Foodthink is a knowledge, information, and writing community dedicated to sustainable food and agriculture, founded and managed by a group of partners with long-term experience in agricultural and food practice and research. Since our inception in August 2017, we have connected with nearly 200 outstanding researchers and practitioners from both…
In 2021, after a ten-year stint in Beijing which I ended for physical and mental health reasons, I returned to my hometown of Xin County in Shandong and stayed for nearly a year. Xin County is known as ‘China’s premier vegetable county’, with fruit and vegetable cultivation covering over a…
In late June, while travelling to Jiangbutasi Village in eastern Altay, Xinjiang, we frequently encountered Kazakh herders on horseback driving their cattle and sheep to new pastures, with cars often coming to a halt to let the herds pass. This is the peak of the migration season. Herders in the…
In this episode, the Food Talk hosts are joined by an old friend, Shu Meng, who holds a PhD in Sociology from Cornell University. Our discussion takes its starting point from Shu Meng’s popular article, ‘The Bigger the Fridge, the Worse the Diet? The Food System in American Middle-Class Fridges’.…
At the end of last year, Foodthink published an article titled “Bringing an Influencer Home to Sell Navel Oranges: Only Then Did I Realise How Hard Life Is for Fruit Farmers”. In the piece, Fengche, who works in Guangzhou, shares the story of her return home to help her family…
Which are the premium lychee-growing regions of Guangdong? Zhong-ge and Guo Rui, residents of Yinlin Village in Conghua, answer in unison: Conghua is certainly among the best. In their view, the quality of a lychee depends not only on latitude but also on the local microclimate. Conghua’s lychees have long…
Recently, reports of the “field-rotting rains” in Henan and the rush to harvest wheat have spread across social media, causing anxiety for everyone concerned with agriculture. The Guanzhong region of Shaanxi, also a major wheat-producing area, experienced these “field-rotting rains” almost simultaneously with Henan, and the damage to the crops…
At the start of this year, four years after moving to the Netherlands, my partner and I finally rented a hectare of land in the province of Utrecht to begin cultivating my own farm. Before deciding to commit to farming, I had interned at several small organic farms across the…
Last week, Foodthink’s focus on the proposed revisions to the Administrative Measures for the Supervision and Management of Quality and Safety of Edible Agricultural Products in Market Sales sparked significant interest among our readers. The removal of “drying” from the definition of “edible agricultural products” suggests that farmers who produce…
Nestled among the countless trendy restaurants and cafes of the bustling Fenghuanghui commercial street on Beijing’s East Third Ring Road, there is a vegetable shop called “Ji Shi”. If you have ever passed by, you may have been drawn in by its rustic storefront and understated displays. In this episode,…
