Looking to land an idyll job

It is the eighth time this summer that Guo Xiunan has failed to grow vegetables without chemical pesticides. After trying various homemade bug sprays, such as plant ash, mixtures of pepper, vinegar and water, and rubbing alcohol, there are still plenty of holes chewed by flea beetles in the leaves.

"I will not give up trying and next time, I shall experiment with mustard oil," the 29-year-old accountant-turned-farmer says.

Covering 0.67 hectares of farmland and 1.33 hectares of woodland and wetland, his farm is located on the outskirts of Hefei, East China's Anhui province. He is trying to turn it into an organic farm, cultivating fruits and vegetables with the same flavor of those from his childhood memories.

"Growing tasty and healthy food has been my dream since I was a teenager. I know how difficult it can be, but if you take the soil seriously, I believe it will pay off," Guo says.

He adds that farming is not a business that can make money in a short time, but for him, it became an urgent issue when his father was diagnosed with stomach cancer last year, ringing an alarm bell over food safety.

Recalling spending time on the farm with his parents as a child, Guo says overuse of pesticides and chemical fertilizers is changing the face of farming, which does not only damage the soil, but also people's health.

After investing more than 100,000 yuan ($13,700) since he rented the farmland last year, and reading many books on agriculture, Guo is in the early stages of navigating the various challenges through trial and error. In other words, his farm is still losing money, even though he only hires one villager to help tend the land.

Unlike a conventional farm, Guo is learning to manage soil nutrients without fertilizer and tackle weeds and insects without herbicides and insecticides.

As well as figuring out different strategies for cultivation on the farm himself, he has to develop marketing channels for his products. In March, he uploaded his first post on short-video platform Douyin to introduce his business. His account now has nearly 6,000 followers, which is way above his expectations. As people around him questioned his decision to till the land instead of riding a desk at some lucrative city job, his followers were there to encourage him, just like they did through hard times on the farm.

"Maybe it is because I've realized their dream life, one that they dare not pursue," Guo says.

Against the decadeslong trend of people migrating to cities, there is a new phenomenon, as seen on social media, a counterflow among the young generation, like Guo, who are moving to the countryside to adopt an agricultural lifestyle.

Data from Douyin shows that content related to farming garnered about 12.9 billion likes last year, with 54 percent of their creators being young people who used to work or study in cities.

Although still small in number, this group of young, educated people introduce the latest agricultural technology and bring fresh perspective to local economic development, indicating the potential for rural vitalization, according to a report released by the Rural Development Institute, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Fish out of water

However, farming is far from a simple task for those who are new to it and imagine it is all about pastoral scenes, fresh air and a quiet life communing with nature.

When Liao Lijun felt exhausted at her reporter's job in Shanghai last year, her father offered her an attractive invitation: to run a farm with him.

While working in the real estate development sector in the early 2010s, Liao's father secured a 133.3-hectare parcel through farmland transfer at a low cost.

The 25-year-old is familiar with the internet and has always wanted to be a social media creator. Producing content related to farming taps into the current online zeitgeist.

When she arrived at her father's farm, located in a village in Huaihua, Central China's Hunan province, in October, it quickly dawned on her that running a farm is nothing like the idyllic pastoral lifestyle she envisioned it would be.

"The key problem is our agricultural inexperience," Liao says, adding that farm life is not as "beautiful as it looks", and that farming is a business full of challenges and difficulties.

Sharing her agricultural endeavors on video platform Bilibili, her posts are reminiscent of Clarkson's Farm, a hugely popular British docuseries on Amazon Prime that follows former motoring journalist and TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson as he attempts to run his Cotswolds farm himself following the retirement of his veteran land manager. "After all," he asks in the first episode, "how hard can it be?"

Liao certainly knows the answer. "Our farm has encountered various unexpected obstacles, which is indicated by my delay in uploading my videos," she says. So far, she has managed to post 10 videos to her Bilibili channel.

The third day after she arrived at the farm, the temperature in Hunan dropped dramatically, from 38 C to 18 C. Overnight, more than 100 fish in her pond died, and she had no idea why. After consulting an expert on the farmers' assistant hotline, by dialing 12356, low oxygen was determined to be the cause.

After oxygenating the pond, the problem was solved, but two months later, there was a bigger issue. It was their first time harvesting the pond, and her father had estimated the total weight of the fish at more than 15,000 kilograms. In the end, there were just 300 kg of bighead carp.

"Where have all my fish gone? Where have all my fish gone?" her father keeps asking, in ever more exasperated tones, in her video of the incident.

After consulting experts and fish farmers and trying all kinds of avenues to find answers, Liao and her father were still puzzled as to why their pond had yielded so few fish. It turns out that there are many important parameters required for the water, and which matter a lot in aquaculture, such as its salinity, hardness and nitrite content.

As well as facing a lack of aquaculture knowledge and technology, their pig-rearing business also plunged into the red due to the decline in pig prices. Liao and her father bought 20 piglets for 12,546 yuan earlier this year when the price was over 25 yuan per kilogram, but now that value has nosedived to about 16 yuan.

"Usually a pig will be sold after being raised for half a year, but now the low prices mean that our efforts are in vain. It is a lesson about the market that we have learned the hard way," Liao says.

From the perspective of making money, Liao doesn't think farming is a wise option for young people, because it is a long-term business which requires a lot of knowledge and hard work, but also a lot of upfront capital, for which there will be little return in the first few years.

"There is a profitable method that I think is viable for young people who are interested in the countryside. They can use their knowledge of technology like the internet, to help local farmers or companies run their businesses," she says, adding that young people with such skills usually have better choices.

Cooperative farmers

This method of cooperation is the one Niu Xiaoxin and his wife Xu Yan adopted when setting up their farm to produce chrysanthemum tea in Zhangjiaweizi village, Linyi, East China's Shandong province, when they were seniors in horticulture at the Shandong Agricultural University in 2016.

Following their teachers' recommendation, and with years of research in chrysanthemum cultivation, their agricultural career started smoothly when a company invested in their business plan.

Although quite familiar with modern farming practices, they still encountered various challenges they couldn't find solutions for in textbooks or classrooms.

"At school, everything is there, but building a farm means starting from scratch on barren land," 31-year-old Niu says, adding that every detail has to be designed, such as where to install water pipes and how long they need to be.

After four-and-a-half years of building up their farm, which covers about 6 hectares, they have cultivated 10 kinds of edible chrysanthemum for use in tea and have provided jobs for more than 40 villagers. To help promote their chrysanthemum tea, they took to Douyin, and their account has attracted more than 112,000 followers. On Bilibili they boast 19,000 followers.

"These days, there is a misunderstanding about agriculture, that we focus too much on how to grow tasty, good-quality products, but ignore the importance of sales," Niu says.

From planting to management and sales, agriculture is a business with a complete chain, Niu adds.

In 2021, due to a disagreement about the direction the farm's development was taking, they left the business and started providing technical support to farmers and agricultural companies in nearby villages.

Later that year, they rented 1,000 square meters of land to plant succulents as a new starting point.

"We will not quit the sector, but it has taken time to find a path that suits us," Niu says, adding that they've learned to use social media as a powerful tool for connecting with consumers.

According to data from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, from 2012 to last year, over 12.2 million people have returned or moved to rural areas with the aspiration of starting their own business.

Despite having been through various difficulties and challenges, Niu, Xu, Liao and Guo all agree that the agricultural sector has a promising future, and more young people need to try and find a way to build their own connection with the soil.