Bottom-up attempts at agroecological transitions in China: The comparative cases of Sanliwan and Sanggang villages

Smallholder farmers play an important role in the global food supply. Forty percent of land is managed by smallholders (Lesiv et al., 2019). Globally, they provide more than 50% of the world’s food on less than 25% of all arable land (Nicholls and Altieri, 2018). In China, there are still more than 200 million smallholder farmers (FAO, 2019).¹ Given their numbers and significant contributions to the food supply, how can smallholder farmers in China transition to ecologically based farming?

Smallholder farming has a long history in China. Chinese agriculture traces back approximately 10,000 years to several locations along the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers (Cox and Atkins, 1979). Ancient China was a peasant society predicated on densely populated, permanent sustainable farming (Netting, 1993; Schneider, 2015). China’s intensive, small-scale agriculture dates more than 5,000 years (Gliessman, 2016a). Agroecological practices of rotating grains and leguminous crops were documented in the Zhanguo Period circa 100 AD (Hui, 2014; Luo, 2016). Over thousands of years, peasants designed sustainable agriculture systems that included intercropping, composting, ecological pest management, and mixed crop–livestock systems (Yan, 2015).

To this day, some smallholder farmers maintain these traditional practices. For example, Qingtian County in Zhejiang Province continues a 1,200-year-old symbiosis between rice and fish (Koohafkan and Altieri, 2011), and the Zhejiang Huzhou mulberry-dyke and fish-pond system is more than 2,500 years old (GIAHS Secretariat, 2018). Fifteen of the 50 globally important agricultural heritage systems are in China (GIAHS Secretariat, 2018). Each of these systems represents rich traditional and agroecological knowledge.

However, smallholder farmers in contemporary China generally rely on pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and agricultural machinery. Starting in the 1950s, China launched its first transition from traditional to industrial agriculture. Most farmers in China use industrial practices that cause environmental problems (Zhang et al., 2020). Following the mainstream logic for rural development, large-scale industrial farming was promoted in the 21st century (Huang et al., 2016). The vision was for China to follow in the footsteps of other postindustrial societies that increased farm size as rural populations shrank (Schuman, 2018). The logic was that rural people moving to cities would stimulate the industrial economy by increasing their consumption levels, while the remaining rural farmers would earn incomes on par with those earned in cities by managing larger commercial farms (Xia et al., 2017).

The mainstream perspective that associates industrialization with progress has led most small farms in China to become highly dependent on expensive external inputs of fertilizers and pesticides (Si, 2019). Increased productivity comes at the cost of sociocultural decay, resource shortages, food safety issues, and environmental deterioration (van der Ploeg and Ye, 2016b). Few small farms in China are managed as diversified ecological systems with low external inputs and high ecological efficiency. In addition to these challenges, many small farmers often balance multiple jobs or leave their farmland altogether (van der Ploeg and Ye, 2016a).

In countries around the world, various initiatives have emerged to improve the economic conditions of smallholder farmers. Agroecology offers a promising approach to increase the efficiency and value of farms (Anderson et al., 2019), enhance the cycling of nutrients and environmental quality (Altieri, 1995; Tully and Ryals, 2017; Velázquez Cigarroa et al., 2018), and improve farmers’ livelihoods and standards of living (De Schutter, 2010; ETC Group, 2017; IPES-Food, 2018; Eyhorn et al., 2019).

As a science, movement, and practice (Wezel et al., 2009), agroecology responds to the Green Revolution (Holt-Giménez and Altieri, 2013), which has resulted in the high use of synthetic inputs and ecological degradation globally (Rahman, 2015; Bala, 2018). Altieri (1995) gave the basic scientific definition of agroecology: “to apply ecological methods to study, design and manage sustainable agriculture.” Through processes emphasizing participation, democracy, equity, and justice, the agroecology movement is building alternative food systems (Gliessman, 2016b; Anderson et al., 2019).

Similarly, agroecology in the Chinese context has been defined as “a discipline for applying the principles and methodologies of ecology and systems theory to agriculture. It considers agricultural organisms with their surrounding social and natural context as a whole and reveals their interactions, coevolution, regulation, and sustainable development” (Luo, 2009, 2016). In China, the use of the term “agroecology”² began in the late 1970s, stimulated by the severe deterioration of agricultural lands and by the introduction of ecosystem ecology from abroad (Luo, 2016).

Agroecology may fit within the development aspirations of the Chinese government. It aligns with the Chinese vision of an “ecological civilization” (Xi, 2017). An “ecological civilization” refers to the harmonious coexistence between humans, nature, and society to establish sustainable production and consumption systems that respect and protect nature (Gao and Huang, 2009; Pan, 2016). In 2017, the central government promoted the “organic connection” between smallholder farmers and agricultural modernization. Since an ecological civilization is one of the state-initiated development strategies written into the constitution in 2012 (Ishwaran et al., 2015; Anderson et al., 2019), ecological agriculture is now considered an important direction for agricultural development.

