Organic production, sustainable farming methods, and agroecological practices.
The gardenias are just beginning to bloom in the mountain ravine. My flowers have finally opened. June 16, a month ago, marked the anniversary of Evil Man Valley. By 2025, it will be the fourth. The modest patch at the front of the house provides more than enough for self-sufficiency,…
Foodthink Says “Stories about food are the best stories we can tell.” This is what Dan Saladino, a senior BBC correspondent, said in an interview with Foodthink at the Third International Congress on Agricultural Biodiversity this past May. Saladino specialises in food and agriculture journalism. Over the past decade, he…
Foodthink Says Since this spring, Shaanxi has experienced its most severe drought since 1961. Combined with extreme weather such as high temperatures, strong winds, and sandstorms, these compound disasters have seriously threatened agricultural production and rural livelihoods. In May, with the support of the Oxfam Hong Kong Beijing office, Foodthink…
In the first decade of the 2000s, repeated food safety scandals prompted a growing number of Chinese consumers to seek out better farming practices and produce. Across the country, a new generation of farmers began pioneering organic agriculture. One such pioneer is this episode’s guest, Cao Xiaohong. In 2008, concerned…
The film *Nei Sha* opens with an immediate explanation of its title. On the banks of a reed bed in winter, Teacher Tang, an organic farmer, explains to a visiting professor: this is the mouth of the Yangtze River, where shifting sands have deposited over time to gradually form islands.…
“It’s all political games!” This was the near-universal response whenever I raised the government’s rice trade policies during my visit to Mindanao in the southern Philippines this past April. Those I spoke with ranged from mayors and government agricultural extension officers to ordinary smallholder farmers whose livelihoods depend on the…
Foodthink’s Take When discussing the impact of climate change on rural areas, we often say that “farmers are at the mercy of the elements”. But is it really as simple as that? What kind of agricultural systems and rural realities do today’s farmers actually live in? How should the macro-issue…
Last April, I arrived at Baicaoyuan through Foodthink’s ecological farming internship programme. Outside of Baicaoyuan itself, nearly all agriculture in Wule Town, Guigang City, Guangxi Province, relies on chemical-intensive methods. Driving into town, the landscape is dominated by the sight of fields being sprayed with herbicides. I vividly recall a…
This episode welcomes the social enterprise Muyunpo to Food Talk. We’ll hear how they have partnered with villagers to explore fairer and more sustainable production methods—one that protects the natural environment while bringing the village’s finest produce to wider markets, ultimately securing better returns for farmers. Xiaojin County in Aba…
Foodthink Says Since its launch in 2003, Taiwan’s *Qingyao’er* bimonthly magazine has chronicled sustainable food and agriculture practices across the Straits and internationally, inspiring and shaping a generation of practitioners in the field. How did the story of *Qingyao’er* begin? How has a publication that pays no contributors and runs…
