Beijing Xiaomully Citizen Farm has been in operation since 2008, for 17 years. In essence, Beijing Xiaomully Citizen Farm is not a cultural tourism project, but a "social enterprise" founded by a group of rural construction people, operating ecological agriculture and integrating cultural tourism into it. In this issue, Zhiku Culture and Tourism's "Cool Project" will introduce the alternative perspective and exploration experience of Xiaomully Citizen Farm, providing another dimension of development reference for the development of rural cultural tourism and agricultural cultural tourism projects.

Beijing Xiaomully Citizen Farm is located in Sujia Tuo West Road, Haidian District, Beijing, situated at the foot of Phoenix Ridge and beside the Jingmi Water Diversion Canal, a first-class water source protection area. It is a municipal ecological farm in Beijing, covering an area of about 130 mu. Once a nursery base, in 2008, under the leadership of Professor Wen Tiejun, a renowned expert in agriculture, rural areas, and farmers, a group of young people dedicated to new rural construction came to this land and began ecological agriculture experiments using the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) model, making it one of the earliest ecological farms in China.

Ecological agriculture means practicing the concept of natural planting. During the planting process, no chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, plastic film, hormones, or genetically modified seeds are used. Weeding is done manually throughout the process, using organic fertilizers such as bio-compost and enzyme fertilizers. For pest management, physical pest control methods are used, such as stimulating substances like plant ash, chili and pepper water, tobacco leaf water, and white vinegar water to repel insects instead of insecticides.

Ecological agriculture is not a new concept today, but the difficulty lies not in the concept itself, but in its true implementation. Today's agricultural producers have long been accustomed to the simple and efficient chemical agriculture. To restrain the impulse to use chemical fertilizers and pesticides is itself a difficult task. In particular, pesticides are simple and convenient for pest control, with immediate results, saving a lot of manual labor. Applying chemical fertilizers is much simpler and easier than making and applying organic fertilizers. On the consumer side, consumers often prefer large, full, well-shaped, and pest-free fruits and vegetables. Truly organic fruits and vegetables are often disliked by consumers because their appearance is not as good as those produced by chemical agriculture.

There are no surveillance cameras in the fields, and agricultural producers are scattered small farmers. Getting them to strictly implement the standards of ecological agriculture is a challenge. Moreover, the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, if used properly, does not affect the products obtaining organic certification. So, under these circumstances, how to adhere to true ecological agriculture and how to effectively supervise the production process?

Xiaomully Citizen Farm's approach is to combine ecological agriculture with Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). CSA allows farmers and consumers to connect more directly, supporting each other and establishing a stable and long-term contractual relationship to support local, organic, and healthy agricultural production. At Xiaomully, the main method is the citizen adoption of vegetable plots, allowing citizens to participate in the agricultural production process.

Xiaomully has three adoption methods: independent labor, entrusted labor, and customized services. In the independent labor model, citizens adopt a 30-square-meter vegetable plot for 2500 yuan a year, planting, managing, and harvesting themselves, ensuring a steady supply of vegetables for their families; the entrusted model is suitable for citizens who do not have time to manage the vegetable plots, entrusting the vegetable plot to the farm for 4200 yuan a year, only needing to harvest; the customized service is where the farm provides citizens with customized planting, harvesting, and delivery services, suitable for citizens who pursue healthy grains and vegetables but are far from the farm and inconvenient to come.

Citizens who work themselves or frequently come to pick and play can see at a glance whether the farm is truly ecological and organic by witnessing the entire agricultural production process. Through vegetable plot adoption, citizens and Xiaomully establish a trusting relationship and deep connection, which is the foundation of Xiaomully's long-term operation.

Ecological Resources Derive Cultural Tourism Value

The benefits of ecological agriculture to society are not only pesticide-free and chemical fertilizer-free, unripened fruits and vegetables, but also aim to build a natural paradise with a superior ecological environment and harmonious coexistence of organisms. This is the foundation of rural cultural tourism.