However, the widespread transition to agroecology is not a simple task. Gliessman’s (2016b) five-level theory of agroecological transition analyzes the different stages from reducing chemical inputs to adopting alternative practices, redesigning agroecosystems, establishing market connections between producers and consumers, and finally transforming the global food system. Anderson et al. (2019) describe the transition to sustainable food systems through agroecology in the context of enabling and disabling conditions across 6 domains, including access to land, seeds, water and biodiversity, knowledge, systems of exchange, networks, equity, and discourse. The IPES-Food (2016) summarizes 8 dimensions of industrial agriculture lock-ins preventing the widespread transition to diversified agroecological systems: dependency, an export orientation, the expectation of cheap food, compartmentalized thinking, short-term thinking, “feed the world” narratives, measures of success, and the concentration of power. Mier y Teran et al. (2018) review emblematic cases of agroecology taken to scale from around the world and identify 8 key drivers in the process of scaling agroecology: “(1) the recognition of a crisis that motivates a search for alternatives, (2) social organization, (3) constructivist learning processes, (4) effective agroecological practices, (5) mobilizing discourses, (6) external allies, (7) favorable markets, and (8) favorable policies.”

This practice bridge aims to examine the potential for an agroecological transition in China inspired by these theories and emerging from attempts at collaborative research projects to improve market access for agroecological products in the rural community of Sanliwan village. Of the multiple challenges facing farming communities in designing agroecological farming systems and distribution models, 4 stood out in working with Sanliwan village. We draw inspiration from the successful and well-documented case of agroecological transitions in Sanggang village to suggest potentially effective strategies to address the challenges that we encountered in Sanliwan village.

We used qualitative methods to compare the different experiences with agroecological transitions in the Chinese villages of Sanliwan and Sanggang. Semistructured interviews were conducted in Sanliwan village during 3 periods³: October 28–November 5, 2017; October 2–5, 2020; and January 24 and 25, 2023.⁴ In Sanggang village, semistructured interviews occurred from February 3 to 7, 2023. Sanliwan village is in southeastern Shanxi Province, Xigou Township, Pingshun County, approximately 600 km southwest of Beijing. Sanggang village is in the midwest of Hebei Province, Pocang Township, Yi County, approximately 190 km southwest of Beijing (Figure 1).

The interviewees in these 2 villages mainly included village leaders, smallholder farmers, agricultural technicians, and consumers. A total of 15 respondents participated in the study: 4 village leaders, 2 technicians, and 9 farmers in Sanliwan village and Sanggang village (Table 1). The older farmers focused primarily on farming, while many of the younger smallholder farmers also had secondary occupations, such as working as village leaders, construction workers, and village doctors.

The semistructured interviews mainly included open-ended questions. We communicated with the village leaders and elders for historical background information about the village. We classified the interviewees into 3 groups: village leaders, farmers, and technicians. The interview notes were transcribed and analyzed thematically (Denzin and Lincoln, 2018). The interviews focused on the following topics: farm production and practices, changes in the environment and markets, income from household farming and off-farm work, whether the farmers attempted an agroecological transition, what challenges the farmers may have encountered, and what kind of role technicians played in the agroecological transition. Asking similar questions to multiple respondents provided validation of what we learned. This empirical evidence helped conceptualize theoretical narratives to explain the core issues we encountered. We also checked secondary data sources, including the scientific literature, books, and reports published by the government and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

A case study is useful for identifying theoretical constructs and developmental processes based on empirical evidence (Eisenhardt and Graebner, 2007). The long-term tracking and investigation of typical cases can also lead to better analytical frameworks that start from a theoretical foundation (Teoh et al., 2017). The inductive concepts were from the reality of the local experience. At the same time, we chose comparative case study methods to explain better the problems studied from different perspectives, provide mutual evidence, and enhance the credibility of the research conclusions (Yin and Campbell, 2018). Sanliwan village and Sanggang village represent some of the challenges and opportunities in the agroecological transitions for smallholder farmers in China. Sanliwan village represents the general dilemma of the agroecological transition for smallholder farmers, whereas Sanggang village was successful in its bottom-up exploration. Through comparative analysis, this research can be more helpful in understanding the significance of bottom-up attempts at the transition to agroecology in mountainous areas in China.

These 2 villages share characteristics similar to those of many other agricultural villages in China, such as a mountainous location, small-scale industrial farming, and demographic composition. Thus, they reflect the general reality of the development and transition for many smallholder farmers in China. Areas designated as plains account for only approximately one-third of China’s national territory; thus, many small-scale farmlands in mountainous areas would be difficult to convert into large-scale farmland. Additionally, rural-to-urban migration has created a situation in Sanliwan and Sanggang villages, as in many other villages in China, where those responsible for farming are mostly elders, women, and children.⁵ We examined the challenges to agroecological transitions in a holistic way that integrates the ecological, economic, social, and political dimensions.

Sanggang village is a famous example of how agroecological products from remote areas can be sold directly to consumers using new market models and internet technology. Similar to our case study of Sanliwan village, Sanggang village is typical of agricultural villages in the Taihang Mountains. The cultivated area is 48 hectares, the mountainous area is 1,266.7 hectares, and the exploitable mountainous area is 266.7 hectares. In 2019, 654 people resided in 173 households in Sanggang village. Half of the population in Sanggang village had left for cities, while the other half—women, elderly individuals, and children—mainly managed small-scale farms, which were integrated with livestock as in Sanliwan, such as growing vegetables in their gardens, raising small livestock in their yards, and planting tree crops on hillsides. However, they could not find methods to improve their salary and increase confidence in small-scale farms.

