Introductions, activities, progress updates, participant records, and reviews related to the Lianhe Programme.
In April 2023, nearly a hundred farmers, scientists and grassroots agricultural bureau staff gathered in Suzhou for the Farmer Seed Network’s 10th annual conference to discuss living conservation of farmer varieties, market use and ecological seed certification, and to exchange seeds at a Kunshan organic farm.
Foodthink’s second Ecological Agriculture Internship Programme has connected 21 young people — journalists, programmers, chefs, and university students — with nine ecological farms across the country, where they are rediscovering food and the land through turning soil, raising seedlings, and composting.
At Zhiliangtian Farm by the Tengger Desert, each vine keeps one melon — a mere twelve hundred jin per mu. Four and a half months working Alxa’s land made me truly grasp farm owner Ma Yanwei’s point: improving soil and keeping groundwater sustainable matters more than producing ingredients.
Jianwen takes us back to his mother’s hearth and his uncle’s herb garden, unveiling the food wisdom behind over a hundred varieties of wild greens and heritage pigs that take two years to mature – a Lisu family living in symbiosis with the mountain.
