Introductions, activities, progress updates, participant records, and reviews related to the Lianhe Programme.
The Lianhe Creative Programme, launched by Foodthink with several public-interest and media partners, received 100 applications. Selected projects span food and agriculture topics — contracted watermelon farmers, imported beef and lamb on herders’ tables, agricultural drones, wet markets’ fight for survival — with works published gradually throughout October.
Two interns set off from Guixinyuan Farm, visiting five ecological farms across Guangdong and Guangxi, repeatedly recalibrating between the ease of Natural Farming and the pressures of yields, lease terms and labour – ultimately affirming the ideal of a Half-farming, Half-X life.
Five months on Foodthink’s ecological agriculture internship programme at Green Me Farm in Xianyang — from driving tractors and harvesting wheat to caring for the soil through Biodynamic farming. The greatest harvest wasn’t technique, but a fresh look at the condition of the land, food and animals.
At Letian Bay Farm in Fengxian, Shanghai, pest damage has left barely any organic maize, the local farm workers don’t buy into the no-spraying method, and the farm’s real revenue comes from land rental and activity experiences – not selling vegetables.
Foodthink’s Lianhe Programme has opened applications for the third cohort of its Ecological Agriculture Internship Programme. The first two cohorts placed more than 40 young people at over ten ecological farms across the country. Application deadline: 6 March.
At Letian Haiwan Farm in Fengxian, local elders averaging over seventy are still tilling the land. After eight months alongside them, a Chinese-literature student found they mostly come for company and chat; the pay of just over ¥100 a day is the afterthought.
At Sister Yanping’s Baicao Garden in Guigang, Guangxi, from handling courier after-sales past midnight and hauling waste with a carrying pole each day, to spending three to five years rebuilding soil ravaged by agrochemicals, Natural Farming is far from the effortless “relying on heaven’s bounty.”
Sister Yanping is trialling Natural Farming across over 50 mu of orchard in Guigang, Guangxi: leaving ripe fruit on the branches to pick slowly, leaving waist-high grass around the trees, dropping unsellable fruit back beneath them – an orchard becoming a living composting ground.
Foodthink is now recruiting for Editor, Communications and Media Operations, and two Programme Officer positions for the Lianhe Programme and Climate Change, seeking new partners in sustainable food and agriculture at its Zhichun Road office in Beijing.
From late May to early June, Lüwo Farm in Jingyang endured nearly two weeks of continuous rain. Abro wheat and spelt wheat suffered lodging, sprouting and mould, forcing farm owner Dahei to rush an early harvest, with yield dropping by roughly 20%.
