Chicken farmer spreads her wings, and business takes off

The Chinese government's supply-side reforms urge the modernization of agriculture and call for innovative, sustainable farming models. But it's hard to imagine a farm as innovative as Zhou Jing's, where 2 million chickens roost in the pine trees of East China's Jiangxi province.

"Compared with fast-growing chickens that are ready for slaughter within 20 days, our chickens live cage-free for at least 150 days in the woods," said Zhou, who is a graduate of Canada's University of Windsor.

The twenty-something entrepreneur gave up a white-collar job in Canada in 2013 to return to her hometown in Fuzhou, so she could raise the free-range chickens in the forest where her parents had farmed 1,000 hectares for more than a decade.

Zhou is expanding and evolving an idea of her father's, who first released chickens into the woods about seven years ago.

He did so because he had no time to attend to them in captivity. The birds soon adapted.

"Only those birds that are strong and good at flying can live for a long time in the woods," said Zhou Jing. "It's survival of the fittest."

And she believes such naturally raised birds are exactly what China's increasingly discerning consumers now demand as they seek quality food.

"More and more Chinese people are buying overseas products, due to food safety concerns back home," she said. "They are no longer satisfied with fast food, like fried chicken and hamburgers."

But she said it is hard to make a good living on a small-scale farm by selling a bit of everything, so the family decided to find a niche by going green.

After expanding her parents' chicken-raising operation, she dug a ditch through the forest to channel waste water into a pond, where she released snails and mudfish. They not only helped purify the water but provided a food source for the soft-shell turtles she started raising.

The pond water where the turtles lived was pumped into a paddy field where she grew rice.

Zhou has even innovated when it comes to collecting the eggs, getting tourists to do the job while having a back-to-nature experience.

Zhou's chickens, which are sold under the brand Flying Phoenix, sell for three or four times as much as typical factory-farm birds.

Last year, her farm generated revenue of 100 million yuan ($15.4 million).

Now, the local authorities are planning to invite high-profile chefs to make dishes using Zhou's chickens in the hope that the publicity will encourage other farmers to go green.

Zhou said her style of farming is not only the sort of innovation and modernization the government is looking for; it's what she was looking for in life as well.