I. The buyers didn’t come this year On 13 December 2023, in Huichang County, Ganzhou, Jiangxi Province—the heart of the Gannan navel orange production area—Liao Hai, born in the nineties, and his mother, Aunt Zou, were preparing to start harvesting. Early that morning, his mother had gathered over a dozen…

Today, the 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change opened in Dubai. While humanity continues to bicker over the distribution of responsibility for saving the planet—who should pay how much, and who must step outside their comfort zone to alter existing economic development…

Those who have studied permaculture will likely be familiar with the name Sepp Holzer. As a pioneer of permaculture in practice, Holzer is almost a household name in Austria, and his book, *Permaculture*, has served as an introductory guide for enthusiasts across the globe. This June, I travelled deep into…

Foodthink says During the Targeted Poverty Alleviation campaign, in an effort to rapidly increase farmers’ incomes, the government of Gong County (a pseudonym) introduced greenhouse vegetables—known for their superior market profitability—and implemented subsidy policies to integrate them into the farmers’ livelihood systems. Given that the government provided greenhouses, seedlings, and…

Industrial prosperity is a vital foundation for rural revitalisation. Perhaps inspired by Shouguang in Shandong, the centerpiece of agricultural industrial development in the rural central and western regions is often the promotion of greenhouse vegetable cultivation. Such is the case in Gong County (a pseudonym) in the central region. A…

In Russian, summer is also known as the ‘dacha season’. Maxim Gorky wrote a short play, translated into Chinese as *The Summer Guest*, but originally titled *Dachniki* in Russian—which more literally translates to ‘the dacha people’. In 1995, the same story was adapted into a film titled *Summer People*. The…

“Whenever I arrive in a foreign land, the first thing I do is ask the locals where the market is.” In June this year, mirroring the experiences of food writer Han Liangyi in *Wandering Through the World’s Markets*, I embarked on a journey of markets in Barcelona, Spain. Of the…

In this episode of Food Talk, we are joined by our old friend, Sun Shan. Having previously worked for several non-profit organisations, including the Shan Shui Conservation Center, she now runs her own farm in Canada. Contrary to the idyllic image of spending one’s days in harmony with nature, ecological…

Did you know? According to research published in *The Lancet*, two-thirds of the world’s population suffer from some degree of lactose intolerance, experiencing symptoms such as bloating and diarrhoea after consuming milk. If this is the case, why has milk become such a ubiquitous daily beverage across the globe? When…

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…