their little backyard and some grow potatoes thumbs up for that and most of the household they fence it all up and have their own little garden at the backyard.
And I think it's a culture thing, because China here we are a massive agricultural country and we value the fact that our soils, our lands, are rich and rich enough to produce and feed people.
So that really comes down from thousands of years of switching of dynasties, and whichever dynasty or whichever time or like a rain is happening in China, the priority always seems to be how to feed people and how we can keep the people away from starvation.
And when we think about that, it's always like how the ruler is thinking about developing agriculture as a top priority of the country's survival.
In a lot of the cases,
So yeah, I don't know if that answers the question, but I think it's an inheritance of culture.
We're using that land to feed people instead of growing flower, but of course we're having a lot of green land just for flowers and wetlands and and bodies of waters.
So It's just that I feel like when Chinese people rent a place or buy a house, sometimes for some people the first thing they do would be figuring out whether or not there is a small piece of land in front of their house or in the backyard that they can grow vegetables with.
And when they play games they try to figure out whether or not in this game there is a growing or farming mode that they can develop.
And we even have a subgenre.
For those of you who like Chinese games, internet-based kind of novel, the very popular and also very, in a way, imaginative and imagine different types of worlds kind of novel.
One specific genre is the farming genre.
That is you as the main character.
You find a strange way to farm and to harvest and to expand your farmland.
And that's the entire plot of the story.
And a lot of people enjoy that.
So my feeling is that Chinese people do really, really prefer farming in a way, compared to other cultures.
And maybe it's because China is an agriculture-based country for a really long time.
Maybe it's because oh for those of you who think oh, Chinese people like to study we have a lot of good students, you know, according to or within the school of Confucianism.
We believe farming and studying would be at the same level of importance for a family.
So if a family is, the family should be with a lot of farmers and with a lot of readers of a lot of scholars.
So that is considered a good family.
And even for families.
Taoism.
In Taoism, we believe the ideal family or ideal society would be the kind of small self-sufficient, little communities living style.
So, no matter which school of thoughts, farming has always had this huge significance which, in my opinion, contributes to the fact that even we are living in a gradually modernized and gradually urbanized kind of society, we still find a way to go back to nature, to go back to the soil.
And that being said, we know this has a lot of perks.
It allows city mouses to go back to the countryside to have a better understanding about nature and also it definitely would provide more opportunities, more possibilities for those living in countrysides to find a different way of living, different way to operate what they have.
All that is positive.
But if we want this to continue to grow, any challenges we're looking at that we need to nip in the bud, we need to solve or need our attention.
Well, first of all, as there are more and more people noticing that developing a shared little vegetable farm is doable and it's relatively affordable to operate, it all starts to look more or less the same a while later.
You know, the rent a plot kind of model is really easy to replicate in many projects.
They actually nowadays, they suffer from a lack of unique cultural identity or specialized services.
Do you think they have to be unique?
I mean, they're serving the need of a really huge market.
As long as they're doing a good job, they can find their customers.
Yeah, but in the meantime, what do their customers really need is also something to consider in terms of operation.
For example, do we have something local?
The reason why I suggested why chili pepper might be a good idea when it comes to southwest China's Trump province, when Fei-Fei talked about How they're doing their renting farm or renting garden, is because yeah, you've got to have something that really hooks up the local customer group to make them come back.
Because yeah, now it comes to.
Another disadvantage is that planting, sowing and harvesting it's all seasonal.
It's not like we do this all year round.
Sort of all year round, but it's one business for one group of customers for that year.
And that's it.
So how do you make sure that this is sustainable?
And how do you make sure that this operation doesn't end next year? is all worth considering.
Yeah, and also I think the locality of this kind of farmlands are also very important for southern areas.
They may be able to plant some sort of vegetables or fruits all year round.
But for those in the northern area, that is just not possible to plant anything in wintertime.
Who will be there to manage this land when the city dwellers won't be coming here managing the soil themselves?
Who will be in charge of that?
And how to make sure the nutrients in the soil are well managed so that sort of over plantation or over farming won't harm the health of the soil itself.
Right.
And also when it comes to the use of land, and I think it's also a global concern, a global challenge as well, is what kind of land can be used, can be utilized as a farmland.
How do you make sure the regulation is there and how do you make sure the supervision is in place?
To make sure, first of all, the land you're using is legally a farmland.
And also you're not taking up other land under the legal term that should be used, for example, for housing or for infrastructure.
Or for real farming instead of just a farmland for fun.
Yeah, so it's just something.
Probably, from a consumer's point of view, you also need to check before you make that payment and make that decision as well.
Yes.
So, as an entrepreneur, make sure you are doing the right thing by checking all the boxes before opening up something like this, especially finding your own niche, market and target audience.
And as an investor, If someone say we have a share farming land idea and by investing 10000 yuan after 200 days I can give you a return rate of 6000 yuan.
That is a Ponzi scheme alert.
That is not what's going to happen.
That's not how agriculture is run.
And we're not encouraging you to invest in that program.
So even we say, yes, this is very promising.
People are enjoying this.
Still, when you make a decision to start a business in this area or to invest in any programs like this, Make sure you do enough research.
But still, after the show, I will find a spot to rent.
Yeah, I'm investing in a hen named Lily.
Oh, don't eat Lily's egg.
