Species protection, ecosystem change, and habitat loss.
I. A Journey That Began with Bananas Bananas have been one of the plants I’ve encountered most frequently over the past year of travel. From Africa to Brazil, I’ve seen and eaten countless varieties along the way—fried in oil, stewed with tomatoes, pan-fried in butter; as long as an arm,…
Disappearing Foods Original Title: Eating to Extinction: The World’s Rarest Foods and Why We Need To Save Them Author: Dan Saladino Planner: Beiye Books Publisher: Wenhui Publishing House Translator: Gao Yubing Publication Date: November 2023 Foodthink’s Take *Eating to Extinction* explores the crisis facing global food diversity, while issuing a…
Foodthink Says “Stories about food are the best stories we can tell.” This is what Dan Saladino, a senior BBC correspondent, said in an interview with Foodthink at the Third International Congress on Agricultural Biodiversity this past May. Saladino specialises in food and agriculture journalism. Over the past decade, he…
The Amazon rainforest is vanishing at a rate of several million hectares a year. Over the first two decades of the 21st century, deforestation across Brazil’s Amazon region totalled 44 million hectares—larger than China’s Yunnan Province. Livestock expansion is the primary driver of illegal deforestation: low-cost pastureland and feed have…
Foodthink Says 5 June is World Environment Day, and Foodthink continues to monitor the link between global meat consumption and illegal deforestation in the Amazon. Early in 2024, a joint investigation by the *Hong Kong Free Press* and the non-profit *Repórter Brasil* found that four trading companies in Hong Kong…
In celebration of World Book Day on 23 April 2025, Foodthink has gathered book recommendations from our editors, authors and peers. Without any prior discussion, these selections have all independently converged on a foundational relationship vital to human existence: our connection to food, the land, and the natural world. From…
Foodthink Says 21 March is International Forest Day, with this year’s theme, “Forests: A Valuable Source of Food”. Yet on the other side of the world, Brazil’s beef industry continues to expand at the cost of felled forests and lost biodiversity. Faced with international demands to halt deforestation, major meat…
In the 2025 Spring Festival release *Ne Zha 2*, the leopard demon Shen Xiaobao won over audiences with his witty and endearing portrayal. Yet, his grievous injuries and uncertain fate in the film bring to mind the endangered North China leopard (*Panthera pardus japonensis*) of the real world. This subspecies,…
The world’s table begins with China’s little pulses 10 February 2025 marks the seventh World Pulses Day. This year’s theme is ‘Pulses: Bringing Diversity to Agrifood Systems’. Grow pulses, eat pulses, diversify agriculture, live healthily. Soybeans, edamame and black beans are common fixtures on the dinner table, yet these pulses…
On 4 February, the Thai Department of Fisheries announced the successful development of a genetically modified Blackchin tilapia. The offspring resulting from crosses between this modified tetraploid tilapia and naturally occurring diploid tilapia are sterile. The government hopes this approach will help curb the spread of this African invasive species…