Today, many urban people who do not understand agricultural production still have the impression of agriculture and rural areas as green, ecological, natural, and pollution-free. This is also the reason why urban people yearn for the countryside and are willing to check in to rural cultural tourism. However, due to the excessive "chemicalization" of agriculture in recent years, agriculture is no longer the pollution-free traditional agriculture. Today's agriculture is even China's largest non-point source of pollution. The use of chemical fertilizers causes water and air pollution and soil compaction. The use of pesticides kills a large number of beneficial insects and soil microorganisms. The use of plastic film leads to a large amount of plastic being buried in the soil, hindering the growth of plant roots. Agricultural pollution and the decline of soil organic matter have directly led to the extinction of a large number of organisms. Today, it is even difficult to find an earthworm in conventional farmland.

In fact, it is not today's widespread "chemical agriculture" that carries the urban people's yearning for the countryside, but ecological agriculture. In Xiaomully Citizen Farm, there are earthworms everywhere. Earthworm castings are rich in organic matter and humus, and can improve soil structure and increase soil water retention, making it the best soil for plant growth. Only in soil without chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and plastic film can earthworms reproduce in large numbers.

In addition to a thriving agricultural ecosystem, Xiaomulv has also built a forest ecosystem centered around native tree species, a wetland ecosystem based on rainwater harvesting throughout the farm, and an environmentally friendly living system that includes measures such as garbage sorting, kitchen waste composting, wheat bran dishwashing, and three-compartment ecological sanitation toilets. This creates a superior and stable habitat for thousands of species of birds, butterflies, dragonflies, amphibians, fish, insects, wildflowers, and aquatic plants.

In April 2020, the extremely endangered insect *Libellula angelina*, listed on the IUCN Red List, was discovered at the Xiaomulv Citizen Farm. *Libellula angelina* has very specific habitat requirements and had been extinct in the Beijing area for many years. Its rediscovery has excited biologists and environmentalists alike, and the news was even covered by Xinhua News Agency.

This kind of farm, ecologically healthy, teeming with species, and full of life, is the idyllic life that city dwellers yearn for. Building on its excellent ecological foundation, Xiaomulv has launched various cultural and tourism activities, becoming a rural living community that integrates farming, food education, gardening, agricultural therapy, environmental protection, and cultural creativity.

In addition to ecological planting and farming experiences, Xiaomulv also offers the Daliushu Campsite, which combines a native garden, a children's playground, a forest camping area, an ecological pond, and rice paddies for family leisure and entertainment. There is a collaborative project, "Ye Wu Edible Garden," which transformed a former pigsty into an area encompassing over 1000 plant species and various flower themes, creating a wild and natural flower landscape. It offers various nature courses, aesthetic education, and ecological healing. There is also the "Xixi Crafts Studio," a crowdsourced project focused on handmade recycling, transforming waste into warm, interesting, and practical small objects or ornaments; and the "Qingzhu Mathematics Agriculture Practice Base," which integrates agriculture with mathematics education; as well as the "Lujia Coffee Shop," where citizens can relax, socialize, and share food.

Xixi Crafts Studio

Xiaomulv's recreational activities and collaborative projects are unlike typical rural tourism projects that focus on creating trendy check-in points and so-called earth art landscapes. Xiaomulv's projects are naturally incubated based on its own philosophy, excellent ecological environment, and customer needs and trust. These offerings are difficult to replicate and foster deeper stickiness and emotional connections with tourists.

Huang Zhiyou, co-founder and executive director of Xiaomulv Citizen Farm, told Zhikoo Culture and Tourism that Xiaomulv currently has nearly 300 vegetable plot adoption members, many of whom are long-term, stable members. Many members bring their children to Xiaomulv for farming and recreation; children spend their childhood here and, as they grow up, they consider Xiaomulv their hometown and often return to visit.

Social Enterprise Shaping New Lifestyles

For typical tourism projects, tourists are merely passersby, lacking sufficient stickiness, lacking value-level exchanges, and lacking influence and shaping of lifestyle. At Xiaomulv, however, tourists are guided toward a new lifestyle and shaped by a new set of values while experiencing farming and touring the park. Tourists witness crops transforming from seeds to food, building relationships with the land and food, and personally experiencing the positive ecological impact of ecological farming. This leads to a deeper understanding of the relationship between humans and nature, rural culture, and healthy lifestyles.

In fact, Xiaomulv has made significant contributions to promoting ecological agriculture and rural construction. As early as 2010, based on its own experience, Xiaomulv promoted the CSA model nationwide, initiating the first National CSA Conference and establishing the "Citizen Agriculture CSA Alliance." Since then, a national CSA conference has been held annually, making it China's largest grassroots ecological agriculture event. This has formed a national CSA network with international influence, profoundly impacting social change and integrated urban-rural development in China, both in terms of ideas and actions.

