Ecological Practice Of Xiaohua Community

Community supported agriculture is a localized way to produce and consume foods, whose agricultural products are organic and the production process is environmental friendly. While in community supported agriculture, the producers—farmers and workers in the farms and consumers—citizens from urban place share the harvest and risk together. This study focuses on community supported agriculture, using social-cultural anthropological field methods—mainly interview and participate observation to do research. Based on the results of two times of filed work which were done during November,2012 to July,2013 and during November,2015 to December.2015, author tries to analyse a group of people called Xiaohua community, who participate in community supported agriculture in Chengdu. Xiaohua Community is consists of middle class consumers with high income in Chengdu city, farmers and workers in the farms near or around Chengdu, and managers and volunteers who handle the operation of the whole community. The field sites are Xinyi Organic Market where members of Xiaohua Community get together irregularly, houses of parents from Chengdu Wanfu School and supermarkets where they usually buy agricultural foods, and a farm called Jijia Farm in a county near Chengdu. Author describes Xiaohua Community members’ perception and attitude of food, health, and so on, also the representation form, operation model and operation foundation of their practice related to community supported agriculture, and their diachronic change during nearly four years’ period. Besides, author synthesizes all the information from different sides together, trying to figure out the logic and driving force behind the investigation results, and the social tendency and social influence which have been shown out from the investigation are discussed too.About community supported agriculture, many scholars from different disciplines, like agronomy, environmental science, architectural science, economy, finance, political science, law, sociology, cultural anthropology, pedagogy, tourism science and medical science and different countries all over the world have done a lot of researches before, using different academic methods and taking different scientific approaches. Generally speaking, existing researches can roughly be divided into two types. Firstly, it is from the angle of consumers. For example, some articles analyse the structure and origin of consumers who participate in community supported agriculture, their choices, preference, and consideration when buying agricultural products and foods, and the way and channel which are used to build or rebuild the trust of products’ quality and safety between consumers, and so on. Secondly, many investigations have been done from the angle of producers. Such as the comparison of difference and similarity among different kinds of community supported agriculture models, the advantages and values related to consisting development of ecological agriculture which of course include community supported agriculture, the structure of authority and contradiction existing in the circulation channels of agricultural products and markets, and the traveling and relaxing functions of community supported agriculture, and the like. An obvious problem for these researches is that their question orientation is rather dispersive. That is to say, scholars choose only one side or few sides of community supported agriculture to do exploration, lacking the idea of integrity and holism. However, In author’s research, both the situation of suppliers and consumers in community supported agriculture has been considered and observed, which include the investigation from the angle of producers and managers of Xiaohua community, also the interview and participate observation of consumers, showing more microcosmic, more precise, and more holistic ethnographic description. Additionally, author regards both suppliers and consumers as a total community, trying to explore the situation of inner interaction in the community itself in order to rethink its raise and diachronic change.In detailed content of the thesis, author firstly focuses on the parents of Chengdu Wanfu School, as mothers are main food providers in Chinese society, the parents who have been interviewed are mostly mothers in the family. According to the interview and participate observation, author tries to understand parents’ perception and attitude about diet, health, nutrition and environmental protection, and variety of practice has been done under the guide of these perception and attitude. It is shown that it is the parents’ class conducted in Chengdu Wanfu School which have a huge effect on parents’ idea, helping them build the attitude of being close to nature, enjoying the beauty of nature, protecting and caring nature resource, and keeping a harmonious relationship with nature. And participating in community supported agriculture is a good way and right approach to practice these above attitude. In order to make the statement more clearly, author also investigates some parents who join in community supported agriculture activity but are not from Chengdu Wanfu School to do comparison. Secondly, author focuses on Xinyi Organic Market, which is the newest and the most typical place to synthetically exhibit Xiaohua Community’s participation in community supported agriculture. Describing the detailed from of Xinyi Organic Market at great length, also the representation of the market information online in Wechat subscription account and moment, based on these findings, the operation model and foundation of the marked have been discussed, referring to the origin and constitution of the fund and human labour resource of the market. Author also discusses the approaches to build the trust of the quality and safety of ecological products sold in the market, figuring out that the serious examination, supervision and evaluation of farms made by managers and volunteers of the market help a lot, besides, the narratives strategy of farmers helps build the trust as well. Based on the findings of both parents from Chengdu Wanfu School and in Xinyi Organic market, author shows the application of new type of communication platform and transportation channel of farms, diacharonic change of a Chengdu Wanfu School parent called Zhangjie, the change of the production line of Jijia Farm, and the core clue of these changes. Finally, author uses the theories of middle class and risk society to explain the motives and form of Xiaohua Community members’ participation in community supported agriculture and the social tendency and dynamics shown from that.