Unfolding the Dining Table: The Year’s Defining Keywords
Over the past year, Foodthink, in its commitment to food and farming systems, has kept its focus on ‘climate change’, ‘delivery platforms’, ‘imported meat’, and ‘smallholder stories’. We have documented how farmers continuously adapt to extreme weather, questioned how technology and capital are reshaping food systems, and examined the blow dealt to local small-scale farmers by global trade.
Beyond our routine priorities—publishing articles, hosting events, and launching the agroecology internship programme—we also ventured into new territory: hosting ‘The Floating Table’ food and farming media workshop, publishing the report *Research on Action Paths for Rural Social Organisations to Cope with Climate Change*, and organising a ‘Local Agroecology Systems Co-learning Camp’ for our farming friends.
Throughout the year, our team visited villages, markets, and kitchens across the country; chatted with delivery riders on the streets; and travelled to Southeast Asia and Europe to understand the challenges faced by smallholders in other regions.
What follows is a record of Foodthink’s writing and observations over the past year. We invite you to take this opportunity to review the food and farming highlights of 2025 with us, and to preserve our collective memory of food, the land, and those who labour upon it.
In the coming year, we invite our readers to look closer at the food beneath their feet, around them, and upon their tables—to continue listening to the voice of the land and to reflect on where our food choices are leading the future.
– Signals of Disorder –
Looking at agricultural disasters, climate ‘disruption’ has become the norm; farmers can no longer rely on past weather patterns to judge and plan their production rationally. From the droughts in Shaanxi and the continuous rain in North China to the succession of super typhoons in the South, it seems no one was prepared.
Shaanxi Drought: Fruit That Cannot Be Saved, Wheat That Cannot Be Watered
72 Hours of Torrential Rain: Destroyed Paddy Fields, Interrupted Lives
4 AM: A Miyun Farm Swallowed by Floods
On the Eve of Harvest, Western Guangdong Farmers Encounter the ‘Global Wind King’
Is there nothing that can be done besides suffering these disasters? Farmers are often the first to sense climate change, and consequently, the first to take action. They are not helpless. On the contrary, in an era of frequent extreme weather, these people are already actively adapting:
As the Weather Gets Drier, How Can Rice Still Be Grown?
When Extreme Heat Becomes the Norm, These Farmers Choose a Different Way of Life (Part I)
When Extreme Heat Becomes the Norm, These Farmers Choose a Different Way of Life (Part II)
The North Turns South: Farmers Busy Digging Ditches
Coffee Prices Soaring: Why Are Yunnan Coffee Farmers Still Worried?
While agriculture faces climatic and ecological crises, our food faces the challenge of ‘invasion’ — Fall Armyworms, microplastics, fossil fuels, and hidden additives. Is our food still healthy?
When the Fall Armyworm Flies into China’s Maize Fields
Microplastics Invade the Brain: How Can We Escape Plastic Anxiety?
Can Humans Escape Their Toxic Relationship with Plastic?
How Many Fossil Fuels Have You ‘Consumed’?
Rice That Isn’t Rice, Flour That Isn’t Flour: Are Modern Staples Still Healthy?
The Secret in Supermarket Oil Bottles: Is Refined Vegetable Oil Truly Good?
As food is contaminated and reshaped, the very concept of ‘health’ begins to waver. Who exactly defines ‘nutrition’? Who dominates the public’s understanding of a healthy diet? Amidst the conflicting opinions, we need to return to our bodies, to common sense, and to redefine ‘health’.
Nutritionists Become ‘Lackeys’ for Food Giants? Perspectives from Registered Nutritionists
Between Monetising Traffic and Professional Ethics: Should Nutritionists Accept Advertisements?
