The impact of pandemics on food supply chains, agricultural production, and consumption behavior.
Food security goes beyond national-level “grain security” – it is about whether individuals can access nutritious and safe food at any time. Nanjing’s “Vegetable Basket” Programme and its mixed-ownership wet markets offer a model for sustaining high levels of food security.
In early summer 2020, Zhang Xiaoshu first tasted kombucha fermented with Chinese tea at a friend’s by the Drum Tower. Three years on, she, tea friends Shuyu and Kiwon, and a growing circle passed cultures, blind-tasted, and guarded connection through a jar of fermentation amid lockdowns and scattering.
After the lockdown lifted, quilts, cured provisions and pickled vegetables lined every street in this small town in the Anhui region north of the Yangtze; the family followed Mother’s seasonal rhythm — frying meat balls, curing pork — drying out all fear and darkness, and met Grandfather’s passing too.
