The Leader in His Fields: Chuang Yu-long

Thirty-nine year old Chuang Yu-long has loved farming since his youth. After graduating from junior high school, he didn't continue formal studies, but took over the family lands, doing endless experiments on how to grow healthy, delicious vegetables and rice without the use of chemical fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides.

Located in Chungli, Taoyuan County, Chuang's farm plays host to inquiring farmers from all over Taiwan, consumers who come to buy vegetables, and visiting school groups. What makes consumers place so much trust in the produce from Chuang's farm?

At his Fulong Farm, Chuang Yu-long has about 2.5 hectares in vegetables and paddy fields. In the broad open space in front of the paddies and vegetable fields, his son plays basketball after school in a space which during the day is thronged with the parked vehicles of tourists from all over who converge on the farm in tour buses, cars and trucks to buy the farm's produce.

Opposite the main entrance, the spacious farmhouse boasts a wallful of award certificates and wooden plaques from friends: 1985 Taoyuan County Top Ten Farmers; First Place, 1994 Organic Growers' Exhibition; 1995 Farm Entrepreneur of the Year. Just this year, Chuang was honored with Taiwan's highest agricultural award, the "Shen Nong" award for his "leadership role in research and promotion of organic farming methods and production of safe, high-quality vegetables." (Shen Nong is the legendary ancient emperor traditionally credited with founding Chinese agriculture.)

Your dirt is so fragrant!

After he became well-known, Chuang Yu-long began to feel the downside of fame. He calculates that, on average, he must receive six groups of visitors a day, and he saw 25 bus-loads of visitors arrive last month.

Visitors include everyone from university professors, fellow farmers from all over Taiwan, and elementary school science teachers, to buyers from major supermarkets and all manner of consumers. Although Chuang rises each morning a little after 3 a.m. to go to his fields, he often must forego the farmer's noontime siesta in order to receive guests.

"Why does your soil smell so good?" "Why doesn't your compost stink?" "Where can I buy your produce in Taipei?" Chuang has been asked about every aspect of his operation: the netting enclosures, the fertilizer, how to get rid of grass and insects, even how to market vegetables. Although he has never had much formal schooling, Chuang says that "so far, I haven't been stumped yet."

There are so many nutrients on the land at Fulong Farm that the fine roots of the celery grown there can stretch out for a full kilometer. The root systems of the bok choi are healthy and white, and the carrots can be eaten right out of the ground without danger of pesticide residues. The high level of nutrition in these vegetables comes entirely from the fine soil in which they are nurtured.

Soil is the stored bounty of Nature's life force. If you talk about Chuang Yu-long's 10 years of experience in growing vegetables, the last three years using the most natural methods, the soil is always the starting point.

Fulong Farm uses red clay, purchased from unpolluted virgin sites and dug out from a depth of 50 centimeters below the surface. This subsurface soil forms the top layer of the farm's land.

The soil's the thing

As a child, Chuang spent many hours playing on the land, and he has farmed twenty-odd plots to date, each with individual soil characteristics demanding different management methods. Chuang has only to dry a handful of soil and rub it between his fingers to know instantly whether it will grow good crops, and what kind of crops will thrive in it.

The special characteristic of red clay lies in "its stickiness. It forms round particles, and holds the water well," says Chuang. However, although the Taoyuan plateau is largely made up of this red clay, this soil type is acidic due to the presence of metals such as aluminum and manganese. Such acidity is harmful to crops.

Three years ago, Wu San-ho, an associate professor at National Taiwan University's Department of Agriculture, heard of Chuang Yu-long's ability to grow gorgeous, healthy crops on red clay without the use of chemical fertilizers. He led a group of students who spent several days at the farm doing on-site experiments. He says jokingly that in order to completely understand the methods of cultivation, "apart from the period from ten at night until three in the morning, when Chuang Yu-long was asleep, we followed his every move." Professor Wu has been making numerous trips between the campus and the farm ever since.

