I. Who truly cares for the snow leopard? The posthumous work of director Wanma Tsairmatar, which won Best Film at the Tokyo International Film Festival, tells a simple story: on the snow-capped highlands, a herder’s sheepfold is attacked by a snow leopard, resulting in the death of nine sheep. This…

I was born in a small tea-growing village in Hunan. Growing up amidst the tea gardens and mountain forests gave me a particular interest in the tea industry. When I was a child, tea production in the village lacked a formal system; every household ran it as a side hustle,…

Foodthink Says As May arrives, it is once again the season for foraging mushrooms in the mountains of Yunnan. In recent years, wild vegetables and wild fungi have become increasingly popular. Not only are various premium wild greens and mushrooms appearing in mainstream supermarkets, wet markets, and online fresh produce…

More than 20 years ago, a group of pioneer farmers and social organisations blazed a trail for “ecological agriculture” in China. Driven by a desire to ensure food safety and a commitment to protecting the environment, they began experimenting with cultivation free from pesticides, chemical fertilisers, and herbicides. Whether they…

Foodthink’s Perspective As mentioned previously, consumers are often too disconnected from the point of production to truly understand the quality of their food, making it difficult for them to effectively safeguard their rights. To address this, Participatory Guarantee System (PGS) practices have emerged within China. PGS emphasises that various ‘stakeholders’—including…

Foodthink says ‘315’ is the shorthand for Consumer Rights Day. Every year on this date, people instinctively focus on which frauds have been exposed by CCTV. In daily life, however, a product’s value exists in more than just a binary of ‘real’ or ‘fake’; consumers also care about quality and…

Foodthink’s Perspective Organic farming is far from a pastoral idyll, a fact for which the young people participating in Foodthink’s Lianhe Ecological Agriculture Internship Programme had already mentally prepared. However, out in the fields, through day-after-day of labour and observation, they gained a completely new understanding of farmers, ecological farming,…

Since its inception in August 2017, Foodthink has reported on the stories of dozens of ecological small-scale farmers across the country. As outliers among their peers, they have made their share of mistakes and learned the hard way; however, through years of growth, they have accumulated rich and practical experience…

Over a year ago, the entire Foodthink team “usurped the nest“, taking over the community vegetable shop of the Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market. In a single day, we took full responsibility for all shop operations and achieved such great sales results that we won our “wager”. The first “Occupy the…

Foodthink’s Take With the Lunar New Year approaching, who wouldn’t want to prepare a lavish New Year’s Eve feast with minimal time and effort? Riding this wave, various pre-prepared meals have once again trended across online shopping platforms—for just over a thousand yuan, you can bring home a full set…