In 2010, a team of teachers and students from the College of Humanities and Development Studies of China Agricultural University began the “nested market” experiment. The “nested market” emphasized the direct connection between producers and consumers and enhanced the interaction between urban and rural residents (Ye and Wang, 2011; van der Ploeg et al., 2012; Ye et al., 2012). Operationally, the “nested market” involved consumers placing orders, village group leaders arranging orders, farmers providing and delivering products to consumers, village group leaders distributing money to farmers, and the community leader collecting consumers’ feedback, which then supported system improvement.

The “nested market” in Sanggang village has developed for more than 12 years (Table 2). It has brought many changes to Sanggang villagers, such as increased organizing capacity, connections to external markets, more experience with agroecological farming, innovative marketing approaches, and the acquisition of government support. In 2019, Sanggang village set up a cooperative (Chaoshi Limin Farmers’ Professional Cooperative of Yixian County) based on the mutual aid group to expand the scale of its members and its market.

In 2016, the local government began providing subsidies to Sanggang villagers to buy a delivery truck, so that they could drive approximately two and a half hours to deliver their products to consumers in Beijing. In 2020, due to COVID-19, they accelerated the development of the e-commerce model. After the pandemic, the leaders of the cooperative continued to explore and optimize the development model of the “nested market.” They planned to lead more smallholder farmers to increase income by attracting more village members.

This model in Sanggang village has proven successful in improving income and living conditions. In the past 6 years, at least 100 citizen households have connected with Sanggang village’s “nested market,” demonstrating the relative stability of agroecological marketing. Smallholder farmers in Sanggang village, who joined the “nested market” in 2019, have experienced a relatively stable economic income, with an average annual increase from CN¥2,000 (US$299) to CN¥3,000 (US$448). In years of good harvest, they earn between CN¥5,000 (US$746) and CN¥10,000 (US$1,493). The “nested market” has also created postproduction jobs, such as slaughtering, processing, packaging, and transportation. Not only has the “nested market” increased farmers’ incomes, but it has also allowed elderly farmers to continue making contributions because many elderly farmers cannot do more farming jobs than before. For example, when villagers discovered consumers preferred traditional eggs, elderly farmers quickly began hatching chickens using their traditional practices.

Through this model, the value of agroecological production has led to increased jobs and income for the villagers. More than 90% of the villagers have changed their approach to farming by reducing their use of agrochemicals and enriching the content of planting and breeding (Table 3).

At the same time, Sanggang village set up public funds for waste management, cultural activities, and agroecological skills learning. Villagers then established an online sales platform to sell their products directly to urban consumers. Doing so has had a double effect in that urban people purchased their agricultural products, and they would also drive to visit Sanggang village with family during holidays to experience rural life. In this way, organized farmers and urban people established mutually supportive relationships: smallholder farmers would sell their products to urban people, and urban people would receive safe products and proactively help solve small farmers’ difficulties in their daily lives.

The county of Sanliwan village was designated as “poverty-stricken”⁶ by the state and therefore received subsidies from the central and local governments to improve village infrastructure and agriculture. As of 2018, 591 people resided in 197 households in Sanliwan village. Twenty-six percent of residents were older than 55, while 17% were younger than 18. Approximately half of the residents were men, and half were women. Close to 9% of all residents were considered impoverished by the state. Most village residents migrate to cities for work, while 41% of residents live in Sanliwan village more than 6 months out of the year.⁷

The total area of Sanliwan village is 506.7 hectares, of which 34.47 hectares is arable land. The ratio of arable land to people, that is, 0.058 hectares, in Sanliwan village is similar to that in many other villages in China. Since 58.54% of all villagers migrate to work in urban areas, the average arable land per person residing in the village is still only 0.14 hectares. According to the village leader, “Almost 90% of people under 50 years old work outside the village in off-farm employment. Otherwise, they cannot earn enough money to buy a house, get married, or assist their children. Families often invest their earnings from off-farm economic activities in agricultural activities. Most of those who remain are women, children, and the elderly.”⁸ Since there are hardly any industries and factories near Sanliwan village, residents primarily make a living through agriculture.

Small-scale farmers predominate in this mountainous region. Farmers grow corn, millet, walnuts, potatoes, tomatoes, cabbages, and dang shen (Codonopsis pilosula). With rising prices for these products, some farmers have increasingly planted peppers, walnuts, and dang shen. While integrated livestock production was practiced in the past, fluctuating prices for feed and livestock and concerns over environmental pollution⁹ were reasons why animal husbandry has nearly disappeared from the village.

In recent years, Sanliwan villagers witnessed many changes in infrastructure and ecological awareness. The development of a rural road system and of broadband internet opened new opportunities for communication and rural e-commerce. Due to the severe and increasing concern over food safety in the last decade (Si et al., 2019), some farmers in Sanliwan village—like many other farmers in China—have begun growing food without fertilizers or pesticides. We found that food produced this way is often for the subsistence of farmers and their relatives rather than for the market. Farmers in the village shared their aspirations to transition to more ecologically based systems. However, doing so is not easy. We observed 4 challenges in the agroecological transition in Sanliwan village: environmental degradation, the lack of technical extension in agroecology, direct market channel development, and farmer atomization.

