Coke’s profit code is hidden in public water supply, government-subsidised sugar and cheap caffeine. Bart J. Elmore’s The Coca-Cola Empire writes this “scavenger”-style plunder—and the plastic and obesity bills it foists off—into history.
In 2011, Yu Jiangang took part in rural development in Zhuang villages in Longzhou, Guangxi. In 2024, he returned to Bangui hamlet to find the water buffalo all but vanished, the village school down to just 5 pupils, and the village still living to its own rhythm.
In 2024, riders’ sudden deaths, the exposé of “ghost takeaway”, collective protests, two new books and two films pushed the plight of workers under delivery-platform algorithms into public discourse. Foodthink reviews the year’s key stories and films about platforms and food.
From the labour order of delivery riders to the insights into symbiosis offered by mycelial networks, more than ten new books published in 2024 across food, agriculture and ecology record the hope intertwined with contradictions between people, land and nature.
Foodthink Founding Editor Chang Tianle and Sijia, host of 100 Ways of Living, chat about ecological agriculture, supporting local farmers, and how office workers can still cook proper meals without ordering a takeaway.
Bunong woman Langheng has guarded a 2,282-hectare community forest in Cambodia for years, yet chainsaws devour the woodland in secret after dark. REDD+ is designed to convert forest carbon into community conservation funding, but “additionality” hurdles and profiteers bypassing consent make it ever harder for indigenous peoples to defend their land.
Late April: the Nanning Urban Farmers’ Market’s eleventh annual gathering at Zhongtuan Village ecological farm, Hengzhou. Traditional farmers, young returnees and volunteers brought their own tents, bowls and chopsticks beneath the banyan tree, huddling through shortfalls of people and money to sustain this urban–rural community of sustainable living.
For four decades, Benedikt Haerlin – Head of the Berlin office of the Future Agriculture Foundation – has been deeply involved in the anti-GM agenda, from driving the EU’s first GM Directive to launching a global advocacy campaign, covering key milestones such as mandatory labelling, Golden Rice and CRISPR/Cas9.
Mycorrhizal fungi are the living threads of the soil, sustaining its water and crop health. Sequencing by Agroscope confirmed that intensive agriculture has reduced their keystone species to near zero — yet restoring these underground networks is far more complex than scattering an inoculant across the soil.
Three farming friends growing vegetables in Shunyi, Beijing, and Chuxiong, Yunnan have weathered downpours battering trees and droughts cracking reservoirs — their experiences trace the link between rising vegetable prices and climate change.