How to Find Vegetables You Can Trust? Two Mothers’ Ten Years of Experience | Food Talk Vol. 49

by Posted on

During the first decade of the 21st century, repeated food safety crises prompted a wave of Chinese consumers to explore better agriculture and ingredients, and the first organic farmers began appearing in communities across the country.

One of this episode’s guests, Cao Xiaohong, is one such consumer. In 2008, due to her child’s health concerns, she began searching for safer ingredients. When she first started shopping on the organic platform Wotugongfang, there were no mini-program orders, no WeChat groups, and even courier services were barely established—buying anything could mean relying on email and cash. While the organic movement was taking off in the big cities, she, living in a small town in Hunan Province, gradually built a small buying circle, reaching out to farmers in various regions on one hand while leading local mothers to “buy along” on the other. To this day, she remains active in consumer communities.

The other guest on this episode, Xiaoyunsheng of the Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market, also reflects on her journey from consumer to vegetable seller. Over more than a decade of selling at the farmers’ market, she has navigated many changes and challenges, learning how to uphold a table that stands the test of time alongside farming friends from all over the country.

Looking back, it was a group of consumers who cared deeply about food—who had both the awareness and the drive, the passion and the practical ability to build organisations—who shifted public understanding of agriculture and food, building a bridge between producers and consumers. Now that livestreaming and drop-shipping have entered the picture, can we build the same kind of mutual trust that those early consumers did?

Xiaohong also shares the life philosophy behind her approach to food: how to practise a calm, unanxious attitude toward eating; how to choose well at the market; and the enviable ideal of following her parents to personally practise farming—a life of getting to know food and nature through practice… If you, too, worry about grocery shopping for the whole family, or simply want to eat with more peace of mind, this episode is well worth a listen.

This Episode’s Guests

Cao Xiaohong

From Chenzhou, Hunan Province, and raised in the mountains. Every generation in her family genealogy is recorded as farmers, until this one, when her siblings all put down roots in the city. As an educator, and also driven by raising her children, she began buying organic ingredients on Wotugongfang in 2008, embarking on a deeper journey into the relationship with food, land, and nature.

 

 

 

Xiaoyunsheng

Once a journalist, a hobby farmer, and a vegetable seller at the Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market for a decade.

 

 

 

 

This Episode’s Host

Wang Hao

Editor at Foodthink, and also a consumer who began exploring ecological food ingredients after the pandemic.

 

 

 

 

 

Timeline

00:45 First Encounter with the Organic Circle: In 2008, with no WeChat, everything ran on email and trust.

05:56 The girl who “escaped” the countryside: why does she also need to reconnect with the land as an adult?

17:01 The Rise of the Mummy Groups: Grocery shopping can build deep friendships. The group leader charges ahead, members follow blindly—eco-farmers from all over the country sustain a whole group of mothers’ dinner tables.

20:46 Lessons from her parents’ vegetable patch: one corn cob, five little bugs—can you live with that?

23:43 From “Die-Hard Organic” to “Laid-Back Shopping”: as the children grew, the pace of life changed, and eating became less of a grind.

25:24 Coming Home, Browsing the Market as a Kind of Practice: how do you tell which vegetables were grown by the old lady herself?

37:52 In the age of livestreaming and courier delivery, why hasn’t consumer trust grown stronger than before?

48:42 The ideal is to return to life as it naturally is: three meals, four seasons, work and awareness

At the Waldorf school, Xiaohong plants peanuts and transplants rice seedlings with the children. Education was also what first led her to actively explore food and agriculture.

Xiaohong’s daily rhythm of natural living in the village. When her father’s crops in the countryside come in with a surplus, they all pitch in and make something: in spring the ducks lay plenty of eggs, so they cure some salted duck eggs; tender, vividly green shoots of a wild herb pop up in the vegetable patch, and you can pick the small yellow flowers to make glutinous rice cakes; they also brew green plum syrup and sun-dry sweet potato slices.
Cao Xiaohong sharing her experiences at Fengnianqing in Guangdong.

▼ Click to read related articles

Rebuilding the Vanishing Neighbourhood: Agriculture for the Future

Remarkable Chengdu Mothers: A Cooperative Journey from Self-Help to Mutual Aid

From Consumer to Inhabitant: The Community Reform Journey of Japanese Mothers

Are Rural Elderly People Doomed to “Being Cared For”? Another Possibility in Xianniangxi Village, Guangzhou

Scan the QR code below

on Xiaoyuzhou | Ximalaya | Lizhi | Apple Podcasts

to subscribe to the Food Talk podcast

We welcome your comments in the discussion section of any podcast platform; we will reply from time to time. Scan the QR code below to add Foodthink’s WeChat secondary account, with the note “食日谈” (Food Talk), to join the podcast listeners’ group chat.

Unless otherwise stated, all images are provided by the guests.

Music: Ba Nong

Produced by: Xiaojing

Edited by: Wang Hao

Contact: [email protected]

Published by Foodthink