Farmers in Sanliwan village reported that soil compaction, environmental degradation, and nutrient imbalances occur across all village farmlands. One farmer reported, “In the past, there were many wild rabbits and pheasants in the mountains, but now, they are rarely seen.” Significant socioeconomic barriers may contribute to the environmental degradation found in Sanliwan village. Since the average arable land per person residing in the village is only 0.14 hectares, Sanliwan farmers cannot fallow their fields to restore soil fertility. According to the respondents, organic soil amendments available for purchase are cost-prohibitive, and the low number of livestock limits the amount of manure that farmers apply to their fields. Farmers instead depend on subsidized chemical fertilizers and pesticides to maintain crop productivity in soils that they perceive as exhausted from years of agricultural operation. Several government programs, such as the Soil and Fertilizer Testing program, have been widely implemented to reduce fertilizer use. While these programs have increased farmers’ ecological awareness, some farmers still overuse fertilizers in pursuit of higher yields of market-oriented production.

Farmers in Sanliwan have dealt with limited water, a major bottleneck for agricultural development in this region. The lake and the reservoir have water only during the summer rainy season. “More than ten years ago, we still had water in the reservoir, but we have not had water for years now.” To villagers, restoring the environment is a problem beyond their means as individuals and would require public investments in ecological infrastructure, such as ponds, rivers, and roads.

Water shortages are exacerbated by environmental degradation. In addition to climate change, farmers associate water shortages with deforestation. The lack of water increases the difficulty and cost of farming. Farmers rely on groundwater and rainfall for their agricultural production. Due to insufficient water for higher value vegetable crops, farmers grow low-value crops such as corn and wheat. For example, in 2018, Li—a 35-year-old farmer, mother, and accountant for the village committee—grew 3 mu (0.201 hectares) of corn for her family’s consumption. After subtracting production costs, including labor, she earned a profit of CN¥10 (US$1.48) per 1 mu (0.067 hectares) of corn.¹⁰ In comparison, one male laborer in construction earns at least CN¥120 (US$17.80) per day.¹¹

Even though smallholder farmers produce agroecological products, they cannot sell them at a reasonable price. Without the help of cooperatives or companies, they mainly sell their products to vendors. Many smallholder farmers are not motivated to transition to agroecology because of selling all products at the standard price. Developing e-commerce skills might lead farmers in Sanliwan village to receive premium prices for local walnut varieties with their unique flavors and high nutritional value. When asked why farmers sold walnuts at a low price, one farmer responded, “We only wait for the purchasers to buy our walnuts. We do not have the knowledge, experience, or skills to sell to consumers directly. The transportation and time cost is higher if we go to the city market to sell our walnuts on a small scale.” Almost every family in Sanliwan village grows a local variety of walnuts, and environmental conditions allow for organic production with relative ease. Developing new markets for organic, locally adapted varieties of walnuts may have helped reduce the trend reported by the farmers of replacing local walnut trees with imported walnuts that have higher yields but are of lesser quality than the local varieties.

Sanliwan village was fortunate to receive government investments and subsidies for broadband internet and an e-commerce station. Online stores are one way for farmers to sell directly to urban consumers. A 20-year-old man tried to open an online store that sold walnuts and peppers for 1 year in 2018. Before rural e-commerce, smallholder farmers sold dried walnuts to vendors at CN¥10–16 per kg, while this young man sold dried walnuts at CN¥24–30 per kg without including the delivery fees of CN¥4–12 per kg. This is cheaper than the same quality of dried walnuts sold for approximately CN¥80 per kg in the large markets of Beijing, giving villagers a competitive advantage to generate higher incomes. Even though e-commerce helped this farmer sell his products at higher prices, the young man faced challenges scaling up his business without organization among smallholder farmers. Additionally, most of the smallholder farmers in Sanliwan did not know how to operate online stores, including knowing internet technology, marketing skills, packaging, sales logistics, and so on. They were most comfortable continuing their previous mode of production and sales through intermediaries.

After the 1980s, the agricultural technical extension (ATE) system became increasingly weakened. Often, farmers’ actual technical needs and the applicability of technology were not sufficiently considered by formal extension services. Inefficiencies in technical training for smallholder farmers also occurred in Sanliwan due to a mismatch between the government’s educational priorities and farmers’ needs. During a 5-day training on pepper and walnut planting held by the Education and Technical Bureau of Pingshun County in November 2017, technicians struggled to recruit enough participants across 33 villages even though the government subsidized the costs of tuition, food, and accommodation costs. Many farmers registered for the training program with no interest in the class because agriculture was not their primary source of income. Some farmers reported during the interviews that they did not attend because they were too busy with their farms.

However, Sanliwan villagers also expressed that they wanted to learn ecological techniques relevant to their specific needs. Farmers in Sanliwan lamented the absence of professional technical guidance. In 2016, several farmers tried to learn from a technician from Shenyang Province who practiced a South Korean technique of ecological pig rearing.¹² Farmers hoped to increase their income through pig rearing while complying with strict environmental protection rules. However, the tuition of CN¥30,000 (US$4,451.04) for the training prevented them from pursuing it further, as they were not sure they would recoup the cost if they raised only 2 or 3 pigs per year. Despite financial barriers and the lack of appropriate government extension, these experiences speak to the willingness of farmers to invest the time to learn relevant ecological practices and skills.