To promote ecologically suitable technologies and the CSA operating model, and to guide organic small farmers, rural cooperatives, and various types of farms toward sustainable agriculture, Xiaomulv has successively held three national natural agriculture technology training courses and five national CSA training courses. It has also launched fifteen Xiaomulv CSA internship programs, the first relatively systematic talent cultivation program for CSA in China. It combines rural construction theory with ecological agricultural practice, providing important talent for the development of CSA and rural entrepreneurship across the country.

Meanwhile, Xiaomulv has repeatedly held farmers' markets in Beijing and the national "New Farmers' Market," promoting the development of local urban farmers' markets nationwide. In addition, Xiaomulv has published books and articles, summarizing its agricultural practices and offering policy recommendations to the government. Huang Zhiyou, co-founder and executive director of Xiaomulv Citizen Farm, also participated in writing the national forestry and grassland administration's vocational education textbook, "Ecological Rural Management."

In 2012, Xiaomulv participated in launching the national "Love Hometown Project," aiming to evoke people's enthusiasm and action in participating in hometown construction through hometown sentiment. Over the years, the Love Hometown team has successively carried out activities such as Discovering the Beauty of Hometown, Finding the Songs of Hometown, Finding New Local Elites - Love Hometown Annual Person Selection, Youth Love Hometown, Love Hometown Ecological Culture Festival, Love Hometown Conference, and Love Hometown Work Stations and Workshops, which are mass participation cultural revival activities. This has initially formed a "five-in-one" system of ecological conservation, cultural inheritance, talent cultivation, organizational reconstruction, and the prosperity of various industries, comprehensively promoting rural revitalization.

To date, the "Love Hometown Village Song Project" has, through the joint participation of old and new villagers, created over 50 co-created village songs nationwide, receiving multiple special reports from authoritative media such as CCTV, Guangming Daily, and People's Daily.

Currently, Xiaomulv is also an environmental school under the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, offering a year-round nature education curriculum to cultivate new talent in ecological agriculture. It holds large-scale events such as the Opening Plow Festival, Dragon Boat Festival, and Harvest Festival every year. It has also attracted Beijing Primary School and Peking University's Marxism College to establish farming bases at Xiaomulv, allowing primary and secondary school students to cultivate the land and increase their knowledge of farming.

Xiaomulv Citizen Farm is a self-supporting enterprise. Why does it initiate and participate in so many public welfare and semi-public welfare undertakings? This is related to Xiaomulv Citizen Farm's positioning. As an enterprise established and operated under the guidance of Professor Wen Tiejun, Xiaomulv is positioned as a social enterprise, taking on the responsibility of promoting rural construction. It inherits the ideals and valuable experience of predecessors such as Zhang Jian, Lu Zuofu, and Yan Yangchu from a hundred years ago, exploring and practicing the new rural construction movement in contemporary China.

Social enterprises do not necessarily forgo profit; rather, they prioritize social contribution, community building, and the ideal of a utopian society where everyone enjoys happiness and well-being over the interests of company shareholders. Commercial enterprises that prioritize shareholder interests may resort to exploitative practices, harming the environment and society, and shifting the costs of their development onto vulnerable groups lacking bargaining power, thereby affecting the sustainability of ecological and economic development. Social enterprises, like those established by Zhang Jian and Lu Zuofu a century ago, aim to save the nation and its people, not to amass personal wealth.

Social enterprises such as the Xiaomulv Citizen Farm are exploring a new path for rural development in contemporary China. To this end, Xiaomulv adheres to ecological agriculture, promotes CSA, initiates the Love Homeland campaign, and organizes various public and semi-public activities. These initial intentions and concepts give Xiaomulv a unique character compared to typical rural tourism projects.

Replicable Rural Tourism Model

Huang Zhiyou, co-founder and executive director of Xiaomulv Citizen Farm, told Zhikoo Culture and Tourism that Xiaomulv's revenue is divided into three parts: agricultural operations, tourism operations, and partnership projects, each accounting for one-third of the total revenue.

