China: ‘New farmers’ focus on green agriculture

Feng Xiaoyan views herself as a “new farmer”, despite being 53 years old. She is contracted to grow organic potatoes on 1,333 hectares of land in her hometown in the northwest province of Shaanxi, and she established her own brand, ‘Sister Potato’, in 2009. “I’m not young, but I think like young people in the internet age,” Feng said at the ongoing 2016 China Yangling Agricultural Hi-Tech Fair in Yangling district, a high-tech agricultural zone in Xianyang. Food safety in China has been questioned due to the overuse of pesticides, fertilizers and chemical additives. Feng, seeing an opportunity for the transformation of Chinese agriculture, decided to plant eco-friendly potatoes to international standards. Feng was a teacher for eight years in her hometown in Zizhou county before she worked as a government official in Tongchuan from 1990 to 1994. More