Labor in food and farming systems, migrant workers, labor rights, and changes in production-side work.
In a sixteenth-century estate in western France, a Colombian brother and sister with expired visas trade room and board, waiting for residency. One month of work exchange pits the rural imagination against the reality of labour, goodwill, and the absence of rights protections.
Behind 30-minute delivery, former JD 7Fresh picker He Siqi worked 31 days. He ran 30,000 steps daily, earned just 30 paise per item, had nine minutes per order, faced scolding and fines when late, and sometimes paid his own delivery fee for a supplementary delivery.
Social worker He Siqi spent a month as a picker at JD Qixian—real-time PDA countdowns, monitoring-screen pressure, fines for mistakes. Behind “30-minute delivery” are bodies sprinting without rest between shelves.
No weather allowance, and fines for not clocking in – the platform’s “tiered reward” scheme pushes risk onto riders. On downpour days there is no circuit breaker; the city’s convenience never pauses, only a person’s safety does.
From the rice fields of the Northeast to Hainan’s orchards, cross-region drone pilot Brother Yang, drone-buying farmer Zhao Mingliang, and others are facing falling spray unit prices, pesticide damage disputes and occupational illness risks for which compensation is hard to claim.
Typhoon Huajiasha made landfall on Hailing Island, Yangjiang; Shangchuan Island recorded gusts above Force 17 – Guangdong’s strongest ever at a national-level meteorological station. Fish rafts shattered, citrus and sugarcane flattened; farmers just over ten days from the Mid-Autumn and National Day holiday face near-total wipeout.
Delivery riders take orders in the rain while facing fines and the risk of accidents. A debate over responsibility among consumers, platforms and workers also asks whether platform gig work has become a safety net for the unemployed.
In Beijing’s downpours and heat, Meituan, Ele.me and JD.com riders are pushed to keep showing up by order assignment, fines and subsidy rules, with pain in their feet, water-damaged phones and losses and risks largely borne by themselves.
Riders eat only two meals a day, stomach problems are rife, and a South Korean study found gig workers eating fewer than three meals face over three times the depression risk of others. Under algorithmic scheduling and livelihood pressures, food-delivery labour runs at the cost of depleting health.
In a small town in eastern Sichuan, at a modern slaughterhouse park invested in by the author’s aunt, cattle and sheep orders, retail cuts and pre-dawn deliveries make up daily life; customer complaints and workshop smells expose how industrialised slaughter is hidden from everyday life.
