Foodthink ends two weeks of silence as Grain Rain arrives, reintroducing itself to readers: a food and agriculture platform founded in 2017, focused on smallholder livelihoods and the conditions of food and farming workers. This year it turns its focus to women farmers, herders and climate resilience.
New harvesters with large grain tanks have left Fourth Uncle, the village’s last “bag catcher”, completely out of work. Small-scale farmers have done the sums: one smart machine costs as much as two or three conventional ones, so they still opt for second-hand Dongfanghong diesel tractors.
The year grandmother opened the shop, customers still brought empty drink bottles to fill with loose soy sauce; now mother hands regulars their usual brand from memory, while the daughter far off in Wuxi returns each Chinese New Year for a few days as the stall’s “second-in-command”.
Guanqi of the Farmer Seed Network died unexpectedly on a work trip in Qinghai. Foodthink’s friends set down who he was: the group’s “study representative”, a craft beer lover, an unsung hero of seed conservation — and the friend who made sure no one was ever alone.
In 2025, Foodthink’s removed articles covered food-delivery rider labour, mouldy grain during North China’s autumn harvest, rural heating in Hebei and high-standard farmland — most were not “sensitive topics”, merely widely known facts. Reader comments are deleted faster and faster; the space for public discussion is narrowing.
This Chinese New Year, villagers in Wutong Village, Weiyuan, carried bamboo baskets to market before dawn, steamed rice over a wood-fired stove, and spent five hours on a dish of native crucian carp, pinching pea shoots for shao bai and meatball soup. Twenty rural days: humble ingredients, labour-intensive cooking.
Leaving the public sector, Zuo Zhi, a post-1985 generation member, dove into Yunnan’s villages, teaching farmers to use fewer pesticides and grow heritage rice varieties, trading a cup of liquor for their trust, and building a bridge between government and the fields for climate-friendly agriculture.
In Lanhe Town, Nansha, Guangzhou, the buying price of black-skinned sugarcane has plunged from nearly 100 yuan to 5 yuan. Farmers over 50 give their cane away for free to clear land before the spring ploughing window, yet farmland policy means they can only keep planting sugarcane.
Mother wept before the sauerkraut crock in the abandoned courtyard of the family home in Heilongjiang. Back in Beijing, this generation dug out Fermented Food and pickled their first-ever crock of sauerkraut.
Fishermen in Satun and Trang provinces treat the mangroves as a “larder”, running their own restaurant, processing seafood and offering eco-tourism – turning the community marine-management rights they fought for into a livelihood that feeds their families.