In Ji County (pseudonym) on the North China Plain, agricultural technology extension has passed from government monopoly through market-town retail to project-based governance contracts, leaving more than 21,000 small-scale farmers with nothing but a phone call to get a drone to spray their crops.
In the Jino Mountain rainforest, Jinuo guide Saoqie forages greens, scoops fish and roasts food wrapped in banana leaves — a meal once the Jinuo people’s daily livelihood. This rainforest is no “untouched paradise”: since 24 trekking companies arrived, Jinuo lives keep shifting between rubber and tourists.
Tusheng Shiguan’s ingredients come mostly from Yang Lifen and her husband’s nearly ten-mu ecological garden in Qujing. This fourteen-year-old Kunming shop, born of group-buying among public-interest friends, weathered falling footfall and a team cut from twelve to three, true to its Slow Food philosophy: “Tend slowly, grow slowly.”
Foodthink’s Lianhe Programme sent five young people to Lüwo Farm in Jingyang, Shaanxi, where their days went far beyond planting vegetables and pulling weeds — raising seedlings, driving a tractor, working on the biscuit production line, attending biodynamic farming classes.
In Texas, a home kitchen can legally sell homemade baked goods after completing a $15 online hygiene course. Zhang Yiqing began there, aiming to build organic food exchanges among neighbours and asking what kind of food law leaves room for small producers.
Joya, formerly head of Fairtrade International’s China office, experienced firsthand the predicament of trading companies monopolising cooperative decision-making and Western standards frequently misaligning with rural Chinese realities, as she helped farmers obtain Fairtrade certification and connect with overseas markets.
Meicuntou, with fewer than four hundred permanent residents, faces “village extinction.” Fan Hanquan offers his own land and housing free for three years to attract ecological farmers, while the village collective’s 2023 trial planting lost 70,000 yuan and the land was left fallow in 2024.
Six months on, cook Xia Lili’s community kitchen in Yulin, Chengdu has knit her meal companions, pot by pot. A burst pipe led a neighbour to take them all in; a new arrival wrote their song. This all-female crew’s table is now a pillar in each life.
The Monsanto biography Empire of Seeds uses data to debunk the GM myth. Chinese scholars and practitioners—Tian Le, Guan Qi, Xu Zhun, Zhou Mujun among them—discuss: GM has neither reduced pesticide use nor raised yields. Can farmers and consumers re-engage with breeding and food networks?
From a short film about delivery riders to a Parliamentary vote, Singapore used its unique system of tripartism over three years to close the institutional gap for more than 70,000 platform workers, securing protections in CPF, Work Injury Compensation and collective bargaining.
