In Èrén Valley, Fujian, Farmer Kouzi has spent four years clearing wild land toward self-sufficiency, turning a gully once deemed unfit for human habitation into fields for growing and admiring. This year, the gardenias behind the house bloomed for the first time.
Following the viral “not enough waste to burn” video, calls to “throw more waste, forget sorting” emerged. Mao Da of the zero waste public welfare organisation and Sun Jinghua of Friends of Nature point out that excess incineration capacity exposes the lack of upstream reduction and sorting.
Ten-fen school-gate ice lollies, Ah Ma’s pig’s-trotter rings from the market, and mother-steamed táo guǒ – Zhang Fulan’s most solid childhood flavours in 1990s Jieyang, Chaoshan; after snack chains and food delivery reshaped a generation’s bodies, she returned to the stove to relearn those guǒ pǐn with her mother.
Heat-driven crop losses and surging tourist numbers are merely the fuse. The legacy of the rice acreage reduction policy, JA’s monopoly on procurement and pricing, and a farming population averaging 68.7 years of age are the agricultural crisis truly reflected by the “rice disturbances of the Reiwa era”.
In a Jing’an District McDonald’s, part-time pay is 19 yuan an hour — just two yuan more after 1,000 hours. Five stations, each worker locked to their post; rainy-day delivery surges send riders and staff unraveling together. The assembly line cuts apart workers’ shared lives.
In an exclusive interview with Foodthink at the 3rd International Agrobiodiversity Congress, veteran BBC journalist Dan Saladino moves from Sichuan Red-Mouth Glutinous Rice to the revival of British farmhouse cheese and the Perry pear, discussing how to safeguard diversity in the industrial food system.
Foodthink has compiled four firsthand accounts of Guangxi’s floods from Liuzhou, Nandan and Du’an. Amid sudden swings between drought and flooding, flash floods destroyed water systems, ponds lay empty, and White-trousered Yao women braved the downpour to rescue hand-sewn ceremonial outfits — a season’s livelihood faces rebuilding.
Kangli, a Yunnan Yi woman, put herself through school on matsutake and rooted in Chuxiong; Jinpeng returned to the Greater Khingan forest, supporting his family by mountain foraging for over a decade. They discuss wild mountain produce pricing, depopulation of mountain villages, and the real labour under climate change.
On World Rainforest Day, Foodthink has compiled over a hundred reader comments via Jieshengzhi on “Fake Meat” Drives Out the Real Thing: from “Brazil’s deforestation has nothing to do with us” to “Forest-burning concerns every creature”, laying bare the full consumer-side divide over imported beef’s environmental cost.
Takeaways, fresh produce, snacks, gift boxes – readers detail everyday life wrapped in layer upon layer of plastic, and share ways to cut down on plastic, such as bringing their own containers and finding recycling points.
