Analysis of national and local agricultural policies, food policies, regulatory changes, and governance mechanisms.
Nearly a decade on from the Ten Air Measures, Hebei’s coal-to-gas conversions, Shandong’s clean heating upgrades and the blanket straw-burning ban were rolled out one after another. Yet nearly one-sixth of converted households have already abandoned their systems; the green transition’s extra cost has long fallen on farmers.
A 2023 study by Feng Xiaojun and team at China Agricultural University in a major dairy-farming county in Shandong found family dairy farms surpass large-scale farms on income, import resilience, environment and dairy cow welfare. Smallholder exclusion by dairy processors stems from unequal bargaining power; policy and organisation must combine.
Zhen Rui’s 450-mu farm in Miyun, farmed for thirteen years, lost all topsoil to flash floods; resuming cultivation in the short term looks hopeless. He temporarily grafted his operation onto a neighbouring farm, while northern farmers still lack systematic insurance and land-planning support against extreme rainfall.
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.
Disaster relief worker Hao Nan retraced the flood’s path through the Xinglong and Miyun disaster areas to reconstruct how flash floods unfolded. Community disaster prevention and mitigation, he finds, has long lacked funding and manpower, with grassroots evacuation timing relying largely on on-the-spot judgement.
Sili partners with agricultural technology stations and social organisations across Yunnan to promote ridging-and-furrowing low-water rice cultivation. From Yilong Lake’s shores to the Hani Rice Terraces, the same approach has grown into different forms, shaped by differences in subsidies, water conditions and varieties.
With support from Oxfam Hong Kong’s Beijing office, Foodthink surveyed 29 social organisations and 11 scholars, finding that the real bottleneck for rural climate projects is not carbon emission reduction targets themselves but structural challenges such as hollowing and ageing.
At Mondeggi commons, over 450 members collectively farm 1,800 mu of land and deliberate democratically; Genuino Clandestino uses independent certification to bypass official procedures. These communities extend agroecology from a cultivation technique into collective action fighting for land and food sovereignty.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., riding the “Make America Healthy Again” campaign, has axed 3,500 FDA staff, slashed its budget by $400 million and suspended the food-testing sampling programme — hitting an agency already short-staffed and embroiled in several recent fatal food safety incidents.
Heat-driven crop losses and surging tourist numbers are merely the fuse. The legacy of the rice acreage reduction policy, JA’s monopoly on procurement and pricing, and a farming population averaging 68.7 years of age are the agricultural crisis truly reflected by the “rice disturbances of the Reiwa era”.
