Sourdough, olive oil and flaked sea salt have become the hottest items on UK supermarket shelves, behind which lies the anti-ultra-processed food movement sparked by the #UPF hashtag on TikTok. But Waitrose caters primarily to middle-class consumers, and “eating clean” is being packaged as a new consumption hierarchy.
Lufeng’s lychees have had a bumper crop year, yet without a centralised collection point, local smallholders have no alternative to courier shipping. Courier and packaging fees eat up about a third of each order’s revenue—so those bountiful red fruits still don’t come cheap for consumers.
Aged 61, Sun Wenxiang carries fertiliser, weeds and raises pigs in Qilong Village, Hongya County. He has preserved more than 12 heritage rice seed varieties yet receives no policy subsidies, and whether his daughter will take over remains uncertain.
In Èrén Valley, Fujian, Farmer Kouzi has spent four years clearing wild land toward self-sufficiency, turning a gully once deemed unfit for human habitation into fields for growing and admiring. This year, the gardenias behind the house bloomed for the first time.
Following the viral “not enough waste to burn” video, calls to “throw more waste, forget sorting” emerged. Mao Da of the zero waste public welfare organisation and Sun Jinghua of Friends of Nature point out that excess incineration capacity exposes the lack of upstream reduction and sorting.
Ten-fen school-gate ice lollies, Ah Ma’s pig’s-trotter rings from the market, and mother-steamed táo guǒ – Zhang Fulan’s most solid childhood flavours in 1990s Jieyang, Chaoshan; after snack chains and food delivery reshaped a generation’s bodies, she returned to the stove to relearn those guǒ pǐn with her mother.
Heat-driven crop losses and surging tourist numbers are merely the fuse. The legacy of the rice acreage reduction policy, JA’s monopoly on procurement and pricing, and a farming population averaging 68.7 years of age are the agricultural crisis truly reflected by the “rice disturbances of the Reiwa era”.
In a Jing’an District McDonald’s, part-time pay is 19 yuan an hour — just two yuan more after 1,000 hours. Five stations, each worker locked to their post; rainy-day delivery surges send riders and staff unraveling together. The assembly line cuts apart workers’ shared lives.
In an exclusive interview with Foodthink at the 3rd International Agrobiodiversity Congress, veteran BBC journalist Dan Saladino moves from Sichuan Red-Mouth Glutinous Rice to the revival of British farmhouse cheese and the Perry pear, discussing how to safeguard diversity in the industrial food system.
Foodthink has compiled four firsthand accounts of Guangxi’s floods from Liuzhou, Nandan and Du’an. Amid sudden swings between drought and flooding, flash floods destroyed water systems, ponds lay empty, and White-trousered Yao women braved the downpour to rescue hand-sewn ceremonial outfits — a season’s livelihood faces rebuilding.
