Smallholder farms contribute one third of all the food consumed in high-income countries like the U.S., but smallholder farmers around the world often struggle to navigate a food system that is controlled by just a handful of large companies. Climate change, lack of access to land, and lack of sufficient policy support make the farmer’s job even harder. Earlier this month in Beijing, I had the opportunity to meet a smallholder farmer named Konkongu (空空谷), based in Beijing’s Pinggu District. He said that, despite the difficulties facing farmers in China, “I just want to plant some really healthy food.”
Before Konkongu became a farmer, he was a medical worker. At the age of 29, Konkongu decided to return to his family’s rented land to practice natural farming. Natural farming incorporates principles from organic farming but also has a distinct goal of “health” — healthy food grown with a healthy mindset, meant to build healthy communities. To Konkongu, natural farming is an Eastern practice and lifestyle as opposed to the Western construct of “organic certification.” But his vegetables are still certified organic and sold at the Beijing Farmer’s Market every Saturday and Sunday during the summer and fall months. That’s where I met Konkongu during my trip to Beijing.
Konkongu with his crops
Corporate power in the global grain trade
My primary purpose in Beijing was to attend a workshop hosted by the BRICS Competition Law and Policy Centre and the Center for Industrial Development and Environmental Governance (CIDEG) at Tsinghua University on competition in the global grain trade. At the workshop, speakers reflected on how developing countries could address the lack of competition in the grain market with a focus on BRICS members, an international group of 11 emerging economies. Some of the key ideas discussed were increasing transparency of trade data, limiting “financial embeddedness,” and coordinating competition law enforcement across BRICS countries.
Grain is one of the most traded goods in the world and an essential node in global food value chains. However, the growing economic power of major commodity traders makes fair and sustainable grain trade impossible. The ABCD group — ADM, Bungee, Cargill, and LDC — together control between 70-90% of the global grain trade. Through aggressive vertical integration, they also control the inputs, logistics, financing, and processing of grain. This concentration of power has often made it hard for farmers and farm workers to make a fair living, and for countries to meet sustainability goals. It also threatens food security around the world at a time when climate change and geopolitics already pose challenges to food production and distribution. Moreover, major commodity traders actually profit from market instability, between government support and derivative-based income that increases during periods of crisis.
Competition issues plague the rest of the food system, too. Just a handful of powerful companies control the markets for agricultural inputs (fertilizers and seeds), farm machinery, meat packing, food and beverage processing, and grocery retail. These companies are then able to use their economic dominance to exercise political power, shape scientific research, and influence the policies and systems that regulate them. Governments around the world are grappling with the common challenge of how to reign in powerful global agribusiness firms and restore fair competition to their markets. The BRICS Centre will continue to host workshops that highlight potential remedies for this issue.
The local food system in Beijing
Food system advocates and policymakers have called for more localized and democratic food system governance as a way to curb corporate control over food systems. During my time in Beijing, I met with an organization that is working toward that goal in China.
FoodThink (食通社) is a Beijing-based nonprofit dedicated to environmental sustainability and social justice in the agri-food system. Along with their core program team, FoodThink works with a network of farmers, academics, and journalists to create articles, podcasts, and multimedia content on food policy, agroecology, climate impacts, and other topics. The organization is led by Chang Tianle (常天乐), who also runs the Beijing Farmers Market. On non-market days, farmer’s products are sold at the Community Market storefront, also led by Tianle. While I was in Beijing, Tianle invited me to eat and convene with the FoodThink crew many times. She also organized a public presentation where I talked about corporate power and climate reporting in the global meat and dairy sector. On Sunday, the day before I would return home, she invited me to visit the Beijing Farmer’s Market.
Leila presenting at FoodThink
When I arrived at the farmers’ market on Sunday, I saw many of the same products from the Community Market, where I gave my presentation the day before — local produce, packaged goods, soaps, hand-carved wood, cotton goods. Some vendors sold hot meat pies and flatbreads as well. Everything sold at the farmer’s market is certified organic, and most of it is local to Beijing and the surrounding areas.
I spoke with the cotton goods vendor about his business and the organic market in Beijing. His Chinese name is 劉逸, and he doesn’t have an official English name, but he told me I could call him Bell.
Bell with his cotton goods at the market
Bell comes to the market every week, and he makes around $800 on a good day. Making and selling cotton goods is his side hustle — during the week, he teaches at a secondary school. Bell mentioned his interest in political economy and investment, so I asked him what he thought about China–U.S. trade relations. “I think the whole world is changing really fast,” he said. “It may not be what the U.S. wants, but I think it is time for the U.S. and China to decouple.”
On the other side of the farmer’s market, Konkongu sells his vegetables. Toward the end of the market, Tianle helped me negotiate a farm visit with him. He agrees to drive me to his farm as long as I can find my own way back to Beijing and use my phone to translate. I said yes, and within the hour Konkongu and I left the city in his van with the unsold produce in the trunk. We also shuttled a tea farmer back to his home, which was on the way.
Kongkongu’s story
On the one-and-a-half-hour drive, Konkongu and I talked via my phone translator. Konkongu told me that he has not planted vegetables properly in the summer for several years due to intense rain. Instead of changing what he plants, Konkongu prefers to adjust the planting season. But that has consequences: “when you wait for the climate to get better and then plant, the planting time will be a little later,” he told me. “The yield will decrease a lot.”
To sell his vegetables, Konkongu only has the Beijing Farmer’s Market and express delivery orders, which are similar to Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) but much less organized and inconsistent. When I asked Konkongu how he heard about the Beijing Farmer’s Market, he said, “the organic market is very small, everyone knows.”
Cucumber
When we arrived at Konkongu’s farm in the Pinggu District, his dog Cucumber greeted us. I offered to help unload the trunk, but Konkongu insisted that I look around instead. I wandered around the farm while Cucumber yapped and growled at my heels. Konkongu’s father came out from the “office” area, surprised to see me. I tried to explain who I am using my phone translator, but he found that odd and cumbersome. He walked away — lots of work to do. It was almost 5 o’clock.
When Konkongu was done unloading, he gave me a farm tour. In the southeast quadrant, he has planted coriander, onion, and spinach, among other crops. He proudly showed me a pond that he built about 100 feet away to attract frogs — “water is the source of all biodiversity,” he said. In the southwest quadrant, Konkongu grows cucumbers, more spinach, and carrots. A few varieties of nuts grow on the trees, and we snacked on them as we walked around. Konkongu told me that his sunflowers and radishes failed this year from too much rain.
Konkongu with a disappointing radish crop
Repairing a broken food system: lessons from kintsugi
After the farm tour, we sat in the office to seek refuge from the sun and bugs. We had about 30 minutes before he needed to drive me to town to catch the last bus to Beijing. We used those last minutes to talk about everything other than farming — tea, hobbies, what he likes to do in the off-season. It turns out that Kongkongu practices kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with paint or gold to make it more valuable and beautiful. He showed me his personal kintsugi projects, and then he opened a chest full of his friends’ broken pottery which they’ve asked him to fix. I remarked at how long it must take him to get through all those projects. He just nodded and smiled.
At the most basic level, food systems are built from the relationship between people and land. As I rode the bus back to the city, I reflected on Kongkongu’s story and how it fits into the narratives about farming and agriculture I heard during my time in Beijing. The work being done by FoodThink, the Beijing Farmer’s Market, and farmers like Kongkongu offer an example of the antidote to runaway corporate power in the global food system. It also serves as a reminder that creating an alternative food system starts, in part, with people willing to do things differently. Just like Kongkongu’s chest full of broken pottery, we need to put our food system back together. Perhaps we can make it more beautiful in the process.
