Personal stories and production narratives of smallholders, individual farmers, and family farms.
From late last year until April, the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai—a popular tourist destination—was frequently shrouded in a thick haze. On 29 March, Chiang Mai was ranked by IQAir as the most polluted city in the world, with an Air Quality Index (AQI) of 188, which is 17.4…
Only the soil Old Li contracted was sampled and sent for testing; restoration has not begun. After the processing plant involved moved equipment, film fragments were buried in soil; the ecological environment and agricultural and rural affairs departments have still not acted, citing unclear jurisdiction.
I. Airborne Plastic Blight With spring ploughing imminent, Li Jidong, a farmer from Nuomizhuang Village in Luanzhou, Hebei, found himself unable to plough his land. Across his 70 mu of farmland, fragmented pieces of plastic mulch of various sizes, blown in from a nearby farm, were scattered everywhere. They covered…
I. Returning to 2011 The reserve’s shuttle stopped by the side of a narrow concrete road, flanked by karst limestone mountains that seemed strangely familiar. We passed through a sugarcane grove; in fact, countless bare stone peaks in the area are surrounded by sugarcane. Unlike the black-purple skin of fruit…
Foodthink Says How many people can commit to a single endeavour for a decade? The Nanning Urban Farmers’ Market is one such example. Since its inception in 2013, it has now entered its eleventh year. Held every two months, each market attracts dozens of vendors selling ecological produce from Guangxi—the…
As the twelfth lunar month approaches, the ultimate comfort food for people in Shaanxi is a simple bowl of mixed noodles: red-hued wide wheat noodles from Yan Gui Qing, oil-splashed chilli made from Qin peppers, and a topping of minced pork sauce made from mountain-roaming pigs—the true finishing touch. Every…
“The American system considers itself a very successful culture because we have more people in prison than we have farmers. To feel smug about such statistics is utterly contemptible.” Five years have passed, and I still remember the shock of first reading Joel Salatin’s *Everything I Want to Do is…
Autumn harvest has arrived once more, and the question of whether straw should be burned has again become a focal point of public debate. In October, several areas in Hunan saw a rise in unregulated open-air straw burning, which worsened air pollution in some regions and led to the provincial…
As global warming intensifies, the Fall Armyworm has emerged as a new risk threatening global agricultural production. In the summer of 2019, during our fieldwork in Jixian (a pseudonym) on the North China Plain, the arrival of the Fall Armyworm put the entire county on a “wartime footing”. The Fall…
Sao Qie, a Jino guide in Xishuangbanna, leads a group through Jino Mountain to catch fish, eat wrapped dishes and share a Jino song, while ecotourism reshapes village life.
