Fresh, delicious and safe

Groups of people carrying shopping bags gathered near the east gate of Chaoyang Park in downtown Beijing's Chaoyang District on February 11, a chilly winter Saturday morning, and waited for a fair to open its doors.

At 10 a.m., they entered the premises, an enormous warehouse-like space, which was so dark that vendors whose stalls were located away from the entrance had to use flashlights to illuminate their goods.

But the cold and darkness didn't dent costumers' enthusiasm. Just two hours after opening the goods available were almost sold out.

Such was the demand for the produce sold at the Organic Farmers' Fair (OFF), which opens every Saturday morning. The fair has no fixed location and all the vendors present are individual organic food producers from Beijing's suburbs who promise that their produce is free of chemical additives, fertilizers and pesticides.

Usually about 20 vendors attend the fair and they sell an enormous range of produce: vegetables, fruits, meat, home-made bread, cheese, soap, honey, jam, dairy products, tofu and even rice wine. None of the producers involved own large-scale farms so only relatively small quantities are available at the fair each week.

New life

Chen Yanhong is a villager in Jugou Village in north Beijing's Shunyi District. Her husband works in a factory near the village and Chen looks after her children and father-in-law at home. They have a courtyard with 200 square meters of land. In 2006, Chen began planting vegetables and raising chickens in the courtyard.

"I used to plant the vegetables just for my own family and I don't know that much about professional farming," Chen said. "I don't use fertilizer at all and feed the chickens corn and vegetable leaves."

Occasionally, urban residents who went fishing in the suburbs and passed Chen's house would stop and purchase vegetables and eggs. Gradually as more and more people began asking for her produce, Chen enlarged the courtyard and increased her flock of chickens to 50.

With the help of a nephew, Chen began attending the OFF last year. Each time she attends the fair, Chen is able to bring back more than 1,000 yuan ($158).

"I know urban residents attach great importance to food safety and was sure the vegetables I grow would be very popular. But I didn't have a channel to sell my produce until I started attending the Organic Farmers' Fair," she said.

Li Yan, Director of Phoenix Community, another fair participant, echoed Chen's sentiments about the difficulty of setting up marketing channels that connect individual organic farmers to consumers.

"In order to really make a field appropriate for organic farming, farmers need to stop planting anything in the field for four years, this is very costly and many people don't understand this," Li said.

According to Li, a large number of farmers really want to do organic farming, but it requires a large investment and a lot of effort. "It is crucial that farmers have a means of selling organic produce and this fair is a wonderful opportunity for us," she added.

Growing popularity

Initiated by Emi Uemura, a Japanese artist, the OFF first started in September 2010. But at the very beginning, it was only held once every two months.

Uemura had been working on community-supported agriculture (CSA) projects in China for almost a year before she started this fair. The CSA's operating model allows farmers and consumers to share the risks and benefits of food production. Consumers pay for the anticipated harvest up-front, and they receive weekly shares of vegetables, fruit and other farm produce after harvesting begins.

The Little Donkey Farm, a CSA farm in west Beijing, is one of a handful of farms Uemura has been working with in China. The farm went into operation in 2009 and has been very influential in popularizing the CSA model amongst Beijing's organic community.