Guanzhong’s old-variety muskmelon Baituwa, passed down for decades by farmers saving their own seed, has now retreated from city shelves under the pressure of large-scale cultivation and e-commerce sales, glimpsed only occasionally at rural markets.
Sister Yan Ping at Baicao Garden, Guigang, Guangxi, refuses herbicides on fifty mu of Wogan mandarins, making labour a practice of nurturing body and mind; Uncle Youming of the White Pants Yao in Nandan keeps a seed bank for heirloom rice, preserving his people’s rootedness in the land.
Farmer Lu Rongyan trialled chayote shoots from local heirloom varieties in Guzhai Yao Ethnic Township, Mashan, lifting income for elderly and women who stayed; cultivation hit 2,000 mu in five years. Last year’s alternating floods and droughts cut seed-fruit supply, putting seed-saving and diversified cropping on the agenda.
Soya beans, mung beans and adzuki beans all originate from China. Following the Silk Road and the footsteps of migrants, they took root in miso, fermented bean curd and Southeast Asian kitchens, weaving together a history of the dining table that spans continents.
From the labour order of delivery riders to the insights into symbiosis offered by mycelial networks, more than ten new books published in 2024 across food, agriculture and ecology record the hope intertwined with contradictions between people, land and nature.
For four decades, Benedikt Haerlin – Head of the Berlin office of the Future Agriculture Foundation – has been deeply involved in the anti-GM agenda, from driving the EU’s first GM Directive to launching a global advocacy campaign, covering key milestones such as mandatory labelling, Golden Rice and CRISPR/Cas9.
The Monsanto biography Empire of Seeds uses data to debunk the GM myth. Chinese scholars and practitioners—Tian Le, Guan Qi, Xu Zhun, Zhou Mujun among them—discuss: GM has neither reduced pesticide use nor raised yields. Can farmers and consumers re-engage with breeding and food networks?
Men leave for work; the women of Stone City stay to farm, tend old and young, and run guesthouses. He Xiuqin’s plot grows twenty to thirty crops across the seasons; Zhang Xiuyun keeps over a dozen heirloom maize varieties. This uncelebrated labour connects field to table.
In the Jinsha River valley at Stone City, Lijiang, villagers whistle to call the wind for winnowing wheat, wait for rain to plant maize. Old varieties like Tunmai and chicken bean live on the hillside from generation to generation, sustained by household seed saving and exchanges among neighbours.
Four eco-farms—Lexiangu, Yuefengdao, Wuyuetian and Fukang Shengliang—span the region from Shanghai to Jiaxing; their losses ranged from minor damage to nearly a whole year’s work down the drain, with scale, infrastructure and farming methods the decisive variables.