Farm adoption members work regularly each week, bringing Xiaomulv a stable base of customers and basic operating income. The farm's excellent ecology and social recognition have attracted study tours, team-building activities, gatherings, and many individual tourists, amplifying the tourism value and revenue. The strong ecological foundation and social enterprise philosophy have attracted many partners to join, expanding the farm's richness and playability through co-creation, avoiding difficulties in content iteration and homogenization.

A diversified customer structure, diverse revenue streams, content iteration mechanisms, and the high customer loyalty and repeat visits generated by the ecological agriculture concept are key to Xiaomulv's solution to the challenges faced by typical rural tourism projects, such as over-reliance on tourist traffic, significant peak and off-season issues, content experience homogenization, and lack of consumer stickiness.

This offers insights for numerous rural tourism investors: the focus should not be solely on tourism. Projects that exist solely for tourism struggle to develop unique characteristics. A more suitable approach is to combine tourism with ecological agriculture, rural characteristic industries, and rural culture. Success in ecological agriculture, rural industries, and culture will naturally lead to successful tourism. This type of tourism, based on the project's inherent characteristics, possesses true and lasting vitality.

Is Xiaomulv's experience replicable? Clearly, it is. Xiaomulv is one of the earliest enterprises in China engaged in ecological agriculture, and has been committed to promoting ecological agriculture and the CSA model, which is now flourishing across the country.

For example, the Sharing Harvest Farm in Shunyi, Beijing, whose founder, Shi Yan, is from the Xiaomulv team and a student of Professor Wen Tiejun, practices ecological agriculture and the CSA model, and is another banner of ecological agriculture in China. Its farm has been included in the sustainable agriculture case studies by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Lǜzhǐshǒu Organic Farm in Zhuhai, whose founder, Zou Zilong, interned at Xiaomulv during university and is also a student of Professor Wen Tiejun, provides citizens with green and organic healthy agricultural products using the model of ecological agriculture and CSA pre-sales. The farm integrates primary, secondary, and tertiary industries. In addition to selling fruits and vegetables, it has its own agricultural product processing plant, producing canned goods, fruit and vegetable juices, freeze-dried fruits and vegetables, meat floss, and meat products. It also offers ecological parks, organic restaurants, fruit and vegetable picking, animal interactions, intangible cultural heritage crafts, and ecological classes. Currently, Lǜzhǐshǒu Organic Farm has an annual revenue of 80 million yuan.

Xiaomulv's experience is replicable, and rural tourism projects based on ecological agriculture are viable. But can tourism enterprises manage ecological agriculture themselves? In fact, the difficulty of rural tourism projects based on ecological agriculture lies not in the high threshold of ecological agriculture, but in the willingness to put in the effort. In reality, the threshold for ecological agriculture is not high at all; many ecological agriculture projects are started by a single returning youth. The challenge lies in upholding the principles and putting in the hard work.

Furthermore, tourism enterprises can adopt a cooperative model for ecological agriculture-based tourism projects, collaborating with ecological agriculture teams and focusing on their respective strengths. In 2021, Xiaomulv Citizen Farm collaborated with Siping Village in Pingnan County, Ningde City, Fujian Province, to jointly build a project. Xiaomulv developed a comprehensive village operation plan for Siping Village, establishing the development direction of "Slow Life Creative Village" with cultural and creative leadership, agricultural innovation empowerment, and co-creation and sharing. Using collective economy as the organizational carrier and ecological agriculture, e-commerce live streaming, and CSA model-based production-consumption docking and integration of the three industries as means, it created core projects such as Xiaomulv Siping Farm, Nostalgia Product Pavilion, Love Homeland Station, and Starry Sky Camp, promoting the overall development of the entire village.

Siping Village, Pingnan County, Ningde City

From a single ecological farm to participating in the overall village operation and promoting the development of the entire village, ecological agriculture is playing an increasingly important role in rural revitalization and urban-rural integration.

Ecological agriculture-based rural tourism projects demonstrate a healthy revenue structure and diversified customer structure, high consumption frequency and stickiness, unique and non-homogenous experiences, and continuous iteration capabilities, addressing the shortcomings of current tourism-focused rural tourism projects. Ecological agriculture-based rural tourism projects represent a viable product type. This is the "alternative experience" that Xiaomulv Citizen Farm brings to the tourism industry.