Is Weight Loss Just Dieting? We Suggest You Read This Genuine Weight Loss Guide
– The Cost of Efficiency –
When food is encoded as an order that must be delivered within 30 minutes, ‘eating’ ceases to be merely an experience for the diner; it becomes a cost borne by the worker. One-click delivery is faster, certainly, but the real distance between people and their food has grown. The many stages from soil to table have been ‘folded’ away; when we can no longer see how food is brought to our table step by step, who is choosing what we eat? How much control do we still have over the act of eating?
Who actually gets a ‘good meal’ from ‘Pin Hao Fan’?
Business wars in the rain, and the delivery driver’s miserable summer
A professional lawyer explains the differences in social security schemes between JD and Meituan
Can you make a living delivering food on foot in Australia?
The ‘McCult’ worker on the assembly line
Fresh produce e-commerce sorters running within the algorithm
Meituan’s acquisition of Dingdong Maicai became a major news story, but few people cared that another wet market had disappeared.
As platforms engage in fierce battle, physical spaces are vanishing. When fresh produce e-commerce, community group buying, and platform subsidies take over the city, it doesn’t just change the way some people work; it changes how urban consumers buy their groceries. The demise of the wet market comes at a cost: consumers find it increasingly difficult to understand food, and even more difficult to understand the price of food.
But we often forget that a wet market has always been more than just a place to buy groceries. It is the connection point between city and country, between food and agriculture. When it disappears, food becomes an abstraction.
Who drove away the wet markets?
Will fresh produce e-commerce make wet markets disappear?
The lychee harvest is plentiful, so why isn’t it cheaper online?
Speaking of wet markets, there are a few things we want to say
Efficiency has changed how the city buys produce, and it has reached deep into the fields to change how we ‘grow’ it. Technology is rapidly taking over the farmland; however, technology is not neutral. It can improve efficiency, but it can also intensify our dependence on it and amplify the risks involved. When pesticide spraying and data tracking are dominated by drone pilots and machines, can farmers truly practice ‘scientific farming’?
When drones become the new farm tool: who defines ‘scientific farming’?
Technology, pesticides, and drone pilots: the other side of the ‘technological revolution’
Increasing efficiency seems to make food more accessible, but the emotions, time, and relationships beyond the food itself are drifting away from the act of ‘eating’. Eating is not merely the consumption of nutrients. If increasing efficiency allows us to eat faster and better, why do some feel that having a truly good meal is becoming harder and harder?
The eating story of an ‘incomplete’ failed worker
Ma Lan in Shenzhen, without a meal buddy
A problem that has plagued workers for a long time
The moment they decided to stop ordering takeout | March 15th: Eat Something Good
‘Digital side-dishes’: the antidote to loneliness for today’s youth?
– Small Farmers in the Margins –
Sweet Watermelons, Bitter Labours
Raising Sheep on Credit: Another Year Endured for Qinghai Herders
Through the Lens: The Shifts and Choices in the Lives of Herders
Small-scale vs Large-scale Farms: Which Milk is Safer and More Nutritious?
Small-scale vs Large-scale Farms: Who Should We Support and How?
Opening a Noodle Factory Just to Keep Farming
Leaving it All Behind for an Organic Farm | A Review of the Film ‘Nesha’
The plight of the small-scale farmer is shaped not only by domestic policy and markets but also by overarching global trends. Farmers worldwide face a shared struggle. As the world gravitates towards industrial agricultural capital, small-scale farmers are squeezed by pricing and environmental pressures, their room for survival shrinking. How do these farmers, across different nations, struggle to survive in the same precarious gap?
When Farmers Become Victims of Low Tariffs
When Burning Bans Become the Final Straw for Small-scale Farmers
Rice Prices Double in Japan, Yet Farmers Lose the Will to Plant
Trump Freezes Agricultural Spending: Are American Farmers Facing Bankruptcy?
Invasive Tilapia Devour Farmed Fish and Shrimp: Fishermen Seek Compensation from CP Group
China’s ‘Post-90s’ Eco-Farmers and 17 Young Agriculturists Call for a Food System Transformation
The oversight and supply chains of giant food corporations and agricultural conglomerates may appear airtight, but such extreme centralisation breeds vulnerability; a single tremor can shake the entire system. Can we truly entrust our food safety, regulation, and security of supply entirely to them?
