Cross-border food and grain trade, import/export policies, and global market impacts.
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…
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…
“‘A glass of milk a day strengthens the Chinese people’ – an advertising slogan most of you will recognise instantly.” In fact, the majority of Chinese people are lactose intolerant, and drinking milk can trigger diarrhoea, bloating and other digestive discomforts. Yet on today’s dining table, milk has become an…
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…
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 Xibei has apologised and promised to improve, and Luo Yonghao has fallen silent; the storm over Xibei’s ready meals has subsided for now. But has the controversy truly ended? Debates and doubts regarding ready meals may resurface—what will be the next focal point? Before the public fully recognises…
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…
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…
