Attention all departments: Foodthink’s ‘Occupy Jishì 3.0’ and Annual Meeting Special Project is now officially underway! From 10:00 to 22:00 on Saturday, 7 February, we will be taking over Jishì, the Beijing Organic Farmers Market community store in Sanyuanqiao. This is more than just the source of ingredients for our…
During the Spring Festival at the start of 2025, the theme of our family dinner was AI—specifically, the overnight sensation that was DeepSeek. The younger generation couldn’t stop talking about it. I felt a certain detachment, much as I did when ChatGPT first emerged a couple of years prior. Had…
In November 2025, Zhao Lishun, a farmer in Meishan, shook his head in distress as he looked at the abandoned rice fields in his village. These fields were no longer his, nor those of his fellow villagers; they belonged to the ‘bosses’—large-scale land leaseholders from outside the region. At the…
I.Nine Years: What Has and Hasn’t Changed On 5 January 2026, coming across a report in *Farmers’ Daily* titled ‘Heating Issues in Rural Hebei Cannot Be Delayed Any Longer’, I was startled; it felt as though I had been transported back nine years. I am from Hebei. For many of…
This is Foodthink’s final post of 2025. Surprise! It’s not a wrap-up! (Truth be told, the year-end review hasn’t quite been ‘dug out’ yet, so please try again later…) In the meantime, why not take a look at the antics we got up to at the recent Guangdong Harvest Festival!…
Weeds are not the other; weeds are you and me. — Michael Pollan, *Weeds, Roses, and Groundhogs: How the Garden Educated Me* Over the past year, I have travelled with my colleagues from Foodthink to more than ten ecological farms across the country, from the coastal cities of the Yangtze…
We often believe that as long as our produce is certified, thoroughly washed, home-cooked, and fresh, it will be healthy and natural. We scrutinise the origin of our meat and vegetables and pore over the ingredient lists of our condiments; surely nothing has been overlooked? Yet, the cautious urban consumer…
A Word from Foodthink Today marks the first day of the National Day holiday. I wonder if you’ve already hit the road? Recently, Foodthink’s “Eat Well” initiative invited readers to share their home fermentation methods and experiences. We’ve summarised three secret tips and identified one category that is particularly prone…
Over a year ago, I first heard of the “climate-friendly rice cultivation” model at a knowledge-sharing session on community practices for agricultural responses to climate change. Last month, together with fellow farmers from Panzhihua in Sichuan, Wuhu in Anhui, and Fuyuan in Heilongjiang, I visited project sites in Kunming, Pu’er,…
I. Typhoon Shifts South: Force 12 Wind Zone Ravages Farmers “In this round of typhoons, the farmers are the biggest victims.” At dawn on the 25th, Hao Nan, a disaster humanitarian aid expert and head of Zhuoming 信援, sent this earnest voice message to the Foodthink editorial office. Before this,…
