In the karst mountains of Nandan County, Guangxi, Li Youming left years of city work to cultivate heirloom rice without chemicals, building a family seed bank he hopes will carry his people’s tradition forward.
“One-size-fits-all” farm closures in no-farming zones and straw-burning bans leaving villagers detained: Jin Shuqin, Research Center for Rural Economy, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, argues that “blocking without channeling” strays from rural revitalisation’s thriving industries and livable ecology — green and development are one.
In Beijing, Professor Steffanie Scott of the University of Waterloo and CSA farmer Theresa Schumilas introduced Canada’s organisational network, from national farming associations to community supported agriculture, and discussed its implications for smallholder and consumer alliances in China.
Seventeen families, including an Australian and an Italian household, run a vegetable sprint, throw potatoes, pull weeds and identify ten wild plants on Time Farm’s duck-rice paddy in Jiangning District, Nanjing.
Tang Liang of Jintang County, Chengdu, returned home with 30,000 yuan in starting capital to farm for six years, tending 30 mu of ecologically farmed land with nine family members, earning roughly 2,000 yuan a month each and reuniting a family scattered for over a decade.
From Laughingstock to Eye of the Storm: A Small Machine Wreaks Havoc on California’s Tomato Industry
Deployed as the Bracero Programme ended, the UC Davis harvester saw 4,428 of California’s 5,000 tomato farms collapse, displaced 32,000 workers, and replaced hand-picked fruit with a bland, machine-friendly variety still in most American ketchup.
At the Fifth National Farmers’ Seed Network Annual Conference, smallholders from Yunnan, Guangxi, Hebei, Jiangsu and beyond exchanged on seed selection and cross-breeding, linked Community Seed Banks to farmers’ markets, and wove old varieties, ethnic food, and festival rites back into the fields.
Fifty mu in Liqiao, Shunyi, Beijing, split into 30 plots and growing 20 to 30 vegetable varieties each season. Fallen leaf compost and lactic acid bacteria fermentation solution replace chemical inputs—four years of consistent quality, never a loss.
Shigeichi Okada’s Shumei Natural Farming, Masanobu Fukuoka’s four nos, MOA Oami Farm, and Akifumi Kimura’s apple orchard — from founding to fragmentation, Japan’s Natural Farming schools have charted distinct paths between rejecting external inputs and pragmatic flexibility.