Analysis of agricultural product prices, supply chains, corporate behavior, and industry trends.
The melamine incident was not the fault of small dairy farmers, nor are large pastures necessarily safer at the production, distribution, and processing stages. With residents’ protein intake already adequate, the nutritional gap between the two types of milk is negligible.
Where farming guarantees a loss and processing a profit, Wuwei’s returned young farmer Yin Fahua makes noodles from purchased gravel-covered Hongguangtou wheat — only to hold the line on pesticide-free ecological farming, and to hold on to that fragrant handful of fried chickpeas along his childhood field edges.
Zha Shiyire, a Huayao Yi, grew up in a mountain village in Shiping County, Yunnan. Her mother whistled from the bund, calling the wind; the family bent, planting tobacco, reaping rice, shredding radish strips. Farm work is never finished — she never loved it, nor could she loathe it.
Solvent extraction dissolves oil with n-hexane, then subjects it to two rounds of high-temperature decolourisation and deodorisation; solvent residues, trans fat and excess omega-6 are hard to avoid. Nuts, home-pressed oil and low-temperature cooking offer alternatives.
“Scientific farming” in rural Northeast China is shaped largely by agri-supply dealers bundling drones with fertiliser. Maize fell to 1.1 yuan per jin after harvest; farmers spraying twice versus five–six times saw almost no yield difference. More output never brought more income.
Former JD 7Fresh warehouse picker He Siqi spent 31 days in the warehouse: 9 minutes per order, 30 fen per item, 30,000 steps a day, supervisors shouting at any moment, and even on your period, no escape from the freezer.
Fifty years ago, half of every million wild salmon swimming toward the Atlantic completed their return migration; now only 30,000 do, while some 400 million are penned in Norwegian fish pens. The journey from gravel riverbed to deep sea and back upstream is nearing its end.
At the World Nomadic Film Festival in Jiagedaqi, young filmmakers including Aolunna, Jiao Xiaofang and Tong Cheng used angles such as the Camel Culture Festival, the imported meat market and the severing of Mongolian, revealing how the contract-like bond between people, livestock and the grassland is fraying.
From harvesting and drying to storing and selling, growers and buyers have exhausted every strategy they can think of—yet nearly every corn grower still has no choice but to accept reduced yields, falling prices and mould. Consecutive years of natural disasters are rapidly rendering the farming experience farmers have built up obsolete.
Beyond the Xibei pre-made meals controversy, small shops that stir-fry to order are being squeezed by central kitchens, local food memories are fading, and exhausted parents and international students may well have long since become unable to do without pre-made meals.