Sanliwan village went from a collectivized culture to an atomized culture. Before the 1980s, Sanliwan’s social organization was well-developed, with villagers demonstrating a large capacity for collective action. Peasants were organized to participate in agricultural work during the daytime: restoring degraded hillsides, planting trees, draining flood plains to increase arable lands, building water infrastructure, and implementing composting technologies. They would study at night school to gain literacy, study agricultural technology, exchange experience with their fellow farmers, and learn how to correctly and efficiently use chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

After the 1980s, farmers in Sanliwan gradually became atomized, similar to most villages in rural China. Especially in the 21st century, many young people left the village to work in urban areas, and farmers became increasingly atomized. Conversations with village elders show that it is difficult for a gradually weakened village committee to organize villagers to build roads and maintain public agricultural infrastructure without monetary compensation. There are now few collective activities in Sanliwan village. The traditions of reciprocity and mutual aid that remain are now based on personal acquaintances. For example, farmers ask their acquaintances to help harvest corn and offer them thanks by inviting them to dinner. While mutual aid and cooperation in agriculture have the potential to improve infrastructure and provide greater access to new direct markets, village farmers expressed concerns about the organizing cost and the complication of multiple actors in cooperative enterprises. As a result, farmer atomization in Sanliwan is now very common.

Although agroecology has the potential to dramatically enhance the resilience of agroecosystems to environmental shocks and increase the productivity of smallholder agriculture, its broad adoption is particularly challenged when fundamental social conditions are not addressed (Holt-Giménez et al., 2021). The relational dynamics between social actors at the territory level are critical for the revitalization of rural economies and adaptation to changing conditions (Lugo-Morin, 2016). This reflects arguments made by recent authors on transitioning to environmentally responsible and socially just food systems (Gliessman, 2016b; IPES-Food, 2016; Mier y Teran et al., 2018; Anderson et al., 2019).

To contextualize our findings in Sanliwan village, we compare them to another village in China, Sanggang village (Figure 1). Sanggang village was selected for the following reasons: a similar mountainous geography, regional and geopolitical proximity to our case study, the shared experience of rural-to-urban migration, the predominance of small-scale farms under 2 hectares and the lack of large-scale farms, and the approximately 13-year history of practicing agroecological rural development.

Most of the villagers in Sanggang village are smallholder farmers who went from being atomized producers, such as those in Sanliwan village, to forming organized mutual support groups and cooperatives with leadership consisting of local people or involving the help of outside allies. The villagers share responsibilities and cooperation among the members of the organizations and take advantage of external resources more effectively. Through these comparative sites, we see that local leaders can support farmers in learning about innovations in other places, identifying new development opportunities, reducing pesticides and fertilizers, exchanging technical agroecological knowledge, and ultimately transitioning to more ecologically and economically sustainable models of agriculture. The experiences at Sanggang village demonstrate that the transition to agroecology may take several years for farmers to experience the benefits.

Sanliwan village’s small-scale industrial agriculture model has left farmers without promising prospects in agriculture. Farmers in Sanliwan face the dilemma of wanting to change but not knowing where to start. We suspect that upon investigation, this phenomenon would present itself in many parts of China. The smallholder farmers in Sanggang village, by organizing together, not only successfully integrated internal resources—creating bottom-up strategies (Table 4) for the agroecological transition—but also effectively utilized external resources from the government, academic institutions, and NGOs. The success of bottom-up strategies in Sanggang village provides insights for scaling out agroecology in other parts of China (Figure 2).

In the following sections, the 4 core challenges we encountered in Sanliwan village are discussed in comparison to Sanggang village. We end by describing the synergy of the efforts of smallholder farmers to mobilize themselves.

Despite the challenges to enhancing environmental stewardship in China, research from other countries points to promising strategies for overcoming them. Favorable policies that support constructivist education, access to resources, and biodiversity conservation facilitate smallholder investments in agroecology (Mier y Teran et al., 2018; Anderson et al., 2019). In Sanliwan village, the small-scale industrial farming methods now commonly used for market-oriented production run contrary to Altieri’s (1995) agroecological principles, leading to soil degradation, biodiversity loss, and pest problems.

A growing awareness of food safety and health concerns motivated some smallholder farmers in Sanliwan village to reduce fertilizers and pesticides in the food they grow for their families, resulting in several beneficial outcomes for the environment. Gliessman (2016b) refers to environmental stewardship in the first 3 levels of his 5-level transition framework: reducing chemical inputs, substituting alternative practices, and redesigning agroecosystems. Many smallholder farmers in China find themselves at the first level, reducing chemical inputs.

While there is still much to be done in villages such as Sanliwan, smallholder farmers in Sanggang village provide the examples of Gliessman’s (2016b) third level of transition: redesigning agroecosystems for environmental stewardship. Restoring soil quality sufficiently to phase out the use of agrochemicals usually took at least 3 years, according to the leaders of “nested markets” in Sanggang village. Increased incomes through the “nested market” after adopting agroecological practices motivated smallholder farmers to gradually reduce chemical inputs and increase management for soil health. Smallholder farmers, especially after joining cooperatives, reintegrated animals into their farms to improve soil health while reducing their dependency on external inputs. Leaders in the cooperative supervised farmers’ production practices. Farmers also received guidance from each other. Additionally, they began to better protect their environment by taking actions such as sorting trash and reducing pollution from domestic sewage through the redesign of toilets. Biodiversity in Sanggang began to recover gradually. Pests and diseases also decreased.

