This lecture will cover urban agriculture in the cities of Guiyang and Wuhan, as well as the Miao and Dong ethnic minority villages in Guizhou province. 

Many ethnic minority villages have settled along the Guiyang basin for hundreds of years.However, these villages and the farmland belonging to them are being encroached upon by urbanization. Today, leftover farmland and villages exists among the tall buildings and big roads.

In the city of Wuhan, subsistence farming practices have endured on rooftops and in vacant lots in in the city despite urbanization and laws preventing land to be used as farmland.

And in Miao and Dong ethnic minority villages in Southwest China, we find ecological and cultural evidence of the harmonious co-existence between humans and nature. Throughout history, different communities have adapted to their different ecological environments in different ways, resulting in unique agriculture, social and cultural systems such as the rice paddy terrace and rice-duck-fish system.

Dr. Juanjuan Liu is Chair of the Landscape Architecture Department of Guizhou Normal University in Guiyang, China.