Young men farm for the future

Updated: 2015-01-06 06:40

(chinadaily.com.cn)

Several young graduates return to their hometowns to work as "new farmers". Though their initial earnings are meagre, they have dreams of a great future for green farming. [Photo/qq.com]

An ecological farm, named Hometown Farm, has seen some unusual young farmers coming to plant vegetables and raise livestock since its establishment in 2012 in Jingxi town of Fuzhou city, capital of south China's Fujian province.

The farm, co-founded by the Rural Development Center of Renming University of China and Zhenro Foundation in Fujian, has championed agriculture in communities by urging university graduates to develop green agriculture by returning to their hometown. The farm aims to provide green vegetables to the rural residents.

Lin Zezhong, the first new graduate farmer there, farms 0.67 hectares of farmland at zero rent for the first three years of his contract. Ever since then, he has lived a peasant life by spending most of the day working on his farm, a life different from his friends' in the city. However, he thinks that is a good way to lift confidence in food safety and encourage people to care about agriculture.