After more than 10 years of farmer organizing, the experiences in Sanggang village point to the possibility of redesigning agroecosystems at the village level. However, lock-ins to the industrial food system (IPES-Food, 2016) make it hard to imagine redesigning an entire country’s food system around small-scale agroecological farming without considering the political principles of the agroecological transition (Gonzalez de Molina, 2013; CIDSE, 2018). Political action is needed to support the restoration of ecological functions in agroecosystems and to achieve acceptable yields with reduced external inputs. For example, the Soil and Fertilizer Testing program is subsidized by the government to assist farmers in applying fertilizers more efficiently, thus reducing their overall usage.¹³ Farmers’ knowledge about the scientific application of chemical fertilizers has increased through trainings, and in some cases, farmers apply only organic fertilizers on some of their lands.

Selling to small vendors is the most common channel for smallholder farmers, both historically and presently. However, these traditional market channels are mainly controlled by agribusiness, mass retail-driven supply chains, and cheap food that requires uniform commodity production (IPES-Food, 2016). Smallholder farmers receive low prices and remain locked into the current industrial market system. Over the last 10 years, marketing through companies and cooperatives has emerged to help smallholder farmers increase their income.

Fortunately, with the development of rural transportation and the internet in China, a new marketing channel for agricultural products, called rural e-commerce, has emerged in rural areas. In 2017, there were 9.856 million rural online shops (China International Electronic Commerce Center, 2018). In the case of Sanggang village, e-commerce from smallholder farmers can offer urban people high-quality agroecological products at a reasonable price and increase smallholder farmers’ income. Brand packaging and marketing skills have greatly influenced online sales. However, older and less educated farmers generally lack e-commerce and marketing skills, as in Sanliwan village. Cooperative members solved this problem through cooperation and division of labor, with assistance from teachers at the China Agricultural University. E-commerce increases the overall economic viability of agroecological products and boosts farmers’ confidence in agroecology as an economically viable option. For example, there is a poor household in Sanggang village. The household head, surnamed Zhao, is 70 years old, blind, and suffering from diabetes. His wife can only do simple work because of her physical disability. Their income comes from government subsidies and raising chickens. After developing the “nested market,” the cooperative became responsible for providing them with chicken seedlings. They raise approximately 60 chickens at most in the yard using the traditional methods. The annual income from selling chickens and eggs can reach a maximum of approximately CN¥5,000 (US$746.2), which helps them to cover their annual medical expenses.

Emerging consumer and retail initiatives provide new economic incentives for transitioning to agroecological practices (IPES-Food, 2016). Gliessman (2016b) recognizes the importance of markets for the agroecological transition, which is the basis for his argument of shortening food chains and establishing direct marketing connections between producers and consumers in the fourth level of his framework. Anderson et al. (2019) also emphasize that exploring new markets and strengthening exchange systems are critical for transitioning to agroecology. Dumont et al.’s (2016) socioeconomic principles of agroecology regard “market access and autonomy” and “partnership between producers and consumers” as 2 important principles.

Therefore, rural e-commerce creates new marketing channels for smallholder farmers in Sanggang village with opportunities to sell to consumers directly by organizing together. It also would help Sanggang villagers benefit from an increasingly health-conscious Chinese middle class that is enlarging the market for ecological agricultural products, as reflected in the Chinese saying, “Eat healthier while young, go to the hospital less when old.” Additionally, in recent decades, the central government in China has invested in rural internet and e-commerce infrastructure, thus providing low-cost and convenient internet services to rural people. Therefore, the e-commerce model of selling products grown in Sanggang village to residents in Beijing could be applied to other remote mountainous areas. Thus, the “nested market” combined with e-commerce creates a new direct producer-to-consumer marketing model.

The urban consumer cooperative brings food from local farmers to consumers in nearby cities, while the “nested market” of Sanggang village involves sales across provinces from farmers to urban populations. In addition, unlike traditional markets, consumers’ attitudes are paramount for producer-to-consumer models to succeed. Educating consumers about sustainable food systems can change their perceptions, thus leading them to support agroecology (IPES-Food, 2018; Anderson et al., 2019).

In Sanggang village, rural tourism creates opportunities for consumers to learn about agriculture and to understand the differences between agroecology and industrial agriculture. For example, smallholder farmers practicing agroecology have the potential to not only provide delicious food but also create environmental value and connection. In contrast, industrial farming provides cheap food but has negative impacts on the environment that will be felt by future generations (IPES-Food, 2018; Anderson et al., 2019). Some urban people have become vocal supporters of agroecology in Sanggang village, and they act in solidarity with smallholder farmers to establish exchange systems of transregional agroecological products based on trust and social networks. On weekends, some parents in Beijing drive their children to Sanggang village to experience farming life.¹⁴

The education system in Chinese universities also has the potential to increase agroecological knowledge. As young generations grow up in urban areas, they become increasingly estranged from agricultural practice. Most college graduates will be middle class in the future. Even if they do not directly engage in farming, they will have the financial means to support the scaling out of agroecology in other ways, including as consumers. Some college students from China Agricultural University who joined the student farms at the university or helped to organize the “nested market” have been loyal customers of Sanggang village in Beijing after graduating.

