Organic production, sustainable farming methods, and agroecological practices.
A post-90s couple, An Tian and San Qi, returned to Zhaixia Village, Longyan, Fujian, to grow passion fruit. Surrounding terraced fields were stained a withered yellow by the villagers’ herbicide, yet little by little they turned textbook Natural Farming into a way of getting along with this land.
At Mondeggi commons, over 450 members collectively farm 1,800 mu of land and deliberate democratically; Genuino Clandestino uses independent certification to bypass official procedures. These communities extend agroecology from a cultivation technique into collective action fighting for land and food sovereignty.
Pu’er’s coffee farmers, tossed by global prices for over a decade — felling trees for tea, then scrambling back — now see record highs. Yet the surge stems from Brazil’s cuts, extreme weather still disrupts flowering, and they are turning to value-added processing and ecological cultivation for a steadier path.
Home Action director Hu Xiaoping on how Sichuan’s project villages have responded to extreme heat — from recovering heirloom varieties to cutting growing costs — and how climate change forces them to rethink what agriculture means for their lives.
The charity Home Action promotes ecological rice cultivation across Sichuan villages — no-till mulching, no chemical fertiliser, no pesticide — so farmers who have stayed behind can grow food well amid successive droughts and heatwaves without external inputs.
Ecological farm owners in Shunyi, Changping and Baoding have endured year after year of torrential rain flooding their fields, making difficult adjustments from digging drainage trenches to switching crops, yet remain trapped by the absence of public drainage and ever-mounting costs.
Through Foodthink’s Ecological Agriculture Internship Programme, Chengzi took root for three months at Lexiangu Community Farm in Fengxian, Shanghai—growing vegetables, repairing roofs, leading goats and feeding ducks, running a market stall—and grew the courage to explore out of her uncertainty about the future.
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.
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.
