Before, factory enterprises would treat their employees with dinner parties and KTV singing to reward them. Now, the employee benefits have changed to organic vegetables and farm leisure activities. Times have changed, values have changed, but in fact, it's the environment that has changed.
Liang Chuyuan is accustomed to checking her company's intranet before going home every day. It's not for meeting records or work schedules, but just to see - if there are any vegetables for sale today.
Liang Chuyuan works at a hardware factory with 2500 people in the Pearl River Delta region. Since 2009, the administrative department occasionally sells vegetables. The vegetables sold are common types like lettuce and Chinese broccoli, but they taste sweet and full of flavor. When cooking, you don't need to add too much oil to make a very good vegetable soup. Later, she found out that these were "safe vegetables" grown by the company's own farm.
Checking if there are any vegetables for sale before going home every day is a habit among a few female colleagues in the office. The factory doesn't supply vegetables on a fixed schedule. You need to closely monitor the announcements on the internal network to catch the right time. Each time vegetables are brought from the farm, there is no fixed quantity, it all depends on the harvest situation. However, every time the farm truck arrives, everyone in the factory is very happy. "As soon as the vegetable delivery truck is still on the road, the colleagues who received the notification are happily waiting in the office," said Xie Shuyi, the director of the administration department.
Since 2009, news about "unsafe food" has been heard from time to time. Li, the head of the hardware factory, thought about ways to make employees eat healthier. Later, he decided to rent a farm and "grow environmental-friendly vegetables for our own consumption."
The farm rented by the hardware factory covers an area of 80 mu (about 13 acres). The rent was cheaper than ordinary factories. According to Xie Shuyi's recollection, it was about 1000 yuan per mu annually. This land is agricultural reserve land, meaning it can only be used for farming and breeding, not for other purposes. The lease term is 5 years. There are only four people managing the farm: Cao Zhiming, the manager and security guard of the farm, pig farmer Liang Hui, Aunt Xiao, and another vegetable farmer.
Aunt Xiao is 56 years old. She used to grow flowers in the factory and started growing vegetables after the farm was built. "For winter-planted vegetables, we spray pesticides once every 15 days, but 25 days before harvesting, we absolutely do not spray pesticides." Under the limited technology and capital conditions, the farm cannot yet achieve pesticide-free cultivation. In the early stage of cultivation, there is one application of pesticides, while adjacent farms apply pesticides two to three times according to the normal planting method.
"Because of less pesticide use, the appearance of the vegetables may be a bit poor. For growing wild vegetables like water spinach, it can be completely pesticide-free. Fertilizers are made from pig manure, with a little chemical fertilizer added..." Aunt Xiao becomes energetic when talking about growing vegetables. Her current job mainly involves sowing, weeding, watering, and occasionally spraying pesticides and fertilizing. It's more interesting than growing flowers.
In addition to growing vegetables, the farm also has fish ponds for raising the four major carp species and pigpens for raising pigs. If the pigs in the farm become too fat, the factory will not give them to the employees to eat but sell them instead. "Pigs must be fed feed until they reach about three months old and weigh around 60 catties (about 30 kg), then they start being fed leftover food from the factory canteen mixed with slightly inferior rice," the reporter learned that the farm had just sold a batch of pigs, and there are currently 76 pigs left, including 59 piglets.
Besides minimizing pesticide use, this farm also aims to be self-sufficient. "The farm has built a biogas pool. Pig manure and urine are flushed into the biogas pool and processed into liquid through biogas treatment, then directed to the fertilizer bucket, mixed with chicken manure, fermented for a week, which increases the organic content of the fertilizer. Sometimes chemical fertilizer is also added, but the proportion does not exceed one in twenty," said Cao Zhiming. These biogas also provides energy support for the four people living on the farm. Their eating, drinking, and living in the farm all rely on biogas energy. And from the farm to the factory, it forms a very good cycle: leftover food feeds the pigs, pig manure turns into fertilizer for growing vegetables, pesticide-free vegetables are sold to people in the factory, and the income from selling vegetables supports various expenses of the farm. This model that looks very much like "self-sufficiency" is praised by Xie Shuyi, "It's self-sufficient, but far from enough."
Compared to buying vegetables from the market for the employee canteen in the past, using the farm to supply vegetables now costs much more and requires more effort. But the factory does not want to cover this gap by selling vegetables. The vegetables sold by the factory are cheaper than those in the market. Generally, vegetables that cost 1.5 yuan per catty in the market are sold for 0.7 to 0.8 yuan in the unit. Any unsold vegetables on the same day are taken to the factory canteen for consumption.
There are quite a few companies in the Pearl River Delta like this hardware factory that have their own special supply farms. A Sino-Hong Kong joint logistics company in the new airport logistics park in Huadu, Guangzhou also supplies vegetables directly from their farm to employees. Fire safety supervisor Xuanfu said that they could eat farm-supplied vegetables three times a week. Although they ate common vegetables like bok choy, Chinese broccoli, and green beans, the kitchen did not post grand announcements, but they could clearly distinguish that they were eating organic vegetables. "Organic vegetables have a significantly different taste, they are very sweet and refreshing without residue."
Supplying food, also supplying a new lifestyle
Last Christmas, Liang Chuyuan called her daughter after work, "Don't wait for me to come home for dinner. Tonight, our factory is organizing a trip to the farm for the holiday."
Now this farm, besides supplying vegetables, has also become an alternative leisure destination for factory group activities. In the past, most activities were held in restaurants or karaoke places, but now the factory celebrates holidays or holds department meetings by arranging trips to the farm. The export department, development department, and finance department all come to the farm for vacations, each time with thirty to forty people.
Since the factory is already in the suburban area, it takes about 40 minutes by car to reach the farm from the factory. Last Christmas Eve was organized by departments, each group contributed two dishes, all ingredients came from the farm, including various vegetables, chicken, duck, fish, meat, freely selected and combined, then voted and scored.
Colleagues showed off their skills, making tomato sauce fish, roasted chicken wings, stir-fried chicken, everyone was busy. Finally, Liang Chuyuan's group made sushi and won the first place due to its good appearance and taste.
The restaurant in the farm can accommodate seventy to eighty people at once. Employees harvest themselves, cook themselves, the activity is simply DIY at the farm, but employees are very enthusiastic about going to the farm. They can breathe fresh air in the suburbs and eat safe vegetables, which are very popular among employees.
Not all factory enterprises have the ability to provide safe vegetables for their employees. Like this hardware factory, it is a minority, but "how to make employees eat healthily" is a nationwide issue.
Of course, organic food is good, but cost control is equally important. As the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) supervisor of a French-funded enterprise, Yuan Xia is also responsible for purchasing year-end employee benefits. This year, Yuan Xia also encountered a dilemma in purchasing benefits. Although the previous year-end employee benefits were just oil and rice, this year Yuan Xia wanted to buy healthier "organic" food for the employees, but seeing the price tag in the supermarket made her hesitate.
Ordinary loose rice eaten by ordinary people costs 1.5 yuan per catty, relatively better packaged rice costs 3.6 yuan per catty, high-end brand Thai fragrant rice costs 4.8 yuan per catty, but good quality organic rice is as high as 6.5 yuan per catty. With the same budget, each employee could take home two bags of ordinary rice plus a bucket of oil, but if organic rice is issued, each person would only get a small bag of rice. Would employees feel that "the company's benefits have been reduced"? After careful consideration, Yuan Xia still chose organic rice, domestically produced, 4.6 yuan per catty, each employee gets a small bag. Fortunately, the employees did not complain about the smaller quantity but were very satisfied with the organic rice, including several French colleagues stationed in Beijing.
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