– The Far and the Near –
How did imported “fake meat” end up on the tables of Tibetan Plateau herders?
Too expensive or too cheap? A review of “Fake Meat Displaces Real Meat”
Deforestation in Brazil is their business; what does it have to do with us?
This culinary paradise absorbs half of Brazil’s exported beef offal
As foreign food flows in, local heirloom varieties and tastes are vanishing. Heirloom varieties are more than just food; they are the bonds that sustain terroir, culture, and family memories—the Baituwa, Hongzui Nuo, and Baimei Dou. If no one continues to grow them, they will vanish from the earth.
Growing vanishing glutinous rice in the hills of Sichuan
The breakthrough of Chayote seedlings: climate, seeds, and the county-town crop trend
Why has the sweetness of childhood disappeared?
If no one continues to grow them, they will disappear from the world forever
Foraging wild greens in the Netherlands: getting closer, and closer still, to plants
Whether it is fish from afar or meat from nearby, we have “coexisted” with the foods we eat for years, yet we still cannot see their true nature. Can our understanding of food move beyond the level of consumption and delve deeper into the place of origin, to understand how the changes occurring there affect our tables?
I have been an agricultural journalist for two and a half years, but I still “cannot see” food
When a Master of Anthropology sells meat at a slaughterhouse
To better understand food, we must actually start with local ingredients. For local food often grows beneath our feet, hides in the mountains and forests, and ferments in the kitchen. They tell a different story of “locality”—of rooting, handcrafting, self-sufficiency, and following the rhythm of nature.
Guanding Tihu: the Tibetan fermented delicacy
How Yunnan wild tomatoes became “Villain’s Valley” tomato sauce | Grandma Kouzi the Sauce-maker
With agriculture so advanced, why do people still eat wild greens?
Chronicles of the Mushroom Pavilion: my fermentation journey in Berlin
Another meaning brought by food through taste is collective memory; taste forms the emotional bond between us and our hometowns, our families, and our past.
– Returning Home and Getting into the Fields –
What did last year’s ecological farming interns gain and learn from their time at various farms? After their internships ended, some returned to their hometowns to pursue ecological farming; what differences and challenges did they encounter in the transition from “graduation” to “employment”?
Leaving the city: I planted new seeds of life on the farm
Just how many skills must a Gen Z farming novice learn on an ecological farm?
Bending to the fields: Why I grew to love “repetitive labour”
In the countryside, learning to be a living seed
When the “996” corporate drone meets the work ethic of an ecological farm
Weeds are a nuisance on the farm, but are they truly the enemy of the farmer? How do ecological farms treat weeds?
On an ecological farm, people are like weeds: the more they grow, the better
Are weeds the enemy of humanity?
Beyond returning home to farm, these people are reconnecting with the land in other ways:
Growing bananas in the “forests” of Brazil
Farming in Beijing: A pointless indulgence?
Can villages once deeply tied to agriculture remain vibrant in this day and age? What changes are unfolding in many of these “old lands, new villages”?
When two-thirds of the GDP evaporates, does this county town still have a future?
When environmentalism becomes an exhibition: the green illusion of an eco-village
Searching for the soul of the grain: a journey back to 2011
– Grandma Kouzi –
One person’s food universe
When people think of farming, they often imagine it within the framework of a market economy, growing produce to generate income. Others, however, have chosen a different path. Grandma Kouzi created her own “food universe” in Fujian, which she calls “Villain’s Valley”. After years of cultivation, 2025 has brought a bumper harvest. She is now largely self-sufficient in food, with the exception of salt. In an era of increasing homogeneity, a lifestyle so closely connected to the land feels particularly precious.
