Food production, farmers, rural society, and agroecological practices.
Grandpa was the fourth child in his family. Born in 1933, he lost his mother in early childhood and his father in his youth, weathering famine and disaster. He was always a farmer, though he also worked at one stage as a cotton carder. In his final years, he dreamed…
I. The fruit buyers didn’t come this year On 13 December 2023, in Huichang County, Ganzhou City, Jiangxi Province – the heartland of Gannan navel oranges – Liao Hai, a farmer born in the 1990s, and his mother, Auntie Zou, were getting ready to start the harvest. Early that morning,…
In 2016, I had a few rather unsuccessful shopping trips to Sanyuanli Market. I only recently made my way back, drawn by the exhibition and the urge to check in, only to find it had long since settled on its new identity: an art scene. Seven years on, Sanyuanli has…
Foodthink Says This October, Foodthink partnered with dozens of co-organisers across the country—including farmers’ markets, ecological farms, fermentation artisans, restaurants, publishers, and non-profit organisations—to launch the ‘Fermentation Awakening Festival’. In November, we hosted four reading sessions centred on Sandor Katz’s *The Art of Fermentation*. The guest for the first session…
In Part One of “Internship Notes from a Desert Oasis”, I attempted to revert to my instincts as a business journalist, examining the operational struggles faced by ecological farms. Yet, during my two-month internship at Zhiliangtian Farm in Alxa, being a barista was, in reality, my day-to-day routine at the…
A Note from Foodthink In early August this year, Wuchang in Heilongjiang province was struck by rare torrential rain and severe flooding, submerging around 40 per cent of its 2.5 million mu of farmland. Two months on from the floods, live-streaming hosts were already pushing Wuchang rice on e-commerce platforms.…
The 28th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP28) has opened in Dubai. While humanity continues to squabble over how to shoulder the burden of saving the planet—over who should bear the costs, and who must step outside their comfort zones to transform entrenched…
Power generation above the panels, crop cultivation below: a single plot of land yields two streams of income. “Agrivoltaics” claims to deliver multiple benefits—including clean electricity, efficient land use, agricultural modernisation, and rural development—and is frequently hailed as a win-win technological innovation that simultaneously addresses food, energy, and climate challenges.…
I. The Beginning In 2018, in a scattered village in Hong Kong’s New Territories that was slated for demolition at any moment, I baked my very first sourdough loaf using a jar of fermented dough I had just received from a friend. Looking back, it barely fermented at all. It…
Torrential rain, flooding, typhoons, droughts… Under the threat of climate change, farmers are invariably the first to bear the brunt of the damage. Yet what is often overlooked is that, in seeking to avert these losses, they are also the most proactive in taking adaptive measures. Last year, the International…
