Personal stories and production narratives of smallholders, individual farmers, and family farms.
Earlier this year, four years after moving to the Netherlands, my partner and I finally rented a hectare of land in Utrecht province, and I began working on my farm. Before I decided to set up a farm, I completed placements at several small organic farms in the Netherlands. During…
Revitalising local industries is the top priority of rural revitalisation and the starting point for practical work. Rural areas without industries struggle to attract people, let alone retain talent; pathways for increasing farmers’ income remain narrow, and cultural activities are hard to organise. As localities promote industrial revitalisation, they must…
I. Loess Plateau Cuisine That Shaped My Childhood Born in the 1980s, I grew up in the mountainous folds of the Loess Plateau. I have always loved the hills, the vast plateau, and the wild freedom of roaming through slopes awash with wildflowers. My hometown lies where the borders of…
In this episode, the host of Food Talk travels to Tongxiang in Zhejiang province, following Yu Jiangang—a young returnee—as he visits the village where he was born, grew up, and has now settled back into. Together they explore the village’s final acre of Hangzhou white chrysanthemums, uncovering the biodiversity and…
“I have a thought, though I’m not sure if it will be of any use?” The grandmother and the former steward simultaneously fixed their gaze on her. She explained, “Our household is busiest in the spring and largely idle in autumn. Why not take this opportunity to trade in Hangbai…
Foodthink Says In Inner Mongolia, where the vast majority of pastoral families have settled into fixed grazing patterns, the grasslands are criss-crossed by wire fences. Consequently, there has been a rise in cases of stomach perforation from ingested wire among cattle and sheep. Meanwhile, in the Banners of Ordos, where…
I. Tang and Wen make their home in a valley threaded by a stream. The watercourse is modest, running at about half a metre deep, but it flows all year round and is even marked on maps. Heading south, it merges with several other waterways before feeding into the Ohio…
Author’s Note My partner, Mr Panghu, and I live in a small town in the Great Lakes region of the American Midwest. The local farmers’ market was founded nearly thirty years ago, and we have witnessed over a decade of its history. This series of short pieces aims to document…
In the summer and autumn of 2021, Beijing endured an exceptionally long flood season lasting 122 days, with rainfall across six northern provinces and municipalities – including Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shanxi, Henan and Shaanxi – reaching its highest level since 1961. That autumn, I began an online master’s programme in…
Towards the end of 2021, while still working for an internet company in Shanghai, I came across a recruitment notice from Foodthink for their Ecological Agriculture Internship Programme. It was as though something had struck a chord within me. Once my application was accepted, I selected Yuanjian Farm in Meishan,…
