Organic production, sustainable farming methods, and agroecological practices.
A 16th-century monastery garden in Umbria passed through sharecropping and a family farm to become Villa Cappuccini, where agriculture and art coexist. Cristiano Corbucci, a doctoral candidate at Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti (NABA), will share the estate’s practice from history to the present on 29 October.
Foodthink, in partnership with Junqiao Crazy Farm, is hosting a three-day co-learning camp in Chongzhou, Chengdu. Led by Luo Lishuang and Huang Guoliang, the curriculum centres on three themes – soil, plants, and animals – paired with hands-on field practice such as composting and fermented plant extract.
At Gudao Xifeng Manor in Haidian, Beijing, Brother Daotian — not formally trained — has kept a business afloat through pesticide-free ecological farming and over a hundred mu of sublet vegetable plots, while more than half of shared garden projects nationwide remain mired in losses.
Foodthink’s fourth co-learning camp, in October at Junqiao Crazy Farm, Chongzhou, is led by Luo Lishuang and Huang Guoliang—over 20 years in ecological cultivation. Starting from carbon source supplementation, it explores soil-crop relationships. 20 places for ecological smallholder farmers from Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan and Chongqing.
Grandma Kouzi of Villain Valley cuts a path for pumpkins, felling white ginger lilies loved for over a decade. After five years, hardy bananas proved they could fruit; she learned to leave care to the seasons—from “plant killer” to one who shares her fate with the land.
Brazil’s smallholder farmers are breaking free from pesticides and chemical fertilisers, moving towards agroecology, while consumers drive change back to the production end. Experienced food and farming practitioner Bia Goll from São Paulo shares twenty-plus years of practice. Saturday, 12 September, afternoon – Beijing in-person + online livestream.
Jin Lipeng, lecturer at the School of Experimental Art, Chongqing’s Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, led students on Huxi Campus in raising chickens and composting through Permaculture. After summer construction workers stole 10 chickens and 2 geese, the school decided to no longer permit poultry on campus, ending its year-and-a-half-old Happy Chickens Raising Cooperative.
Three young directors with a China–France perspective plunge into rural China, following in six episodes Mum Hu, Chen Xi, Fanli, Dahai and other ecological farmers who left old lives to re-root in the land. The Life on the Land team meets audiences after two Beijing screenings, 12–13 September.
Heilongjiang permits orderly burning, yet Hebei farmers remain unaware: ‘Start a fire and they’ll detain you.’ After over a decade of straw return in Quzhou and Fengfeng Mining District, poor emergence, more pests, rising spray costs draw one shrug: “Not a big deal” — yet they’d far rather burn.
After the straw-burning ban, rice farmers in the Dongting Lake area of Hunan paid an extra 60–80 yuan per mu for straw shredding, rotary tillage and pesticide spraying — yet the rice stem borers overwintering in rice stubble have grown more numerous year on year.
