Zeppelin promotes food education: Friendly farming methods make "ugly vegetables" just as nutritious!

Ambitions unfulfilled! It is a pity that Chi Peilin, the famous director who filmed the documentary "Seeing Taiwan", was killed in a plane crash. During his lifetime, he not only cared about Taiwan's land issues and environmental conservation, but also attached great importance to food safety. This year, I participated in the "Taiwan Food Education Year One" event and served as a food education ambassador. I shared the "ugly vegetable" sweet potato delicacies grown by Miaoli County farmer Hong Xiang using friendly farming methods. Although they look ugly in appearance, they are actually as nutritious as ordinary sweet potatoes.

Documentary "Seeing Taiwan" wins major awards at home and abroad

Chi Peilin filmed the documentary "Seeing Taiwan" in 2013, which set the highest box office record for documentaries in Taiwan's film history with a box office of 220 million yuan. The film also won the Best Documentary Award at the 50th Golden Horse Awards. In 2014, he won the Special Jury Award and Best Photography Award at the Houston International Film Festival. This is not only an honor for the "See Taiwan" team, but also allows the international community to see Taiwan and the energy and strength of Taiwan's cultural and creative industries. It was announced a few days ago that the filming of "Seeing Taiwan II" had begun, and the filming locations would be expanded from Taiwan to Japan, New Zealand, Malaysia and China. Unexpectedly, there was an unfortunate accident at work.

Meet the "Hongxiang Lady" and learn about her friendly farming methods

Through work, Chi Peilin met the farmer "Hong Xiang Xia" from Wanbao Village, Houlong Town, Miaoli. He learned that she successfully protected her land and used friendly farming methods, emphasizing that agricultural products are non-toxic, so that everyone can eat healthy food. Chi Peilin was very moved. The following is the full text of Chi Peilin's post on the Facebook page of the Taiwan Food Education Association:

Led Zeppelin's Flight over Taiwan

Actually, when I was looking for a topic for shooting Taiwan, I didn't want to shoot the sweet potatoes in Hong Xiang. In 2007, the Miaoli County Government turned the land in Wanbao into an industrial zone. When I discovered this, I actually wanted to talk about the issue of land justice. Later, when we went to chat with Hong Xiang, we found out that the Wanbao area you see now is by the sea and can only grow peanuts. It is sandy land, but their ancestors have been changing the soil in large quantities to improve the land. They brought soil from the mountains to the seaside and mixed it with the sand to make it into good quality farmland, and then they can grow rice and other things.

After they worked hard for so many years to improve the land, our government wanted to expropriate it in an industrial way in order to develop technology. So at that time, Sister Hong Xiang was a female hero who came out to lead everyone to fight against the expropriation of land. Later, I learned that at that time, Hong Xiang's family had already used friendly farming methods, because her grandfather and her father, according to our past farming concepts, they put a lot of pesticides and fertilizers, which caused a burden on the land, and even directly harmed their own relatives who were farmers during the spraying of pesticides, so she decided to change this method, and then Hong Xiang and her family began to use friendly farming methods.

As you can see, in their sweet potato fields, weeds and sweet potatoes coexist. There is a very famous saying in Hongxiang, "What the insects leave behind is ours." We all know that agriculture is the foundation of the country, and farmers are the best guardians of the land. If you give it a good piece of farmland, it will take good care of our land.

This inevitably makes me worried. Now, because there are many places where our farmland is not used for agriculture, you are very worried that if the farmland is used for other purposes in the future, as in Taichung and Changhua, where a lot of farmland has become Taiwan's most high-tech factories, this is actually something that everyone should worry about.

So I filmed the process of them working hard in the fields to grow sweet potatoes. Later I found out that there is a science to growing sweet potatoes. Why? Because there is a severe shortage of agricultural labor in rural areas, there are only old people and children left, and no one can farm. So they invented a practice of shared farming in Wanbao. Anyone who is willing to practice friendly farming with Ms. Hong Xiang can cultivate everyone's land together, help each other with the harvest, and then share the profits.

So, the sweet potato I brought today is called "chestnut sweet potato". It looks small and ugly, but it is actually very nutritious and very delicious. I went to buy sweet potatoes from Hong Xiang. They are very interesting. When you shop at the market, you have to pick the good-looking ones. For example, if I buy 50 kilograms of sweet potatoes, he will give me 50 kilograms as a gift. He will separate the ugly ones. But in the process of eating, they are actually equally good.

Therefore, the name "Ugly Vegetables" means to me that I can often introduce to everyone the ugly vegetable delicacies of Hongxiang. Because of this, I learned that Taiwan had some concerns about food safety in the past. We really hope that through the Food Education Association, everyone can eat healthily and have a better future.