Analysis of agricultural product prices, supply chains, corporate behavior, and industry trends.
Not long ago, Nature Cities published an article detailing how urban residents in China shift the risks of heat exposure onto food delivery riders simply by ordering takeaway. The logic is straightforward enough, but when torrential rain or scorching heatwaves strike, the delivery rider is reduced to little more than…
If you visit Pu’er in Yunnan this spring, you’ll find coffee farmers everywhere in high spirits. Green coffee bean prices have been climbing steadily for a year, jumping from 38 yuan per kilogram in early 2024 to 66 yuan per kilogram by May this year—a surge that has even outpaced…
Many view craft beer as a niche culture centred on individuality and distinctive taste. Yet long before the arrival of industrial lagers with their monotonous, watery profiles, brewing traditions and flavour profiles were inherently diverse. Beyond the flattening of taste, industrial beer has also stripped fermented foods of their natural…
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…
That loaf of bread has sold out again. This weekend, as usual, I headed to the supermarket to stock up on next week’s “survival rations”. I made my way to the bakery aisle looking for Jason’s Sourdough, only to find the shelves completely bare, save for a white “Out of…
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…
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…
This episode of Food Talk features an impromptu conversation recorded at ‘Jishi’, the Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market’s physical space at Sanyuanqiao. We’ve welcomed back two old friends: Kang Li and Jin Peng. One is a Yi woman from Chuxiong, Yunnan, who funded her studies by selling mountain mushrooms and matsutake.…
