Policy, institutional, economic, and technology trends shaping food systems.
Nearly twenty years into rural work, Lao Liu (Huang Guoliang) and his partner, Agricultural Technician Luo Lishuang, have nurtured fellow ecological farmers in Guangxi. He discusses the gap between textbook science and rural experience — and asks whether new-generation farmers’ minds have followed their bodies back to the village.
Virginia organic farmer Joel Salatin rails against USDA regulations that make on-farm slaughter and on-farm sales all “illegal”. A single Texas farm visit to slaughter chickens and rabbits illuminates the dignity and demise of the butcher’s trade beyond the production line.
Machinery cannot access small, scattered plots, and straw-incorporation subsidies flow mainly to large-scale farms and machinery operators. Yuan Yong, an agricultural technician in Jianyang, Sichuan, has spent over twenty years in no-till mulching, seeking a way for smallholders to nourish the soil and save money.
Foodthink, supported by Oxfam Hong Kong’s Beijing Office, has launched a survey soliciting practical experience and needs in climate adaptation from rural social organisations. The survey closes on 31 December 2024.
The Jester, the student newspaper at Wageningen University, argues that ethical labels such as Fairtrade and organic certification merely repackage the longing for liberation as product codes – and that under capitalism, ethical consumption does not exist.
A Community-Supported Agriculture farm in Fengxian, Shanghai—20 mu of arable land held up by four farmhands in their seventies, members unwilling to share yield-loss risks, organic fertiliser still bought in—three months of farm life have reconciled ecological farming’s ideals with its realities, entry by entry.
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.
Tusheng Shiguan’s ingredients come mostly from Yang Lifen and her husband’s nearly ten-mu ecological garden in Qujing. This fourteen-year-old Kunming shop, born of group-buying among public-interest friends, weathered falling footfall and a team cut from twelve to three, true to its Slow Food philosophy: “Tend slowly, grow slowly.”
In Texas, a home kitchen can legally sell homemade baked goods after completing a $15 online hygiene course. Zhang Yiqing began there, aiming to build organic food exchanges among neighbours and asking what kind of food law leaves room for small producers.
Joya, formerly head of Fairtrade International’s China office, experienced firsthand the predicament of trading companies monopolising cooperative decision-making and Western standards frequently misaligning with rural Chinese realities, as she helped farmers obtain Fairtrade certification and connect with overseas markets.
