Seed sovereignty, heirloom variety preservation, and traditional breeding systems.
From Yunnan’s Red Junglefowl, Guizhou’s high-legged chicken and Little Liangshan Yi chickens, Zou Lei, a PhD student at Minzu University of China, sees that local chicken breeds are fading as industrialised farming, urbanisation and foreign varieties arrive, and food, language and ritual change accordingly.
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.
Veteran BBC journalist Dan Saladino compiled 40 stories of foods at risk of vanishing into Eating to Extinction, published in Chinese by Beiye Books. At the 3rd International Congress on Agricultural Biodiversity, he stated that only by saving diversity can the Earth and humanity have more choices.
Under the Rice Tariffication Law and the impact of imported rice, smallholders on Mindanao in the Philippines face falling paddy purchase prices and high retail rice prices. They are turning to breeding and agroecology to seek food autonomy.
Passed down since the collectivisation era by farmers saving their own seeds, Guanzhong’s “Baituwa” melon helped growers make fortunes in the 1980s. Now unable to withstand storage and transport, and not “attractive” enough, it has retreated from city shop shelves, glimpsed only at rural markets.
Last April, I arrived at Baicao Garden through Foodthink’s ecological agriculture internship programme. In Wule Town, Guigang City, Guangxi Province, where we were based, almost everything outside of Baicao Garden is chemical-based agriculture. On the drive into town, the sight of people spraying herbicides is a constant presence. I remember…
I. The Seed Bottleneck In Guzhai Yao Township, Mashan County, north of Nanning, farmers’ incomes had soared thanks to growing chayote seedlings, but since last year, they have been plunged into a crisis: they have no seeds to plant. Guangxi experienced several bouts of extreme rainfall in 2024. In Mashan…
The world’s table begins with China’s small pulses 10 February 2025 marks the seventh World Pulses Day. This year’s theme is “Pulses: Bringing Diversity to Agrifood Systems”. Grow pulses, eat pulses; diverse farming, healthy living. Soya beans, edamame, and black beans are common staples on the dining table, yet all…
Foodthink has compiled a 2025 reading list from the new books on food and agriculture, ecology and sustainability received in 2024 — from delivery riders’ working conditions to the ecological lessons of fungal networks.
Foodthink’s Perspective Some media outlets have dubbed 2024 the “inaugural year of GMO commercialisation” in China. In 2023, 37 varieties of genetically modified maize and 14 varieties of genetically modified soy passed variety certification, and 26 companies were granted permits for the production and operation of GM maize and soy…
