In 2023, a prolonged drought delayed the first pick of Xinyang’s spring tea. Zhang Chao of Deyi Tea Garden in Shihe District, who has practised natural farming for ten years, opened his garden just one day later than the previous year.
Department of Biological Sciences, Southwest University graduate, former white-collar worker, Tang Liang returned to Jintang County, Chengdu, in 2013, sustaining eleven on 30 mu. Per-capita monthly income barely reaches ¥2,000, yet each family member has found their place; the village gained free courses and benches for the elderly.
Farmer Pierre inherited more than twenty cows from his parents. When one shows BSE symptoms, he must choose between culling the whole herd or concealing the medical history — a dilemma that echoes French farmers now taking to the streets against EU policies.
Foodthink’s third Ecological Agriculture Internship Programme has finally selected 25 interns for mentorship across 12 farms. From designers and civil servants to PhD holders and charity-sector workers, they set aside their city jobs to relearn farming and sustainable living on the land.
Drawing on years of reporting, Foodthink shows how China’s small-scale ecological farmers grow healthy produce without relying on chemical inputs — from pest and disease management and soil management to permaculture and other farming systems — and previews the agricultural training courses set to launch in 2024.
From Jingyang in Shaanxi to Hainan, Harbin and Beijing, four Spring Festival tables each have their own flavour. Small-town dining is quietly drifting towards big-city standards — yet the rice noodles a Shaoyang local scoops into their own basin still hit the mark better than Dianping’s high-rated chains.
The Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market is China’s most mature Participatory Guarantee System (PGS) initiative, but high organisational costs, the care burden on female consumers, and mainstream scale-oriented competition are constantly compromising the ideal of producers and consumers co-negotiating food standards.
The marketing rhetoric of premium supermarkets, the Specialty Coffee Association’s flavour wheel, legislation shaped by lobbying from large agribusinesses—quality is no natural concept, and consumers and smallholder farmers remain ever on the margins of this chain of power.
Five months on Foodthink’s ecological agriculture internship programme at Green Me Farm in Xianyang — from driving tractors and harvesting wheat to caring for the soil through Biodynamic farming. The greatest harvest wasn’t technique, but a fresh look at the condition of the land, food and animals.
Foodthink’s third Ecological Agriculture Internship Programme welcomes four new farms, with twelve partner farms spread across Guangdong, Beijing, Inner Mongolia, Guangxi and beyond. Interns will learn crop cultivation, animal husbandry and farm management from experienced growers out in the fields.