The environmental and soil impacts of agricultural inputs and pollution issues.
Coaches day after day follow the same route along the village’s carefully arranged roads, telling eco stories to inspection groups and tourists; the scorched-black field ridges charred by herbicide beneath the rice paddies are selectively hidden in the display.
H Province farmer Old Li’s 70 mu of farmland lies under mulch film fragments blown from a neighbouring peanut haulm processing plant. The Ecology and Environment and Agriculture and Rural Affairs Bureaus deflect jurisdiction onto each other; over two months on, pollution persists and accountability grows ever harder.
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…
From Liuzhou in Guangxi to Kunming in Yunnan, fall armyworm in the maize fields of farmer Old Lei and Yanta Village farmers has made spraying more frequent and costly, drawing out issues of climate warming, pesticide resistance and genetically modified maize.
Eighty years ago, Albert Howard warned that chemical fertilisers would sever the mycorrhizal network sustaining the soil; Swiss research later confirmed no mycorrhizal keystone species could be found on conventionally managed farmland. Under chemical fertilisers and pesticides, can ancient underground symbiotic relationships open another path for agriculture?
Under the “no-burning” ban, smallholders on small plots, with no machinery and subsidies out of reach, still simply set the straw alight. Yet over twenty years of Sichuan technician Yuan Yong’s no-till mulching work, echoed by fieldwork nationwide, point to a clear conclusion: straw incorporation must fit smallholders’ own ledgers.
I. An Unexpected Village Party Secretary “Ecological farming?” Fan Hanquan, who had his back to us, suddenly turned around. “I want to try it.” I was slightly surprised. It was 23 February 2022. I remember it so clearly because since I entered E-Ren Valley in 2021, he has been the…
Inspired by Nichole, a US permaculture practitioner in Texas, Zhang Yiqing learns permaculture, stops using herbicides and chemical fertilisers, grows food on large suburban front- and back-yard lawns, and reflects on American lawn culture.
From saccharin and Agent Orange to Roundup and genetically modified seeds, its 115-year history shows how new agribusiness products created fresh problems while US regulation arrived only after harm.
Foodthink’s Perspective 15 August is National Ecology Day. When we speak of ecology and biodiversity, our thoughts immediately turn to wildlife or the Amazon rainforest; few consider the mutual influence between agriculture and ecosystems. In fact, over the last 70 years, the expansion and intensification of agriculture have increasingly degraded…
