Organic production, sustainable farming methods, and agroecological practices.
From a private school in the city to Zhaixia Village, Longyan, Fujian Province, a couple born in the 1990s are learning to grow passion fruit and peanuts in terraces surrounded by pesticides, adjusting Natural Farming, and opening a micro-shop to sell ecological products.
Residents in Florence’s outskirts reclaimed a former estate, restoring soil as a commons and running the farm democratically; smallholders and consumers have bypassed official certification to form the Genuino Clandestino network. Agroecology here is not just a farming method but a social movement against the industrialised food system.
In Puer, Yunnan, a South American crop shortfall has kept green bean prices rising for a year running, but erratic rainfall and extreme weather still threaten the harvest. Some local farmers are processing their own beans, planting green manure and shade trees to cope with the climate and find steadier prices.
In some villages in Sichuan, farmers and the public-interest organisation Home Action are trialling low-input, low-pesticide methods that retain local heirloom varieties, helping families eat healthily first and keeping seeds for the community to cope with heat and drought.
In Jianyang, Ya’an and other places in Sichuan, farmers including Yang Xiuyou and non-profit organisation Home Action use no-till cover, heirloom varieties and experience in storing grain to cope with harvest risk in persistent drought, while also sustaining village life for the left-behind elderly.
Several ecological farms in Shunyi and Changping, Beijing, and Baoding, Hebei, have reshaped land, switched crops, and reinforced infrastructure after four straight years of downpours — but with surrounding public drainage works still lacking, extra investment is squeezing already razor-thin margins.
Through Foodthink’s Eco-Agricultural Internship Programme, this Gen Z intern spent three months at Lexiangu Community Farm in Shanghai’s Fengxian District, raising seedlings, weeding, repairing a roof, tending sheep and dogs, working at market stalls, and gaining the courage to explore the future.
61-year-old farmer Sun Wenxiang, with his wife and father, maintains ecological farming in Qilong Village, Hongya County, keeping old rice varieties such as Red-beak Glutinous Rice, relying on black pigs, biogas slurry and daily weeding, while questioning whether old varieties will reach the next generation.
Over four years in Fujian’s Eren Gu, Kouzi hired six excavator operators, was repeatedly slapped in the face by soupy mud, wild grass, and the neighbours’ ducks—until a valley once choked with bamboo roots and wild grass finally spilled with gardenia fragrance.
Foodthink Says Since this spring, Shaanxi has experienced its most severe drought since 1961. Combined with extreme weather such as high temperatures, strong winds, and sandstorms, these compound disasters have seriously threatened agricultural production and rural livelihoods. In May, with the support of the Oxfam Hong Kong Beijing office, Foodthink…
