Personal stories and production narratives of smallholders, individual farmers, and family farms.
I. Setting Out with Questions In late March, I began a three-month internship at Guixinyuan Farm. Partly, it was to see if I was cut out for a life of agricultural labour; partly, I was searching for an ideal model of farming: what should be the relationship between agriculture and…
I. My Story with Fireflies As a Northerner, I had never seen a firefly before the age of fifty; my limited knowledge was confined to the idiom “studying by the light of reflected snow and fireflies in a bag”. That was until I found myself immersed in a sea of…
On 12 April, a week after the Grain Rain solar term, eastern Sichuan had seen several consecutive rainfalls. This provided relief from the drought that had persisted from the Lunar New Year into March, and the rice seedlings in the fields were nearing the time for transplanting. That afternoon, Yuan…
Li Pengyue, a former IT professional now running an ecological orchard in Weihai, Shandong, compares crop losses from birds and rabbits to a trapped snow leopard and nine dead sheep, and the real question is who pays when wildlife damages crops and livestock.
I was born in a small tea-growing village in Hunan. Growing up amidst the tea gardens and mountain forests gave me a particular interest in the tea industry. When I was a child, tea production in the village lacked a formal system; every household ran it as a side hustle,…
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…
