CoopCycle brings together 67 cycle-delivery cooperatives from around the world, where riders are paid hourly and enjoy paid leave, with no algorithmic monitoring or dynamic pricing, operating on the democratic principle of “one person, one vote”.
In Ji County (pseudonym) on the North China Plain, agricultural technology extension has passed from government monopoly through market-town retail to project-based governance contracts, leaving more than 21,000 small-scale farmers with nothing but a phone call to get a drone to spray their crops.
The Monsanto biography Empire of Seeds uses data to debunk the GM myth. Chinese scholars and practitioners—Tian Le, Guan Qi, Xu Zhun, Zhou Mujun among them—discuss: GM has neither reduced pesticide use nor raised yields. Can farmers and consumers re-engage with breeding and food networks?
Director Liu Taifeng of Another Day Full of Hope says riders’ “zero-cost onboarding” is really just debt for equipment and rent upfront; engineers under KPIs dare not question the system; restaurant owners must pad reviews — all strata are bound by the same algorithmic logic.
Foodthink chats with director Liu Taifeng and producer Zhu Tong about their in-depth research into delivery riders before filming, and about riders and programmers being equally trapped in the system – and how to find our footing when faced with platforms.
From saccharin and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) to genetically modified seeds, Monsanto kept its profits and left the pollution to society for a century. Sun Yat-sen University’s Xu Zhun, Zhejiang University’s Zhou Mujun and others discuss The Seed Empire: who sets the rules, and who pays?
Apollo Go in Wuhan leaves drivers with nothing but remote fire-fighting; Bianlifeng locks store managers’ experience outside the algorithm; Meituan’s system turns the time riders save by running red lights into new standards — power is accelerating toward the platforms.
Going Against the Flow has its programmer protagonist fall to become a delivery rider, yet ends with his return to a major internet company; it reduces algorithmic oppression of labour to a technical fix and sidesteps the collective struggle actually taking place among riders.
Foodthink, together with Sanlian Academic, Yali and the Peasant Seed Network, hosted a series of Seed Empire book-launch talks in five cities, where researchers, returning farmers and university scholars discussed how Monsanto and agricultural capital intervene in public scientific discourse.
Brandenburg’s rainfall is 30% below the national average. The Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development has introduced broad beans, chickpeas and other overwintering crops into trial plots at organic farms, recommending farmers gradually shift from the three-summer-two-winter to the three-winter-two-summer rotation.