Why This Marketing Manager Now Farms Asian Crops In N.B.
MEMRAMCOOK – In Shanghai, Tony Tang was a sales and marketing manager in a multinational firm. But in New Brunswick, the nature-lover has found a new passion in farming.
“For me, [farming] is like a journey, kind of. If you plant a seed you don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said. “But with the seed planted, you’re expecting. Some will be a success, some will not. You just follow along the process.”
“When you grow [crops] and become good harvest and people like it, you feel satisfaction out of it…it’s a good feeling also,” he added.
Tang now lives on a farm that he runs called New Garden Organics, located on the bank of the Petitcodiac river just outside of Moncton. He uses his marketing and sales expertise to help him run the business that aims to bring more diversity to the organic vegetable offerings in the region.
Tang started working on the farm last August, but it received its organic certification just a couple of weeks ago. He grows plants often used in East Asian and Southeast Asian dishes, like bok choy, daikon, edible chrysanthemum, gailan (Chinese kale), pea shoots and others.
New Garden Organics offers boxes of vegetables through the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) model, through which consumers buy shares of the harvest at the beginning of the season. The CSA boxes are delivered to clients when they’re ready.
With just Tang on staff and the help of friends from time to time, for this year, New Garden Organics can only supply 15 boxes, mostly to the Chinese community in the Greater Moncton Area, though he has some Korean and local customers as well.
“It works so far. You can say it’s beginner’s luck because I’ve really got a loyal group of customers from the local Chinese community…so I plant around this group’s demand,” he said. “It’s a lot of stuff that is not easily available in the stores, so that’s why it’s popular with the Chinese community.”
He says small organic farms are labour-intensive and quite expensive to run compared to conventional mass-scale farming, so he prefers direct sales through things like CSA boxes or possibly later, at farmers’ markets, rather than through retail grocers.
This year, Tang says he’s focused on seeing which crops grow best. Next year, he hopes to be able to hire staff and increase the number of CSA boxes offered to 50.
A New Start
Tang named his farm New Garden Organics to signify a new start of his life and career in Canada, his new home since 2016. He was first exposed to farming in late 2017, following which he took part in a community garden for a season.
“I saw such bountiful harvest from a small piece of land,” he said, adding that he realized he could grow some of his favourite Chinese vegetables here.
After doing some reading, talking to local farmers, visiting a successful Chinese-run farm in Manitoba, and even volunteering at a farm for one summer, Tang decided to give his new passion a try.
It took him about a year to find the right property, which turned out to be a former horse farm in Memramcook. He began growing three beds of vegetables last August to test.
Tang realizes there’s a niche market in catering to ethnic communities because he’s been in their shoes.
“When I went shopping, I couldn’t find the stuff I really like or they’re not good quality [because] of shipping,” he said, explaining that the vegetables available in stores right now are usually shipped from other parts of Canada or abroad.
There are not many choices, the prices are still high, and the time it takes to ship the vegetables changes their flavour profile. Shipping from so far away also means more carbon footprint.
“Overall, it’s a lack of quality. I think there’s potential enough…This year I can see that [my crops] are just not enough for the demand,” he said.
With Covid-19 showing the need for more self-sufficiency in agriculture in New Brunswick, Tang wants more people to realize that they could try planting more vegetables to cater to ethnic communities here, too.
With more newcomers settling in the region, he expects demand for diverse crops to grow.
“I know there’s a niche market there. Canada is an immigration country, so definitely, this demographic will remain for coming years,” he said.
Immigration is also a key pillar for the agricultural sector’s succession and labour strategy, according to an industry workforce development strategy commissioned by Agricultural Alliance of New Brunswick.
The strategy, published in May, proposes medium-to-long-term solutions to help more New Brunswickers enter the sector, and help farmers automate. But as the province’s farmers’ age with many not able to pass their farms to their children, the strategy proposes that newcomers can buy those farms, like Tang did.
In the coming years, he hopes to grow fruits, flowers and have poultry on his farm, as he builds it to be an ecological, permaculture farm.
“The idea is nature manages itself,” he said. “This concept is not new. It’s just going back to the basics, to the old-time farming.”
For Tang, this is also his way of contributing to the community in a changing time.
“Because the way I farm is very organic, I don’t use chemical spray or anything. For customers, they’ll have better health. For the planet, less carbon emission,” he said.