Throwback Thursday: The Budding Days of Beijing's Urban Farming Movement

Throwback Thursday takes a look back into Beijing's past, using our 12-year-strong blog archives as the source for a glance at the weird and wonderful stories of Beijing's days gone by.

Last month, we broke down the basics of how to grow veggies on your balcony as a way of staying entertained and occupied, but five years ago this month, the Sanyuanli Garden Project, a venture founded by the French Youth Economic Chamber of Beijing, launched an effort to recruit 30 households to the practice of urban farming.

The effort was part of a rapidly growing movement in China to cut the produce supply chain, from the hundreds of kilometers that a vegetable would typically travel from ground to kitchen, to just a few meters. The project gathered prospective home gardeners along with kindergarten classes for a true community education that would allow learners of all ages to dig their fingers into the dirt – an experienced they all might have otherwise missed as urban dwellers.

The movement saw tremendous growth in the following years. One online forum for the hobbyists has grown from 60,000 accounts in 2015 to over 200,000 accounts in 2020. But – if you will forgive my turning this throwback into a throw-forward – can urban home farming ever be more than a hobby?

Undoubtedly, the practice helps to reduce an individual's carbon footprint. A small amount of food no longer needs transportation and kitchen waste that would otherwise produce harmful greenhouse gasses in landfills can instead be used for compost that can fertilize the home garden. But critics say that without the growth hormones used on industrial farms, home gardens simply cannot provide enough produce to fully feed a family. In light of that fact, would efforts be better spent trying to recruit mindful consumers into the home-delivery agriculture economy, which has also been shown to reduce the carbon footprint of Beijingers?

READ: How to Get Fresh Organic Produce From Beijing Farms, Right to Your Door

Many more eco-friendly food production methods are on the horizon, from the year-round greenhouse production happening in Beijing's nearby suburbs to the anticipated growth of futuristic vertical farming that could theoretically boom within the city itself. 

However, the argument that the home gardening movement should be abandoned because of its current infeasibility reminds me of the argument that electric vehicles aren’t good for the environment. Yes, at present, the necessary electrical production causes just as much, if not more pollution as gas-powered vehicles, but that won't always be the case, and if we develop the industries and train the consumer markets now, then they will be ready when sustainable electrical production has sufficiently advanced. Moreover, abandoning those industries will reduce the incentive to develop more efficient production technologies.

In that same vein, future methods for more efficient home and community gardening production might enable hobbyists to more completely sustain themselves from their own balcony, but they will never be developed if the movement is abandoned. 

Fortunately, the movement has seen success in recent years, but the window for its growth in Beijing may be limited. According to one study, Beijingers who moved from rural areas into the city are far more likely to support the founding of a community garden. In the future, there will be fewer such migrants living in the city and more city-raised residents, leaving only so much time to create community gardens before support wavers.

READ: Easy Indoor Composting With This Beijing-Made Kit

Images: Sanyuanli Garden Project