In a small ranching town in Texas, Zhang Yiqing buys eggs directly from free-range backyard hens and small organic farmers, sidestepping supermarket purchase limits and price hikes. She believes decentralised local food systems are the real solution to the egg shortages intensive farming keeps causing.
Qiaoyi’s family in Ruyuan, Shaoguan, moved from the deep Nanling Mountains to beside Danxia Airport. In summer, colony after colony of wild termite mushrooms lets the Guoshan Yao carry on their days living with the mountains and forests in the gaps of urbanisation.
Maize once needed just one round of pesticide; now each crop demands six. The Fall armyworm has pushed farmers onto a “pesticide treadmill”, biological control is too slow, and whether GM maize can break the deadlock remains uncertain.
Soya beans, mung beans and adzuki beans all originate from China. Following the Silk Road and the footsteps of migrants, they took root in miso, fermented bean curd and Southeast Asian kitchens, weaving together a history of the dining table that spans continents.
Zejun refused the mainstream path of life. In spring 2024, a three-month internship at Guixinyuan Farm in Huizhou, Guangdong—from weeding and feeding ducks to visiting multiple farms across the two Guangs—gradually revealed that ecological agriculture has no standard answer but a spectrum.
Blackchin tilapia entered Thai waterways via CP Foods’ experimental fish farm in 2010, spreading to 19 provinces over more than a decade. 1,400 fishers have formally filed a lawsuit demanding the responsible party be identified and 2.486 billion baht in compensation.
Sangje, a herder settled in the county town driving a sanitation truck, cannot afford his own yak meat—he boils imported frozen meat with sheep intestines in one pot. Cheap JBS-chain beef is driving live livestock prices into loss, from Gannan to Brazil, and burning the Amazon’s forests.
Coke’s profit code is hidden in public water supply, government-subsidised sugar and cheap caffeine. Bart J. Elmore’s The Coca-Cola Empire writes this “scavenger”-style plunder—and the plastic and obesity bills it foists off—into history.
In 2011, Yu Jiangang took part in rural development in Zhuang villages in Longzhou, Guangxi. In 2024, he returned to Bangui hamlet to find the water buffalo all but vanished, the village school down to just 5 pupils, and the village still living to its own rhythm.
In 2024, riders’ sudden deaths, the exposé of “ghost takeaway”, collective protests, two new books and two films pushed the plight of workers under delivery-platform algorithms into public discourse. Foodthink reviews the year’s key stories and films about platforms and food.