It is difficult for smallholder farmers to benefit from new agricultural knowledge. Because of administrative orders and top-down approaches, many extension training activities lack efficiency and effectiveness (China ATE System Reform Research Group, 2004). Farmers’ real technical needs and the applicability of new technologies are often not considered when formal extension services are provided. For this reason, villagers in Sanliwan were not motivated to participate in technical training. The same also occurred in Sanggang village. Therefore, specialists from China Agricultural University provide technical training through lectures and activities that encourage knowledge exchange between farmers. They take full advantage of local agricultural technicians and empower them to help solve farmers’ problems.

Additionally, sharing agroecological knowledge can help farmers escape the path dependency of industrial agriculture and design sustainable food systems. Agroecological knowledge and culture are critical for agroecological farming (Anderson et al., 2019). Dumont et al. (2016) also propose the principle of “diversity and exchange of knowledge” in their socioeconomic dimensions of agroecology. Both Anderson et al. (2019) and Dumont et al. (2016) emphasize the importance of local and traditional knowledge in agroecology. Currently, local agricultural technicians in Sanggang village have mastered the technology of vegetable planting, breeding, forestry, and fruit production. They can effectively manage all common diseases and pests. Because most young people leave for work in urban areas, elders and women always play an essential role in the transition to agroecology. For example, a 75-year-old farmer with a primary school education has taught himself to become a veterinarian and forest fruit expert. He is kind and has high prestige in the village because, for more than 40 years, he has assisted villagers in solving their pest and disease problems.

Many smallholder farmers have limited access to technical support (IPES-Food, 2016). When smallholder farmers in Sanliwan and Sanggang villages began transitioning to substituting alternative practices and redesigning agroecosystems, they lacked agroecological knowledge. Additionally, some farmers who master agroecological techniques do not want to share their knowledge or lack the platform to help many more farmers. However, in the collective atmosphere of an organizational culture, experienced farmers prefer to share their technical knowledge rather than keep it to themselves. For example, the elders in Sanggang village shared their knowledge on hatching heirloom chickens to meet the growing demand in Beijing. They also worked together to find low cost and efficient ways to keep eggs fresh. Through farmer organizing and collective action, agroecological knowledge can be disseminated from farmer to farmer efficiently and cheaply (Holt-Giménez, 2006).

Bottom-up efforts are critical in the transition to agroecology (Scott et al., 2018). Top-down support from the technical extension system is also essential. Rebuilding the ATE system, especially at the town-village level, encourages networks and platforms for sharing agroecological techniques and knowledge (Bruil et al., 2019). To some extent, the cooperatives replaced some of the functions of the town-village-level technical extension system, which allowed local technicians to offer more effective guidance to farmers. In contrast, the lack of strong grassroots organizing led to the low efficiency and inconsistency of agricultural technical training in Sanliwan village.

Networks of producers, scientists, researchers, public officials, consumers, and so on have an important influence on the transition to agroecological agriculture (Anderson et al., 2019). Rebuilding the ATE system requires the participation of all parties, including the government, universities, companies, and producers. Reliance on only local agricultural technicians, as in Sanggang village, is not sufficient to scale agroecology. Improving technical extension in agroecology is useful for systematically changing the situation of weak knowledge dissemination in agroecological agriculture.

After the 1980s, farmers in rural China gradually became atomized (He and Tong, 2002; He, 2003; Yan, 2012). The village community and farmers’ mutual assistance and cooperation were seriously weakened (Li, 2015). The weakening of collective consciousness and action hinders the development of agriculture in ways that may only be noticed much later.

In our view, social organizing¹⁵ is fundamental to overcoming other challenges in the agroecological transition, as shown by the changes in Sanggang village. Organizing smallholder farmers can reduce transaction costs and improve the division of labor for bottom-up strategies in the agroecological transition. However, Gliessman’s (2014, 2016b) framework, perhaps inadvertently, suggests that social organization follows changes at the farm scale. Gliessman’s theory may reflect the particular context of highly individualized farming in the United States, where the goal of building a new global food system is assumed to begin with changes in production prior to social organizing among actors in the food system.

The context faced by smallholder farmers in China differs from that of the United States. Chinese farmers’ landholdings are smaller and more dispersed across the landscape, and only 8.3% have graduated from high school or above (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2017). Without farmers’ capacity to organize from the start, it is hard to imagine how a critical mass of smallholder farmers will transition to the highly knowledge-intensive practice of agroecology described by Altieri and Toledo (2011).

As Anderson et al. (2019) write, social organization matters for farmers’ transition to agroecology. Practices in Sanliwan have also demonstrated that it is not easy for atomized smallholder farmers to change their current situation and overcome the challenges of the agroecological transition. Sanliwan village lacks in organizing by farmers and associated food processing actors, which is described as the degree of information exchange by actors across value chains (Dumont et al., 2016).