A soil researcher, Professor Wu says that the red clay widely distributed in tropical countries is usually barren, and it is difficult to coax a good crop from it. However, Chuang Yu-long has overcome this problem, and could rightly be called a model of success in organic farming. When he has the time, in the future Wu plans to write down Chuang's unique farming experiences.

"Chuang Yu-long is very intelligent. He has an extraordinary feeling for the degree to which the soil can breathe, retaining the good qualities of red clay while adding large amounts of organic fertilizer to take care of the acidity problem," says Wu.

A return to natural farming

Since ancient times, plants have taken their nourishment from the soil and been eaten in turn by animals; the animals returned these nutrients to the soil through their excrement and carcasses. This unending cycle made up the complex and rich cycle of ecology.

However, the rapid development of human civilization in the last century has led to rapid population expansion, and a greater demand for chemical methods to increase yields. But the "green revolution" had a dark side as well: the cycle of nature has been placed in jeopardy, and the large-scale use of chemical fertilizers has caused pollution of the soil.

The Taiwan Forestry Research Institute recently announced the results of a survey which showed that Taiwan's soil is already severely polluted. Additionally, there is severe acidification of farmland on the plains, with pH values as low as 4.2 to 4.8. The acidification is so severe that even the formerly ubiquitous earthworms cannot survive in the soil. Apart from the global phenomenon of acid rain, the cutting of forests is contributing to the acifidication process, together with overuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

Chuang Yu-long's soil is tested regularly by the Taoyuan District Agricultural Improvement Station and the National Taiwan University Department of Agricultural Chemistry, and the pH values have remained normal. The combination of unpolluted soil, pristine water, and complete avoidance of all chemicals and chemical fertilizers is a return to natural tilling methods, also called "organic farming."

Organic soil and organic fertilizer

Chuang Yu-long does use fertilizer, but it comes from Futien Farm in Pingchen City, which raises pea sprouts. It's a good example of the re-use of agricultural waste.

After the tiny, fine pea sprouts have been harvested, the roots and stems are thrown together with husks and ground oyster shells, eventually becoming the best organic fertilizer after a long period of fermentation and turning.

The vegetables grown in such fertile ground seem themselves to be filled with great vitality. Last summer, when Typhoon Herb swept through Taiwan, causing incalculable damage throughout Taiwan, the unharvested paddy in the area near Chuang Yu-long's farm was whipped so hard by the wind that nothing was left standing. But Chuang's own paddy was so tough and had such a good root system that after the storm, the plants were still standing upright.

In the past few thousand years, three major problems have plagued farmers: declining soil nutrients with each successive crop, the ravages of insects and the encroachments of weeds on the crops. How can one conquer these difficulties without the use of chemicals?

Fulong Farm currently boasts 54 net structures. Ten types of vegetables are grown inside by turns, including many types of greens, bok choi and mustard. Chuang reaps six crops a year, and each net structure is separated by a drainage ditch.

The nets can only keep out a portion of the insects. Outside the vegetable plots there are bottles of scented bait to kill moths, a natural biological means of controlling harmful insects. To a moth, the bait smells like a female moth looking for a mate, luring males to death by starvation inside the bottles. This disturbance of the sex ratio in the moth population can lower the number of moths in the area by reducing breeding opportunities.

The drainage ditches between the net structures are intended to prevent the outward spread of intruders. If there should happen to be insects within, they will be limited to the area of one net structure.

Timing the cabbage growth spurt

"Chuang Yu-long has a lot of valuable experience which cannot be found in textbooks, and he often rains on the parades of the experts," says Professor Wu.

"On one occasion, he quizzed me: 'Dr. Wu, do you know at which time of day the cabbage grows three to five centimeters?'" Professor Wu's natural reaction was one of skepticism. But Chuang told him: "Just get up before dawn and take a look. And did you notice when the bugs climb up on the leaves to sip the dewdrops?"

Based on Chuang's observations, "At sunrise, when the sky is just becoming light, the insects hide among the leaves. Therefore, if you spray insecticides during the day, you just won't hit them, and the pesticides end up in human stomachs instead," Professor Wu says.

