Once, farmers sold their grain. Now, people are telling them that the “carbon” in their soil can also be sold.   By changing their farming practices as the project requires—storing more carbon in the soil or reducing methane emissions from rice paddies—this “reduced carbon” could become carbon credits, sold…

    Historian Duan Zhiqiang has written a book about his experiences growing vegetables on Chongming Island, Shanghai – <em>I Live at the Tail of the Yangtze</em>.   The day I received the book, Beijing was under the influence of Typhoon Dolphin, with a heavy-rain warning in effect. The typhoon…

  Bitter greens, scientifically known as sow thistle and in herbal medicine as Chinese rue. A few decades ago, I would never have imagined that the bitter greens once dug up by people in northern Shaanxi merely to fill their stomachs would now be prized by the market for their…

    When we walk into a supermarket or market every day, or open a shopping app or food delivery platform on our phones to buy milk, meat or pre-prepared meals, it feels as though there are endless options.   However, from the perspective of the global supply chain, the…

    Brazil is a major global producer of food and meat, known as “the world’s breadbasket.” It is also among the largest consumers of pesticides and fertilizers. The beef we eat on a daily basis is very likely to have come from there.   Over the past decade or…

  In late August, Xu Lingni (a pseudonym) discovered that the 10 chickens and 2 geese kept on the hillside had gone missing.   It was a chicken-keeping cooperative founded by staff and students at Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, based at the Huxi Campus in the western suburbs of Chongqing.…

    City life carries us ever further from the land, but have you ever considered another possibility?   In Chinese, the character for life (生) is composed of the characters for person (人) and earth (土).   Three young women — Suli Liu, Yuyuan Ma, and Shuzhi Wang —…