Food production, farmers, rural society, and agroecological practices.
Lamb prices have slumped for years and imported frozen meat has flooded the market, trapping generations of Qinghai Lake herders in revolving debt: some sold their yaks at a pittance to deliver food in town; others carry 200,000-yuan loans, hoping each year for sheep prices to rebound.
Zha Shiyire, a Huayao Yi, grew up in a mountain village in Shiping County, Yunnan. Her mother whistled from the bund, calling the wind; the family bent, planting tobacco, reaping rice, shredding radish strips. Farm work is never finished — she never loved it, nor could she loathe it.
From Beijing to Yunnan, the practice of more than a dozen ecological farms across the country shows that weeds are not enemies to be conquered but partners in mending soil and building ecology; how weeds are managed reveals the fundamental difference in how farmers relate to nature.
In 30 mu of foothill fields, hail wipes out apricots and rain washes away autumn crops. Wenzizi and Changjiaoling learn the craft from old farmers, sow more seeds, and over ten years have gathered two books and a way of living alongside the sky.
Zhen Rui’s 450-mu farm in Miyun, farmed for thirteen years, lost all topsoil to flash floods; resuming cultivation in the short term looks hopeless. He temporarily grafted his operation onto a neighbouring farm, while northern farmers still lack systematic insurance and land-planning support against extreme rainfall.
At the World Nomadic Film Festival in Jiagedaqi, young filmmakers including Aolunna, Jiao Xiaofang and Tong Cheng used angles such as the Camel Culture Festival, the imported meat market and the severing of Mongolian, revealing how the contract-like bond between people, livestock and the grassland is fraying.
From harvesting and drying to storing and selling, growers and buyers have exhausted every strategy they can think of—yet nearly every corn grower still has no choice but to accept reduced yields, falling prices and mould. Consecutive years of natural disasters are rapidly rendering the farming experience farmers have built up obsolete.
Through Foodthink’s Ecological Agriculture Internship Programme, Jianing came to Yinlin Farm in Conghua. Among hens, goats, rain-thinned maize and old lychee trees planted by the older generation, she relearned to recognise the land and the farmers behind the food.
Disaster relief worker Hao Nan retraced the flood’s path through the Xinglong and Miyun disaster areas to reconstruct how flash floods unfolded. Community disaster prevention and mitigation, he finds, has long lacked funding and manpower, with grassroots evacuation timing relying largely on on-the-spot judgement.
Drawing on her organic farming experience in Shengou Village, Taiwan, Kouzi spent four years at Erren Valley practising self-sufficiency – grappling with cogon grass, purifying wastewater with banana plants and water lilies – and ultimately confirmed that humans can be a link that nourishes the land.
