A rooster crows in the morning at Shared Harvest Beijing's poultry farm in suburban Beijing. Wu Zhou raises 4,500 free-range chickens on the farm. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Wu is grateful to the villagers. He wanted to sustainably improve their livelihoods.

The pristine forest gave him the idea to raise chickens.

He spent months reading stacks of graduate-level books on organic poultry farming.

Wu found raising 3,500 free-range chickens to be easier than expected. But selling them was harder.

"The chicken dealers in town cared more about the profits than about quality," he says.

"Nobody wanted my free-range flocks at 30 yuan per kilogram."

Wu had to use his local government connections to retail his chickens to high-end hotels.

But the failure to find regular buyers lingered in his mind, even after he left the village.

It occurred to him that the lack of direct connections between farmers and consumers may be a reason for the flight of labor from the countryside.

The group had struggled to find someone with both academic expertise and practical experience. Wu offered to fill the gap.

"Many agriculture majors volunteered here last year, but none stayed," Wu says.

"The living conditions and the salaries aren't what they'd expected. But they might have underestimated sustainable agriculture's future."

This year, Wu plans to complete the integrated-farming model long discussed by academics but not yet created. He hopes to raise 4,500 more chickens and bring in 2.8 million yuan for the farmers.

He also wishes to visit different farms around the world.

"I want to write an informative, interesting and easy-to-understand book about organic farming," Wu says.

"I've already got my target readers in mind."