"This kind of practical experience is something that the theorists never catch. We have learned more from him than he has from us," says Professor Wu admiringly.

Fulong Farm's water management practices are also much praised by the experts.

Chong Jen-tze, a professor at National Taiwan University's Department of Agricultural Chemistry, says that Chuang Yu-long is both interested in and dedicated to agriculture. "He keeps a tight control on the watering times for all his paddy fields." Every week he drains them, irrigates them, and allows the roots to get more oxygen. This makes them very healthy, but this kind of labor is something that most farmers find too troublesome to bother with on a regular basis, so that they often allow the young shoots to stand in water for long periods of time.

Every bit of Chuang's agricultural knowledge comes from personal experience, as he has no theoretical background at all. Most books on raising plants advise watering early in the morning and at dusk, because the heat of the day may burn the leaves.

Chuang Yu-long's vegetable fields are often watered at 10 o'clock to best accomodate photosynthesis. By two o'clock, the leaves are dry and can be harvested. He says, "The leaves get dry because the organic fertilizer isn't completely fermented, so that it releases ammonia when the temperature goes too high." His fertilizer is fermented completely, avoiding the drying problem entirely. Furthermore, he pays careful attention to the weather. When the north-east winds become strong, he waters in the early morning, evening or noon. On windless days, he does it at a time which allows the leaves to be dry at 5 or 6 in the evening, ensuring their health.

Chuang's water management techniques involve controlling time down to the minute and second. Before the plants have sprouted, a net structure will be watered for five minutes; in the second phase, for half that time, and in the last phase for only thirty seconds. "This is because the leaves are growing, and blocking the surface of the soil. The sun can't get in, and the soil stays wet, so it doesn't need too much water."

Degradation of soil organics

In response to the problems of excess pesticide residues on vegetables and the declining quality of soil, Taiwan's agricultural authorities began to promote organic farming methods in 1989.

But according to statistics from the Taiwan Provincial Agricultural and Forestry Office, less than 300 hectares of land are currently under organic cultivation. This is only 0.03 percent of Taiwan's total land area of 880,000 hectares. Most of the organic farming activity is found in Hualien, Taichung, and Taoyuan counties. Of this farmland, about 130 hectares are paddy, while another 41 are in vegetables.

Although organic farming is still in its infancy in Taiwan, it is the best hope for restoring the soil quality. But if the products of organic farming activities have so many advantages for both the ecological cycle and consumers. why is it that the majority of farmers are unwilling to adopt organic farming methods?

"It is sometimes very difficult to break farmers' habits," says Taoyuan District Agricultural Improvement Station's Taipei branch director Liao Kan-hua. For instance, Chuang Yu-long has told farmers that they should not sow vegetables so densely, to avoid the spread of disease, but some still believe that scattering the plants farther apart is a waste of space. Likewise, it is difficult for a farmer to stop reaching for the pesticide when he sees insects munching on vegetable leaves. Clearly, most farmers are doubtful whether a change in habits will be successful.

Apart from this, chemical fertilizers are produced in large quantity and are much cheaper than organic fertilizers. Between the red clay, the construction of net shelters, and the addition of more than 20 tons of organic fertilizer per hectare, Chuang Yu-long's farm tots up a cost of several million NT dollars. Chuang says that each time he brings in a couple hundred bags of fertilizer from Futian Farm, he doesn't dare to look at the price tag. Even today, he's unable to calculate exactly how much he has spent on fertilizer.

Springtime Renaissance

For various reasons, Taiwan has only recently begun work in organic farming, and it is only practiced on a small scale. Why isn't it possible to expand the scope? Chuang Yu-long's answer is that "nobody is willing to pull weeds by hand."

Chuang points out that weeds are the biggest obstacle in growing vegetables. Anyone with experience on a farm knows that "once you see a single weed, your hands just melt." To keep these weeds from spreading, Chuang's own method is the simplest, most traditional one: he pulls them up by the roots, by hand.