Digging a ditch by hand, gifting me gardenias | Grandma Kouzi
A permaculture food forest: the garden of my dreams | Grandma Kouzi
In the countryside: from anxiety and guilt to peace of mind | Grandma Kouzi
– Food Talk –
In 2025, Foodthink’s podcast “Food Talk” released a total of 14 episodes. Over the past year, we have questioned how to reclaim the right to “eat well” under the dominance of the mainstream food system, while reflecting on the conflicts and risks inherent within that system.
Without a doubt, pre-prepared meals have been the most enduring and influential topic in this year’s public discourse on food. Foodthink has been monitoring the rise of pre-prepared meals for some time; as early as January last year—before the debate between Luo Yonghao and Jia Guolong erupted—we had already produced a podcast episode on the subject. Our guest, Doudou, proactively provided a healthier, safer pre-prepared meal recipe for those “corporate drudges” pressed for time. Is the future truly the era of pre-prepared meals? Food Talk will continue to follow this issue.
The resistance to pre-prepared meals suggests that, deep down, people in China still long for healthy meals with “wok hei”—that distinct breath of the wok. But will this longing be destroyed one day, when pre-prepared meals become synonymous with “cheap” and “convenient”? In reality, whether it is food delivery, online fresh-food retail, or plastic packaging, everything serves the needs of a cheap and convenient urban life, yet the hidden costs and the risks borne by society as a whole remain largely unknown. Meanwhile, the corporations inextricably linked to our cheap, convenient food system use PR and greenwashing to prevent us from seeing the truth. From peanuts, maize, and rice to bread, milk, and beer—how do these foods reach our tables? Who decides what we eat? How can we find better social support networks to ensure the food on our plates is safe and trustworthy? There is still so much to discuss when it comes to food.
As consumers, if we can pay more attention to the farmers and the land that produce our food, and care about their livelihoods and ecological challenges, we are already on the path toward eating well. Over the past year, we have focused on many who toil on the land—from the Greater Khingan Mountains in Heilongjiang to Chuxiong in Yunnan, and from Pinggu in Beijing and Baoding in Hebei to Heshun in Shanxi. Though their backgrounds, the foods they grow or gather, and their circumstances differ, they share a common desire to protect the environment and ensure we all eat well. In 2025, Food Talk launched a new series, “100 People Who Feed Us”. In 2026, we hope to use the experiences of these workers as a bridge to foster more detailed and profound discussions about the food system that sustains us.
Scan the QR code below
On Xiaoyuzhou | Ximalaya | Lizhi | Apple Podcasts
Subscribe to the “Food Talk” podcast
– Public Events –
This year, “extreme weather” and “climate change” became the defining keywords. From the fragmentation and rebuilding of villages following the July rainstorms in Hunan to the climate shocks that hit Guangdong and Guangxi at the end of the year, we invited meteorologists, agricultural researchers, first-hand witnesses, and chroniclers to converse, seeking to understand how climate change is rewriting the map of Chinese agriculture and how those caught in its wake are responding.
In 2025, we amplified individual voices: from the long journey of homecoming silkworm farmers coming to terms with themselves, to the joys and anxieties of Altai herders navigating markets and pastures, and the ‘outbound’ footprints of post-90s ecological smallholders venturing from China to Thailand and Rome. The sharing sessions for the ‘Fake Meat Expels Real Meat’ series wove together the voices of grassland herders with academic perspectives, interrogating the complex propositions behind industrial meat substitutes.
In 2025, we joined our readers in opening *Vanishing Foods*, using domestic and international case studies to discuss the preservation of biological food varieties and the survival of local cultures. At the book launch for *Fermenting China: Yunnan and Guizhou*, we explored the fermentation traditions of Yunnan and Guizhou and the endurance of local culture. In line with this theme, we launched interactive calls for contributions such as ‘Food Talk: Not Available’ and ‘Eat Something Good’… reflecting through interaction and reading: as delicacies vanish, what else will we lose, and what can we still create?
