Personal stories and production narratives of smallholders, individual farmers, and family farms.
A Note from Foodthink With the passing of Grain Rain, the peak season for this year’s spring tea has come to a temporary close. During the Qingming Festival, Foodthink shared a story about the climate resilience of a natural farming tea garden in Xinyang. Today, we present the second part,…
Foodthink says Since returning home in 2013 to establish the Chengdu Liangliang Farm, Tang Liang’s practice has provided a constant source of inspiration for those concerned with food and farming. In 2018, Tang Liang’s 《The Ledger and Lifestyle of a Family Farm》 offered a sincere answer to the question of…
In Xinyang, Henan, Zhang Chao’s naturally farmed Deyi Tea Garden endures spring drought, late frost and heat, while old drought-resistant tea shows more resilience than the government-promoted early-sprouting variety Xinyang No. 10.
On a windy March day in Beijing, we sat down at the Foodthink office with Tang Liang, who had travelled from his farm in Sichuan, to look back on his twelve-year journey of returning to his roots. Tang Liang was the first in his family to attend university. After graduating…
One of the most significant recent news stories from Europe has seen farmers across the continent taking to the streets to protest against EU trade and land management policies, with France serving as the epicentre of the unrest. According to leaders of the primary French agricultural unions involved, extreme weather…
At the start of 2024, farmer protests spread like wildfire across Europe, beginning in Germany. During the peak of the protests in mid-January, more than 30,000 farmers drove over 5,000 tractors from across Germany to demonstrate in Berlin. The immediate trigger was the German government’s announcement at the end of…
Long-time readers of Foodthink will certainly be familiar with the name “Grandma Kouzi”. Since 2021, this woman in her sixties has chosen to move to “Villain’s Valley” in Fujian. There, she built her own home and worked the land herself, carving a sanctuary out of the wilderness to explore a…
My grandfather was the fourth child of his family, born in 1933. He lost his mother as a child and his father as a youth, weathering years of famine. He was a farmer throughout his life, and for a time, a cotton dresser. In his later years, his dreams grew…
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…
Foodthink says In early August this year, Wuchang in Heilongjiang suffered rare torrential rains and floods, with approximately 40% of the local 2.5 million mu of farmland submerged. Two months after the disaster, livestreamers selling Wuchang rice appeared on e-commerce platforms. Set against a backdrop of lush, harvested fields, they…