In Sanggang village, significant changes began when the teachers from the China Agricultural University team helped smallholder farmers organize themselves. Through the organization of farmers, smallholder farmers carried out internal coordination and the division of labor utilized internal and external resources more effectively, reduced external transaction costs, and overcame other challenges, such as restoring the environment, extending agroecological technology, and developing new markets. The members of the farmer cooperatives in Sanggang village have different responsibilities: agricultural production, providing technical guidance, butchering animals, connecting with citizen-consumers, managing online marketing, packaging, making deliveries, organizing leaders, and so on. Their collective action through organizing cooperatives helps them develop a new agroecological product market. Many smallholder farmers in Sanggang village are willing to adopt agroecological agriculture.

However, our research in Sanliwan showed how challenging it can be for farmers to solve production and livelihood problems without cooperation and collective action. This reality, as evidenced in Sanliwan, increases the difficulty and cost of top-down technical extension to smallholder farmers and establishing new direct markets. Increasing the ability of farmers to organize, as in Sanggang village, is essential to address the 3 other challenges we identified for agroecological transition.

This case study shows that smallholder farmers in China face the same reinforcing lock-ins to industrial agriculture (IPES-Food, 2016) for their market-oriented production. This comparison of the 2 villages, Sanliwan and Sanggang, suggests that a theory that moves from farm-level adjustments and redesign to the cultivation of new market relationships by social organizing among smallholder farmers finally coalesces into alternative global food systems (Gliessman, 2016b). The challenges and strategies identified in comparing the 2 villages align with the enabling conditions or lack thereof presented by Anderson et al. (2019), what we call challenges and strategies, which we believe have regional and national relevance for smallholder farmers in China.

The challenges of Sanliwan village and the successful experiences of Sanggang village highlighted in this comparative analysis lead us to question whether linear frameworks of the agroecological transition—while valuable, frequently cited, and well tested—apply to the Chinese context. Observations in Sanliwan village indicate that an agroecological transition was greatly impeded by a limited capacity among farmers to organize. The organization of farmers, such as those we discussed in Sanggang village, can potentially increase investments and guide farmers in improving their organizational capacity, restoring the environment, and developing new markets. Published case studies also point to farmer organizing as a foundational step in achieving an agroecological transition. The agroecological transition for smallholder farmers in Sanggang village was achieved after 5–10 years through a direct marketing strategy by organizing farmers into a “nested market.” Further research is needed to test our proposal that the social organizing of farmers is crucial in enabling the entry and progress of smallholder farmers along agroecological transition pathways. The organization of farmers, we believe, helps improve environmental stewardship, technical assistance, and the cultivation of new markets.

The literature suggests that external support can assist in the scaling out of bottom-up strategies. Agroecological transition frameworks that focus on enabling conditions, that is, drivers of change to agroecology, and disabling conditions, that is, lock-ins to the industrial system, are synergistic to our proposed model. The Sanliwan case study indicates that even smallholder farmers become locked into industrial food systems. Even though smallholder farmers are a critical force for an agroecological transition, we observed in Sanliwan village how difficult it can be for individual smallholder farmers to succeed in transitioning on their own because of obstacles at broader societal levels. Based on our case study and 2 comparative sites, we suspect that favorable external conditions would greatly facilitate the agroecological transition for a large number of smallholder farmers across China.

The 4 core challenges to the transition to agroecology in Sanliwan village were environmental degradation, the lack of direct markets, inadequate extension, and farmer atomization. The experience of overcoming these challenges in Sanggang village results from the bottom-up efforts of Sanggang villagers and external support, especially from the team of teachers from the China Agricultural University over more than 10 years. We also found that these challenges interlocked and extended beyond the farm or community level. Therefore, it is also crucial for the government to support scientific research, technical extension, agroecological subsidies, public trading markets, agroecological education, and information to consumers. We encourage the further study of attempts to systematically combine bottom-up and top-down approaches not only to assist smallholder farmers in overcoming the challenges of transitioning to agroecology in China but also to gain a more widespread understanding of agroecology for the benefit of Chinese society.

This research used qualitative methods. The data, including transcripts and notes from the semistructured interviews, are not publicly available to protect human subjects. Questions regarding the data referenced in this article may be directed to the corresponding author, PR, or the author who acquired the data, CL. 

Thanks to Professor Zhihui Tong’s research group at the Rural Governance Center of Renmin University of China and Professor Miguel Altieri and his research group at UC Berkeley.

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

Contributed to conception and design: CL, NPJ, PR.

Contributed to acquisition of data: CL.

Contributed to analysis and interpretation of data: CL, NPJ, PR.

Drafted and/or revised the article: CL, NPJ, PR.

Approved the submitted version for publication: CL, NPJ, PR.

How to cite this article: Liu, C, Pinzón Jiménez, N, Rogé, P. 2023. Bottom-up attempts at agroecological transitions in China: The comparative cases of Sanliwan and Sanggang villages. Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene 11(1). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.2019.00033

Domain Editor-in-Chief: Alastair Iles, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA

Associate Editor: Selena Ahmed, The Food and Health Lab, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT, USA

Knowledge Domain: Sustainability Transitions

Part of an Elementa Special Forum: New Pathways to Sustainability in Agroecological Systems