Offline, at the ‘Hands-on Craft’ market in Beijing and the Urban-Rural Harvest Festival in Guangdong, Foodthink collaborated with the Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market to host smallholder dining tables and handmade workshops. We invited ‘Earth! Spaceship’ to bring an interactive board game, alongside a ‘Back to the Future’ climate change novel-writing game and a ‘Poetry in Food’ collage game, sparking reflection on the present and imagining a sustainable future.
2025 Final Letter: Foodthink Harvest Festival ‘Creative Antics’ Showcase
– Lianhe Creative Initiative –
Over the past year, the supported works have been released sequentially, garnering steady public attention and sparking discussions on pastoral regions, farmers, and the underlying issues of food systems. This initiative has also made us realise that there are many more unseen questions regarding food and agriculture waiting to be answered. Consequently, at the end of 2025, the Foodthink Lianhe Creative Initiative set sail once more, continuing to support creators and researchers in their inquiries into food and farming.
– The Fluid Table –
Food and Agriculture Media Workshop
The workshop brought together a diverse range of participants, including not only traditional news media but also editors from knowledge platforms and independent creators who have worked extensively on the front lines, using imagery to document smallholder adaptation practices and climate disasters under the pressure of climate change.
Additionally, Foodthink’s sister organisation, the “Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market”, provided “ecological smallholder” lunches for the workshop participants. While discussing how agriculture should respond to extreme weather, how to support sustainable farming, and how to rebuild trust between consumers and producers, Foodthink was also supporting smallholders through the most everyday and direct of actions.
– Rural Social Organisations in Action Against Climate Change –
The wisdom of those who came before, and the pitfalls they encountered, have been condensed into this report: *Research on the Action Paths of Rural Social Organisations in Response to Climate Change*.
With the support of the Oxfam (Hong Kong) Beijing Office, Foodthink conducted extensive interviews and surveys over the past year, holding workshops in Nanning and Xianyang to engage in deep discussions with farmers, village officials, social organisations, and scholars to answer the aforementioned questions. The report’s core finding is that it is not only the climate that is changing, but the rural landscape itself; only by understanding these rural transformations can the underlying logic of climate work be clarified. At the report’s launch, Foodthink emphasised that a true path to climate resilience can only be found based on a profound understanding of internal rural issues, calling on colleagues in the non-profit sector “not to turn mitigation into a numbers game, and not to turn adaptation into a word game”.
Report Launch | Rather than fearing “climate”, root yourself firmly in the countryside
“Thanks to climate change for bringing attention to rural areas”
Is climate change really just a “natural disaster” in rural areas?
– Ecological Agriculture Local Systems Co-construction and Learning Camp –
Where can such techniques be found? In December 2025, Foodthink hosted the second Ecological Agriculture Local Systems Co-construction and Learning Camp at Huiling Farm in Guangzhou, attracting over 30 students from across the country aspiring to practice ecological agriculture. The camp did more than explore the underlying logic of ecological planting techniques; it invited traditional smallholders, “new farmers”, consumer cooperatives, and NGOs to discuss: in an organic produce market where “the dazzling variety can be misleading”, how can smallholders leverage their own strengths, stay steady, and find a sustainable way to make a living? In this regard, the camp is merely the start of a long marathon. Foodthink will organise a third camp this year; interested farmers are welcome to star the Foodthink WeChat official account so as not to miss the latest training information.
Learn a set of applicable ecological agriculture techniques in three days | Training Recruitment
– And also –
Finally, finally
All colleagues at Foodthink wish you, in the Year of the Horse,
🐎 to eat, and 🐎 to eat well, on horseback!
● On 7 February, Foodthink took over (for just one day) the offline shop of the Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market; see what delicious New Year dishes we enjoyed. These are still available for pre-order—order your healthy and delicious ecological New Year dishes now.
Coordination: Li Ye, Kerry
Editor: Tianle