Livestock production systems including cattle, sheep, pigs, poultry, and related animals.
Foodthink Says On 17 January 2026, Mercosur (including nations such as Argentina and Brazil, hereafter referred to as Mercosur) and the European Union formally signed a free trade agreement in Asunción, the capital of Paraguay. Prior to the signing, the pact had already sparked widespread protests among European farmers. They…
On the final day of the holidays, treat yourself to one more light and refreshing dish. The Herigeobi herders’ gently simmered free-range mutton is simple to prepare, yet anyone who has tasted mutton from their year-round migratory flocks invariably praises it and cannot put down their chopsticks. Across the grasslands…
Haymaking, or harvesting grass, is a term used exclusively in pastoral regions. In early August 2025, I returned to a traditional Kazakh pastoral village in south-eastern Altay, arriving just as the herders were beginning their hay harvest. Since the television series My Altay captured the public imagination two years ago,…
Foodthink Says Milk, often heralded as a symbol of purity and nature, is in fact highly conducive to microbial growth. Its propensity to spoil and deteriorate quickly meant it was originally ill-suited for long-term storage or long-distance transport. Initially, milk was indeed merely a localised food, yet within today’s modern…
Foodthink Says At the start of the 21st century, small family farms were the primary producers of raw milk in China. Today, however, the sector is dominated by large-scale operations housing herds of over 1,000 cows. An earlier article on this channel, Small Family Farms vs. Large Ranches: Whose Milk…
Foodthink Says Securing safe and nutritious milk is a primary concern for many consumers. At the start of the 21st century, China’s raw milk was predominantly produced by small family farms; today, it comes mainly from large-scale operations housing over 1,000 cows. Over the past decade, farms with herds of…
I. Summer Pasture: The Last Pastoral Song Early autumn around Qinghai Lake already carries a distinct chill. On that September afternoon, as daylight gradually faded, our group drove on, relying on directions from passersby and wending deeper into the mountains one stretch at a time. None of us could say…
Late September in the Greater Khingan Range carries a faint chill. Perhaps owing to warming temperatures, the birch woods around Jagdaqi have yet to turn gold. As recently as a few decades ago, this forest served as hunting ground for the Oroqen people. A gathering of filmmakers has convened in…
Foodthink says *Eating the World: Industrial Britain, Food Systems and World Ecology* was published in 2020 by Chris Ott, a historian at Ohio State University. The book examines the shift in the British diet since 1750 alongside industrialisation: a transition from locally sourced plant-based proteins to the mass consumption of…
“Complaints and mishaps pile up every early morning. Yet I choose to switch off my phone and bury myself in sleep: they are never serious enough to drive clients away or push the slaughterhouse into bankruptcy. They simply keep turning up at their usual time each day, keeping our routines…
