The Last Farmers of Dali

A favorite pastime in this house is simply staring out the window. I do this with a slight twinge of guilt, though the sages long ago noted that nothing induces a trance quite like a flickering fire, flowing water, or the planting of onions. Since we are in Yunnan, the opportunity to witness all three presents itself for most of the year.

The most striking feature of the Dali region is its sheer agricultural intensity. While the immediate vicinity is dominated by cabbage, kohlrabi, corn, beans, celtuce, and those hypnotic onions, these give way to traditional staples like rice and tobacco in the lower plains. Together, they make the Erhai Valley one of the most vital agricultural—and historically, political—hubs in northwest Yunnan.

In his 1911 classic, *Farmers of Forty Centuries*, the American agronomist Franklin Hiram King sought to understand how the people of China, Korea, and Japan managed to feed vast populations without exhausting the soil. Traveling through East Asia, King discovered a sophisticated system designed to squeeze every drop of yield from a single plot. This was achieved through relentless planting cycles, intricate irrigation, legume rotations, and the meticulous recycling of every scrap of organic matter—animal manure, plant residues, canal sludge, wood ash, kitchen scraps, and, inevitably, human waste.

In the depleted China of the late Qing Dynasty, land was a luxury while labor was cheap. Every inch of earth, every embankment and canal, was mobilized to produce food, fuel, fiber, or fertilizer. It was a system that preserved soil fertility over centuries and supported dense populations by relying on traditional knowledge, disciplined resource management, and backbreaking work.

In modern terms—and despite the book becoming a favorite among organic farming circles—the methods King documented were pre-industrial in the harshest sense, rather than "permaculture" in the idealized one. They allowed for the sustained support of massive populations without industrial backing or mechanization, but they demanded constant communal effort. The system offered high yields and stability, but its price was a crushing workload, health risks, vulnerability to disaster, and a level of rural poverty that barred the way to industrialization.

By 2026, Chinese agriculture faces a reckoning. The farming workforce is aging rapidly, while the younger generation naturally prefers the cleaner, easier prospects of urban service-sector jobs.

In the industrialized East, much of the agricultural sector is undergoing a necessary transition toward mechanization, land consolidation, and corporate management. Meanwhile, in the West and Southwest—in the rugged mountains of Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan—small family plots of less than two acres and an aging population of farmers remain the norm.

The government has responded with its "Rural Revitalization" policy, pushing subsidies, smart drones, and land tenure reforms to lure entrepreneurs and youth back to the countryside. Yet the long-term trend remains precarious, particularly in a nation where food security is a matter of existential survival.

Dali’s temperate climate, nestled in a high valley between the tropical and the alpine, allows this agricultural intensity to persist year-round. It is a feat of endurance achieved through the very real, very visible sweat I see through my window.

There is no doubt that mechanization, corporate models, and AI are necessary if the community is to be fed, and perhaps one shouldn't mourn the turning of the world. And yet, it is impossible not to catch one's breath as the sun sets over the last farmers of Dali.