From pavement to produce: Citizen's farms help Suwon residents flex their green thumbs

Suwon residents are buzzing about the Tap-dong Citizen's Farm, which offers farming opportunities to citizens through a lottery system.

Suwon citizens Lee Chan-woo, his wife Shin Hyun-sun and their daughter plant and water crops at the Suwon Tap-dong Citizen's Farm during its opening weekend in mid-March. [KIM JU-YEON]

SUWON, Gyeonggi — On a warm and sunny Sunday in mid-March, Suwon citizens armed with shovels and water cans and clad in comfortable outfits flocked to the Tap-dong neighborhood in the heart of the city, ready for a day of farmwork.

It was the Suwon Tap-dong Citizen’s Farm's opening weekend, and the air buzzed with excitement as families loosened soil and marked out plots for their crops.

The farm is part of a state-run program that began in 2013, aiming to provide Suwon residents with green spaces and opportunities to farm. The farmland is carved into individual plots of land that are assigned to Suwon families through an annual lottery system. The program prioritizes those from underprivileged corners of society, ranging from people with disabilities to multiethnic households.

“I’m planting strawberries for my daughters,” said Lee Chan-woo, aged 39, who came with his wife and their two daughters aged 7 and 10.

“I helped my father in our home garden when I was younger but it’s the first time growing crops on my own, on my own plot of land. I think I got lucky with the lottery system because of my disability,” he said.

Red poppies fill Suwon Tap-dong Citizen's Farm's gardens in late spring. [NEWS1]

The farm sprawls over 119,635 square meters (29.56 acres) of land in Gwonseon District, western Suwon. It borders the Gyeonggi Sangsang Campus, and both are built on Seoul National University's old campus site for its College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

The area is completely open to the public and also consists of gardens and soft grass fields, which are popular weekend spots for many. Now filled with poppies, the gardens will soon be replaced by sunflowers — a sanctuary for the grey-capped greenfinch — and broom cypress, buckwheat flowers and Chinese silver grass in the fall.

Buckwheat flowers fill Suwon Tap-dong Citizen's Farm's gardens in autumn. Photo taken on Sept. 22, 2023 .[NEWS1]

Through the Citizen’s Farm, participants get to plant and harvest crops and flowers of their liking, and are only restricted from using chemical pesticides. Suwon citizens who were unlucky with the lottery system can also sign up to pick and bring home the farm’s produce, including potatoes, corn, sweet potatoes and radishes, at the website of Suwon’s Agricultural Technology Center.

For the 39-year-old Lee, it’s a chance for him to bond with his daughters and take part in physical exercise for his body. He also hopes to use the experience to enter other government-sponsored agricultural enterprise programs, as he was laid off from work after an industrial accident left him paralyzed from the neck down.

“I think it’s good for both his physical and mental rehabilitation,” his wife, Shin Hyun-sun, said. “And it’s nice for the children to have some place where they can play in open spaces, feel the dirt and experience growing their own food.”

The Suwon Tap-dong Citizen's Farm houses ponds that bloom with lotuses in the middle of summer. Pictured is a great reed warbler at a pond in July 2023. [YONHAP]

For older citizens or children, the easily accessible farm can be a refreshing break from urban life.

“People really look forward to the farm opening its doors in the spring,” Kim Young-hwa, 57, said. “It’s a source of joy for a lot of families.”

Kim has been farming at the citizen’s farm for six years, ever since it moved to its current spot. The farm was originally located at Dangsu-dong from 2013 to 2017 before reopening in Tap-dong in 2019.

She says she gives away the produce, which she says is “abundant — too much for one family,” as well as the flowers from her garden to her neighbors and friends. She also works as an instructor for the farming class program for disabled citizens.

“My students always tell me about how they prepared and ate the vegetables, and they’re so proud that they grew and harvested them themselves. It’s very rewarding.”

Suwon citizen Kim Young-hwa waters her newly planted seedlings at the Suwon Tap-dong Citizen's Farm. [KIM JU-YEON]

The Suwon farm in Tap-dong is just one of the many regional and local government urban agriculture programs. There are three other citizen's farms in Suwon, and 11 programs are operated by Seoul, such as at the Yongsan Family Park.

Although they are cited to improve quality of life and are popular with the public, they are also prone to shutting down as they become reassigned for other usage. The Tap-dong farm, for instance, lost its spot in Dangsu-dong so that public housing could be built on the land.

Suwon Tap-dong's Citizen Farm's farmland is divided into individual plots of land that are assigned to families through an annual lottery system. [KIM O-SEONG]

Whether the farm will remain at this location is also unclear.

The Suwon government has been paying 600 million won ($439,000) a year to rent out the land from the Ministry of Economy and Finance since 2013. The contract to use the land expires in January next year.

The Suwon city government attempted to purchase the land in 2019 but failed to reach an agreement with the Korea Asset Management Corporation, which said the land would be used for other purposes, according to a 2022 report from the local newspaper M-Economy.

“I’m scared that the farm will disappear just as quietly if we remain silent,” Kim said. “Yes, the people who want to farm will find another place somehow. But there’s no other place like this one.”

The results on whether the contract will be extended will come out sometime in June, Jeong Hye-rim, a Suwon Agricultural Technology Center employee in charge of the farm’s operations, said. Whether the citizen’s farm will continue in its current location or move to a different place, should the contract fall through, is up for discussion.

BY KIM JU-YEON [kim.juyeon2@joongang.co.kr]