Urban food life, consumption behavior, and food culture.
Late April: the Nanning Urban Farmers’ Market’s eleventh annual gathering at Zhongtuan Village ecological farm, Hengzhou. Traditional farmers, young returnees and volunteers brought their own tents, bowls and chopsticks beneath the banyan tree, huddling through shortfalls of people and money to sustain this urban–rural community of sustainable living.
At Yulin’s Longquan Green Vegetable Shop, several owners bound in an egalitarian partnership tend local ecological produce and the daily weigh-and-close routine. Professor Xu Leiqing’s Research Group 408 at Tongji University finds such a community space — most accessible, most frequently visited — is itself a therapeutic setting.
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”.
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.
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.
Six months on, cook Xia Lili’s community kitchen in Yulin, Chengdu has knit her meal companions, pot by pot. A burst pipe led a neighbour to take them all in; a new arrival wrote their song. This all-female crew’s table is now a pillar in each life.
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?
From a short film about delivery riders to a Parliamentary vote, Singapore used its unique system of tripartism over three years to close the institutional gap for more than 70,000 platform workers, securing protections in CPF, Work Injury Compensation and collective bargaining.
