Food production, farmers, rural society, and ecological farming practices.
Foodthink Says Thirty-one elderly residents at a care home in Taishitun Town, Miyun, Beijing, have died. A minibus carrying fourteen female chilli-pickers in Shanxi vanished in the torrential downpours. In the aftermath of these record-breaking floods, each account is heartbreaking, yet they compel us to confront a pressing question: how…
This March, carrying a blend of uncertainty about my future career and anticipation for the unknown, I joined Foodthink’s “Eco-Farming Internship Programme” and arrived at Le Xian Gu Community Farm in Fengxian District, Shanghai. Until then, my image of a farm had been shaped entirely by the fields, lawns, and…
Foodthink Editorial Torrential rain has struck Beijing once again. This time, the flooding has swept through the northern mountainous regions. Upstream of the Miyun Reservoir, water inflow reached its highest level since the reservoir was first constructed in 1959, peaking at 6,550 cubic metres per second — but what does…
“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…
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…
I. Branches laden with lychees Until my father sent me a photo on his phone of the branches heavy with lychees, I had never once thought of going back home to help sell them. My hometown is Lufeng City in Guangdong Province, where our family tends a lychee grove covering…
Farmer Sun Wenxiang stood barefoot in the concrete courtyard to greet us, his feet broad and weathered. It was early July in Hongya County, Meishan City, Sichuan Province, and a series of heavy downpours had just moved through. These marked a rare few days of respite from the seasonal workload.…
The gardenias are just beginning to bloom in the mountain ravine. My flowers have finally opened. June 16, a month ago, marked the anniversary of Evil Man Valley. By 2025, it will be the fourth. The modest patch at the front of the house provides more than enough for self-sufficiency,…
Foodthink Says The ongoing saga of rice “shortages” and soaring prices in Japanese supermarkets has stretched from last summer to this one. Despite repeated government interventions, prices refused to drop. Instead, the crisis intensified, earning the media moniker the “Reiwa Rice Turmoil”. Japanese consumers were up in arms, and farmers…
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…