Chuang Yu-long displays his own thick palms, crisscrossed with scars. Each time he finishes harvesting, the weeding is still asking for careful attention. Because roots that haven't been fermented cannot be left in the land as fertilizer, they must be pulled out one by one, and he can't hire anyone who's willing to do it. "I can work on my knees in the field for six hours straight," he says, adding that most people are ready to quit after twenty minutes or half an hour.

"The key is the belief of farmers who actually work the land themselves," says National Taiwan University's Dr. Wu.

Take Futian Farm, which provides Chuang with his organic fertilizer, as an example. Chan Ming-hsing, the manager of the farm, says that he got into raising pea sprouts because his parents were ill.

Chan Ming-hsing's father was in construction, but he had a stroke thirteen years ago. At the time, he was only just past 50, and the doctor suggested that as part of his treatment, he should follow a special diet based on pure vegetables untainted by pesticides. The farmers the Chans knew often gave them vegetables, and once, when the family gave some leftover celery to their goose, the bird suddenly died. Unable to rely on the quality of the vegetables sold to the public, the Chan children began to try to grow pea sprouts at home, preparing "green broth" from the juice each day for their father. After six months, the father's health had taken a miraculous turn for the better. What's more, the experience of the illness had changed the father's values, and he decided to turn to large-scale production of the pea sprouts as a service to his fellow man.

The farmer is the best doctor!

Professor Wu also feels that Chuang Yu-long's belief in his ability to find suitable alternatives for chemicals "is a kind of philosophy leading him to develop these new technologies."

"Using chemicals, the farmer is the first one to be injured," says Chuang. When he was in middle school, he was in contact with farm chemicals, and when the wind blew, he would often get a faceful of the stuff, which he would immediately rinse off with water. Now, he can say proudly that his own land has been chemical-free for five years.

Having found his philosophy of life through farming, Chuang says that "crops are like people. They both want to live in a well-ventilated place to be healthy."

Chuang firmly maintains that "the farmer is better than any doctor, because the things we eat are all from farmers. If you eat healthy food you won't have any problems."

He relates that he was never able to concentrate in school when he was younger, because he was always thinking about "how much had the pigs grown? How much taller were the vegetables?" His brothers all hold university degrees, and as a result, although his father didn't oppose his wishes to be a farmer, he never encouraged Chuang to do so. On the other hand, Chuang's grandfather always told him that "all you need to do is diligently till the land, and you can better yourself."

Being close to his grandfather in his youth, Chuang got up with the old man before dawn each day and helped in taking the cows to pasture and doing the other morning chores around the farm. By the time he was a teenager, he was out in the fields himself with a plow.

Chuang didn't only grow vegetables; he also raised pigs, and by the time he had to do his army service, he had over a hundred head. After his discharge, he went back to pig raising for a few years, but after he married, his wife suggested that he give up the pigs, because of the smell and noise, which were causing the neighbors to complain. From that time on, Chuang put his entire effort into raising vegetables and paddy.

He also devoted much thought to how to distribute fruit to supplement the family income. Each morning after he had made the purchases, his wife went down to the market to operate a stall. Chuang Yu-long spent six years investigating the characteristics of each type of seasonal fruit. The result? He no longer had to rely on others for advice; he himself could tell in a single glance which of the papayas had the milky taste.

In 1988, he became involved in a project overseen by the Pingchen Agricultural Association, which had begun to promote the use of net enclosures in vegetable cultivation. However, at the time his enclosures were rudimentary, and were often destroyed by typhoons. Over the years, he made improvement after improvement, and eventually managed to stabilize the design to a point where the structure not only kept bugs out, but also stood up to typhoons and frost.

Through the garden

Since organic farming's beginnings in Taiwan, more and more produce in the market has been spotted wearing a label such as "organic," "natural," "eat with confidence," or "clean."

What concerns people is that vegetables without pesticide residues aren't always organically grown. Because a small amount of chemicals on the land can be gradually broken down to the point where they cannot be detected, it isn't a given that no chemicals were sprayed over the course of the vegetables' life cycle.

