Analysis of agricultural product prices, supply chains, corporate behavior, and industry trends.
Inspection and loss assessment, random sampling and premium refunds mean that agricultural insurance payouts to smallholder farmers often diverge from expectations; in widespread disasters, claims-paying capacity and catastrophe risk pooling remain under pressure.
From “ghost delivery” and farmer-support marketing to sorters on the run, shifting wet markets, and plastic waste, the issues facing workers, merchants, farmers, and the environment beyond platform convenience are often overlooked.
No pesticides, no regard for yield: from their own bayberry trees to industrialised variety breeding, a southern farmer argues that store-bought fruit grows sweeter, bigger, and hardier in storage and transit, yet its nutrients decline — and every purchase votes for capital’s choices.
Ru has run a roujiamo shop in a small town in Exeter for six years. Dealing with delivery platforms since the Hundred Groups War, she sees two logics: UK delivery is just delivery, with transparent rates, while merchants in China lost their bargaining power after the subsidy war.
After the 1922 botulism poisoning of eight people at Loch Maree, the “germ theory” swept into kitchens via the public health movement. Domino Sugar, Heinz, Nabisco and others exploited the moment to amplify microbial fear, replacing pickles and bread made at home for generations with packaged food.
On 26 May 2026 at 19:00, Foodthink will screen “Whose Dining Table, Whose Rangeland” in Nanjing, a documentary tracing how imported frozen meat has driven down cattle and sheep purchase prices around Qinghai Lake and altered pastoralists’ livelihoods. Registration is free for Nanjing viewers.
Foodthink’s three-day co-learning camp in Yangqiao Village, Lianhua County, Pingxiang, Jiangxi (4–6 June) features hands-on soil, composting and liquid-fertiliser work plus returning-home case studies, helping farming friends already in or transitioning to ecological agriculture sharpen their techniques and work through yield, quality, cost, and sales.
In Lanhe Town, Nansha, black-skin sugarcane prices have fallen from 99 yuan per dan to a low of 5 yuan; clearing a mu for free means a loss of over 6,000 yuan. After “non-grain conversion” campaigns cleared out bananas, 30 years of continuous cropping leaves only one crop.
Oyster sauce, salad dressing, “No Added Sucrose” drinks—added sugar is embedded in four-fifths of supermarket products. Spot the disguises on the ingredients list, see how the Bliss Point turns sweetness into addiction, to protect yourself in a world besieged by sugar.
The insect protein race sparked by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report is really driven by soaring feed costs; French unicorn Ÿnsect has entered compulsory liquidation after becoming insolvent, while a UK Government-commissioned study shows that per-kilogram carbon emissions from insect meal far exceed soybean meal’s.
