Foodthink says At the beginning of the 21st century, the primary producers of raw milk in China were smallholder family farms; today, they are large-scale farms with more than 1,000 head of cattle. In a previous article, “Smallholder Farms vs Large-Scale Farms: Whose Milk is Safer and More Nutritious?”, we…
Foodthink says How to obtain safe and nutritious milk is a concern for many consumers. At the beginning of the 21st century, the primary producers of raw milk in China were smallholder family farms; today, it is large-scale farms with over 1,000 head of cattle. Over the last decade, the…
Three months ago, a young couple farming in Gansu welcomed a baby boy and named him Maizi, meaning ‘Wheat’. His mother, Shitou, wrote on her social media: “I hope that young Maizi Yin, born from Shitou’s land, grows as resiliently as our stony land Hongguangtou wheat. May he walk the…
Foodthink Notes Can “local vegetables” still be found at the rural markets on the outskirts of Beijing? The answer lies in the hands of those elderly farmers who still persist in saving their own seeds. After ten years of farming at the Gaia Worth Garden in the far suburbs of…
Seeds are the essential vehicles for the continuity of plant species. Human survival also depends on them; our food—whether grains, oils, vegetables, or fruits—all begin as a tiny seed. Different seeds produce food with different flavours. In today’s maize, watermelons, and tomatoes, we can no longer taste those “vanished flavours…
I. The Summer Pasture: The Final Pastoral Song Early autumn around Qinghai Lake already brought a biting chill. On that September afternoon, as the light began to fade, our group drove onwards, navigating the mountains by asking passers-by for directions, one stage at a time. No one could say for…
A Word from Foodthink Zha Shiyi, born in 1990, is a member of the Huayao Yi people from Shiping County, Yunnan—a “girl grown up in the village” deep in the mountains. After graduating from college, she worked for a television station before resigning in 2019 to devote herself to writing.…
Weeds are not the other; weeds are you and me. — Michael Pollan, *Weeds, Roses, and Groundhogs: How the Garden Educated Me* Over the past year, I have travelled with my colleagues from Foodthink to more than ten ecological farms across the country, from the coastal cities of the Yangtze…
Let’s start with a test: does anyone remember what happened on 2nd July 2024? Don’t check your phone; try to think back. I guarantee the vast majority have forgotten. I searched the internet for this date in 2025, and not a soul mentioned the oil tanker incident from a year…
I. The Black Box Behind Drone Crashes In the summer of 2024, on the second day of my research into agricultural drones in my hometown in Northeast China, a drone in a neighbouring village crashed while operating: it got snagged on power lines. Crashing is common, not just for…