The Consumers Foundation recently did a study in Taipei and Tainan markets, inspecting eggplant and beans, in which tests for chemicals found that 14 of the 61 samples tested contained "excessive pesticide residues," a failure rate of about 20%.

Because one cannot rely solely on the label, consumers cannot buy confidently. A minority have turned to "do-it-yourself," going directly to the farms to buy produce. Chuang Yu-long's vegetables have become a hot item in direct sales. Today, there are organic food stores from Taipei to Hsinchu which stock his vegetables, and a Taipei department store supermarket is planning a special stand for his vegetables.

A Taipei company, Green Ivy Health Foods, sells vegetables and rice from Fulong Farm. The owner, Lin Wen-tsung, also leads groups of a few dozen housewives on "produce tours" to let them understand for themselves where the food they eat each day really comes from.

Lin has had a contract with Fulong Farms for a year now, and he says that he chose Chuang's farm because "it is open." One may observe the growing process at any time.

Pricey organics

Because organic produce is not produced in large quantities, demand outstrips supply, and the "organic" cachet brings a high price tag. Fulong Farm vegetables sell for two to three times the price of ordinary vegetables.

From his beginnings in a market stall in Pingchen, Chuang Yu-long has always priced his vegetables and rice higher than other people. However, business is booming. It's clear that people in Taiwan urgently desire healthy, clean vegetables.

But the high price of organic produce can lead to doubts. The Moa International Foundation of Natural Ecology, which has been actively promoting the Japanese idea of "natural farming" to Taiwan farmers, asked three organic farmers, including Chuang, to discuss their farming experiences. At the conference, someone asked if it was reasonable that the price of organic vegetables was sometimes as high as NT$100 per pound, and what a reasonable price might be.

Kao Yi-ying, a farmer from Ilan, said that the operating expenses and management practices of each farm are different. He is not willing to produce a large volume of vegetables and have to sell them at a low price. Everyone knows his are the highest priced vegetables in Ilan, because they are all cared for individually. Furthermore, he harvests for twice as long a time as others.

Futian Farm's Chan Ming-hsing, after noting the prices of cars or houses in Taiwan, asked: In such a situation, would selling cabbage for NT$2 per pound allow farmers to get back their costs? Consumers only have to stop and think about the way organic vegetables are grown in order to be able to accept the prices attached to them.

Land in the bank

Everybody wants to earn money, but Chuang Yu-long's philosophy is that he has put his soul into his work, and he will naturally be rewarded. Embracing his grand-father's ideas about the land as wealth, Chuang has put his all into buying land. Relying on his own two hands and his work on his own land, Chuang Yu-long puts a little bit more thought into things than others, and has created a good life for his entire family.

But Chuang's fondest hope is that even more farmers will decide to join in using the organic farming methods which are good for both the farmers and the earth, and create a new springtime of organic farming in Taiwan.

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Chuang Yu-long grows beautiful, delicious vegetables without pesticides or chemicals. The flourishing root system is the result of ample nutrition in the soil.

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A flourishing 2.5 hectares of open farmland.

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As his fame has spread from the farm, people come to have a look at the real thing. Over a hundred Taipei primary school science teachers stand in the rain to listen to Chuang Yu-long explain his methods.

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Chuang Yu-long's

thickly callused hands are the result of pulling roots out one by one.

Pheromone baited traps are strung next to the net enclosures. The bottles emit the scent of a female moth looking for a mate, which attracts the males to fly into the bottle, where they starve to death. This use of biological control methods reduces insect damage.

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Chuang Yu-long's use of fertilizer which is actually farm waste is a good example of reuse. After the delicate pea sprouts are harvested, the roots are thrown together with husks and stems and turned constantly during composting. The result is an excellent natural fertilizer.

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Taipei supermarkets carry Chuang Yu-long's produce, but consumers in Taoyuan can go straight to the farm to make their purchases.

(illustrations by Lee Su-ling)

As his fame has spread from the farm, people come to have a look at the real thing. Over a hundred Taipei primary school science teachers stand in the rain to list en to Chuang Yu-long explain his methods.