Jinzi grows heirloom yellow garden peas using biodynamic farming on mountains above 3,000 metres in Xiaojin County, Aba Prefecture. Shipping lasts only about two weeks a year; this year, three jin of pods finally reached the dining buddies’ table.
Nichole, 55, spent a decade turning her Texas yards into a jungle of food and herbs without chemical fertilisers or pesticides. She and Yunnanese Zhang Yiqing — a cross-generational pair — bonded over refusing the American suburban lawn before Nichole moved to rural Pennsylvania to practise permaculture on larger land.
Researching tomato flavours, American writer Chris St. Cavish found that ingredient quality is already determined the moment a seed is chosen; China’s rice varieties have shrunk from 46,000 to 1,000, yet living seeds in farmers’ hands still guard the last of that diversity.
Foodthink, together with Sanlian Academic, Yali and the Peasant Seed Network, hosted a series of Seed Empire book-launch talks in five cities, where researchers, returning farmers and university scholars discussed how Monsanto and agricultural capital intervene in public scientific discourse.
From volunteer teaching in Shaanxi to promoting ecological agriculture training in Guangxi, Huang Guoliang (Lao Liu) co-founded the Y.C. James Yen Rural Reconstruction Academy and the Little Donkey Community Farm, advocating coexistence and mutual learning between ecological and conventional agriculture rather than irreconcilability.
After the sequel premiered in spring 2024, four Foodthink editors gathered to rewatch Food, Inc., discussing whether the industrialised farming, seed monopolies and corporate grip on the food supply it exposes have worsened or improved in the United States—and whether China is facing the same problems.
The Supreme Court of the Philippines has ruled Golden Rice commercialisation unconstitutional, revoking all Biosafety Permits. Farmers and scientists led by MASIPAG have fought for over twenty years: from table safety to tenant farmers’ freedom to breed their own rice seeds, free from seed company control.
In 2023, a prolonged drought delayed the first pick of Xinyang’s spring tea. Zhang Chao of Deyi Tea Garden in Shihe District, who has practised natural farming for ten years, opened his garden just one day later than the previous year.
Wayina’s Banong and Guilin musician Shiba returned to farm and sing. Pesticides have nearly emptied the fields of fish and frogs, heirloom rice is all but extinct, and schooled young people can no longer tell herbs, catch insects and frogs, or reclaim old ways of singing while working.
In April 2023, nearly a hundred farmers, scientists and grassroots agricultural bureau staff gathered in Suzhou for the Farmer Seed Network’s 10th annual conference to discuss living conservation of farmer varieties, market use and ecological seed certification, and to exchange seeds at a Kunshan organic farm.