An Overview Of Our Solution
Modern farming degenerates environment and is a big pollution source. Permaculture simulates patterns observed in nature ecosystem. No chemical is used in permaculture. It uses recycled resources and restores the vitality of environment and ecosystem. Biodiversity is one of the cornerstone of permaculture. Time Farm is a permaculture farm which has practiced for four years. Our practice proved permaculture is feasible both in environment and economy. There are more than one hundred plants could be found at Time Farm. Lots of worms, spiders and other insects live at the farm. Bird flocks fly in the trees. Biodiversity has been enhanced in these years. And all these doesn’t come at the cost of food security. Though yield is lower than normal farming, its yield is enough to feed local community. And produces usually taste better than normal farming.
Who is this solution impacting?
Community Type
Rural
Additional Information
- Population Impacted:
- Continent: Asia
General Information
Organization type
Other
Ecosystem (select all that apply)
Freshwater
Oceans/Coasts
Population impacted
1,000 people
Challenge
Size of agricultural area
3.4 ha
Production quantity
4,900kg (1/5 of total land used at this moment)
People employed
2
Solution
Describe your solution
Before I started my own farm, I studied several options, including permaculture, organic farming and nature farming. And chose permaculture as my solution. Permaculture simulates patterns observed in nature ecosystem. It works with, rather than against nature. It looks at plants and animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single product system. Permaculture doesn’t use any pesticide. It depends on balanced ecosystem and interactions between bacteria, insects, plants and animals to realize pest management.
Biodiversity is one of the cornerstones of permaculture farming, which is the base for pest management. Biodiversity can prevent pests from breaking out and put them under control. Actually pests are legal components of biodiversity. If pests break out, it is not their fault, it is the environment change that created the circumstance that helped them expand out of control.
Another part of the solution is customer education. Without customer support, we can get nowhere in improving the environment. We need to get us understood and supported by local community.
Implementation
Describe your implementation
Time Farm was started in 2012. We designed the farm with permaculture principles. A ditch was dug to collect rain water and for irrigation. A constructed wetland was built to help purify water. Many varieties of trees, herbs and plants were planted to improve biodiversity. We also left enough space for wild species. Chicken manure, canola meal, recycled vegetable scraps and weed clipping were used to make compost or directly spread on the soil.
In the first two years, the yields were disappointing. But then it started to improve, and right now many of yields reached acceptable level and some of them are quite good. And financial status is close to break even. Now we can provide healthy produces to consumers and grow these produces in a sustainable method. Soil is resuming its vitality and biodiversity is improving.
This solution works in the circumstance where normal farming practice degenerates the ecosystem and pollutes the environment, while people start to realize the damage and unsustainability of this practice and are willing to pay for the cost of more sustainable farming.
To make permaculture farming succeed, technical solutions and customer acceptance are two key factors. We tried many different approaches to grow rice and vegetables. We looked for promising solutions from traditional farming practices, permaculture experience from other countries and modern technology, tried them in the field and kept those can work in our circumstance.
Customer support is the most important factor to succeed. Few people knew permaculture several years ago in China. To win the support from local community, we reached local community through different channels including website, face-to-face introduction and farm activities, etc,.. Step by step, year by year, more and more consumers started to realize the value of our work and supported us.
External connections
Because permaculture and sustainability was not a hot topic several years ago in China, I developed the solution and implemented it by myself. After some volunteers came to join me later, the volunteers gave me plenty of support in implementation.
Results
What is the environmental or ecological challenge you are targeting with your solution?
Factory farm is a normal practice in agriculture right now in China, which depends on monoculture to take advantage of big scale and standardization. This farming method relies on depleting resources, makes pollution in water, soil and air, reduces biodiversity in surrounding ecosystem and usually leads to unhealthy, pesticide contaminated produces.
So our solution is to:
1.Provide healthy produces to community
2.Make the whole process of farming sustainable, which includes environment and economy
Describe the context in which you are operating
The current agriculture in China is heavily relying on chemical. The average chemical fertilizer usage in China is twice the world average. The average pesticide usage in China is triple the world average. Green Peace had been monitoring pesticide residue in vegetables in China market for several years. Most of the samples checked were pesticide contaminated. For example, in 2011 pesticide residue were detected in 30 samples out of 35 totally checked.
Most people just complained about the factories and farms that made pollution. Few of them can recognize that it is consumers’ behavior and life style that caused the pollution. When they shop in the market, they don’t care if the process behind those goods is environment friendly or not. It is their choices in the market that encourages farms and factories pay less attention to environment sustainability.
How did you impact natural resource use and greenhouse gas emissions?
Right now, there are more than one hundred different plants can be found in that farm, including planted by us and coming themselves. From Aprils to November, different flowers blossom at the farm, which provide enough food for beneficial insects and a beautiful landscape for us.
Plenty of worms, spiders and frogs could be seen in the farm. Dragonflies and lacewings fly in the field. Birds flock makes a lot of noise in the trees. There are even a few pheasants and rabbits hidden in the farm. Some aquatic birds swim in the pond. Egrets arrive in spring after flying a long distance from the south and stay here until winter comes.
After several-year working, biodiversity in the farm has been improved much better than before.
Language(s)
Mandarin dialect (Xuzhou)
Water
Because no chemical used in our farm, water in nearby pond will turn better with its own self clean mechanism.
Food Security/Nutrition
Yields of most produces are satisfying. And some research pointed out these produces are more nutritious than chemical produces.
Economic/Sustainable Development
Because we use recycled organic materials, we made some contribution to help the local small vendors that provided those, like canola meal.
Climate
N/A
Sustainability
We were losing money in the last four consecutive years. One of the reasons is that we were exploring feasible permaculture farming methods. It was an experiment. Many methods didn’t work. Another reason is that few people knew the value of our work. But things are improving. We accumulated much experience in permaculture farming and more consumers are joining us. We would have broken even in 2016 without the flood in summer. We will boost the revenue to realize economic sustainability in 2017.
All the income of Time Farm comes from market-based revenue. We have no grant funding or government subsidies.
Return on investment
It has costed us more than US$100,000 until now. Permaculture farming is a long term investment. It may take 10 years to get rewarded for this investment. From the perspective of ROI, it may not be a good investment opportunity at this moment. But as permaculture said, we need to look at the whole functions of each element. Besides providing produces, farm can be used as an nature education place for kids, or a weekend pleasure attraction for families. There are a lot of opportunities waiting for us to explore. We are going to work on these opportunities in 2017. If we look from the environment sustainability and benefits of our descendant (Do we want to leave a dirty planet for our descendant to struggle with?), the ROI is phenomenal.
Replication and Scale
How could we successfully replicate this solution elsewhere?
The principles of permaculture can work all over the globe. But because of climate and culture difference, the technical approaches should be adjusted to comply with local circumstance. The more difference, the more adjustments will be needed. For example, this solution can be easily replicated at Yangzi River delta in East China. And it can work in many cities in China east after some adjustments. It may need many adjustments to be replicated at China west. The cost could vary at different locations. To build a similar farm at China east, funding of US$100,000 is needed. And farm owner should be enthusiastic about sustainable development and flexible to convince local community to involve in this movement. If getting trained before they start, it could save a lot of time and efforts. And finding people at local community who share similar ideas and getting their supports is very important.