Environmental pressures, climate change, biodiversity, species protection, and pollution.
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.
Blackchin tilapia entered Thai waterways via CP Foods’ experimental fish farm in 2010, spreading to 19 provinces over more than a decade. 1,400 fishers have formally filed a lawsuit demanding the responsible party be identified and 2.486 billion baht in compensation.
In 2011, Yu Jiangang took part in rural development in Zhuang villages in Longzhou, Guangxi. In 2024, he returned to Bangui hamlet to find the water buffalo all but vanished, the village school down to just 5 pupils, and the village still living to its own rhythm.
Foodthink Founding Editor Chang Tianle and Sijia, host of 100 Ways of Living, chat about ecological agriculture, supporting local farmers, and how office workers can still cook proper meals without ordering a takeaway.
Bunong woman Langheng has guarded a 2,282-hectare community forest in Cambodia for years, yet chainsaws devour the woodland in secret after dark. REDD+ is designed to convert forest carbon into community conservation funding, but “additionality” hurdles and profiteers bypassing consent make it ever harder for indigenous peoples to defend their land.
Mycorrhizal fungi are the living threads of the soil, sustaining its water and crop health. Sequencing by Agroscope confirmed that intensive agriculture has reduced their keystone species to near zero — yet restoring these underground networks is far more complex than scattering an inoculant across the soil.
Three farming friends growing vegetables in Shunyi, Beijing, and Chuxiong, Yunnan have weathered downpours battering trees and droughts cracking reservoirs — their experiences trace the link between rising vegetable prices and climate change.
A Foodthink intern at Zhiliangtian Ecological Farm in Alxa confronts the risks of farming at the mercy of the weather and the frictions of communal living — yet among the plants, birds, and beasts beneath the Helan Mountains, discovers the quiet confidence to keep tending the land.
Drawing on cracked dry land in Chongqing and flood-hit Hebei villages, Liu Juan, Associate Professor at China Agricultural University, argues that rural climate adaptation is trapped by ageing labour, unprofitable farming and other fundamental problems. The answer is comprehensive social mechanisms, not treating climate as a siloed issue.
Machinery cannot access small, scattered plots, and straw-incorporation subsidies flow mainly to large-scale farms and machinery operators. Yuan Yong, an agricultural technician in Jianyang, Sichuan, has spent over twenty years in no-till mulching, seeking a way for smallholders to nourish the soil and save money.
