Digital technology, agricultural technology, AI, and biotechnology applications in food and farming.
In northern Anhui, old combines are giving way to new machines with large grain tanks and air conditioning. Bag-catchers, fertiliser-spreaders and pesticide-sprayers are losing their work one after another, yet smart agricultural machinery, at its high price, remains further from small farmers.
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.
Farmer Kou Yanding has sued for defamation after Baidu AI generated a fake “judgment” saying he had been sentenced for extortion. The Beijing Internet Court has heard the case, making it the first AI defamation case in China with documented records.
Agricultural input dealers define “scientific farming” with rhetoric such as “foliar fertiliser nano-penetration,” pushing drone fertilising to five or six rounds a year. In 2024, with northeast maize at 1.1 yuan per jin, net profit per xiang was minimal whether farmers fertilised twice or five or six times.
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.
On Thanksgiving 1953, Swanson & Sons, needing to clear surplus turkeys, packed meat, vegetables and sauce into compartmented aluminium trays and sold them frozen; since then, retort pouches and modified atmosphere packaging have in turn emerged, continually rewriting food’s journey.
Former agriculture reporter Xie Xiaodan spent two and a half years at a financial media outlet, drawing most stories from listed companies’ earnings reports. A chance lead on abscessed pig meat proved impossible to trace; a ten-square-metre vegetable plot was destroyed by torrential rain; she lost her job.
Qingming is a festival for ancestral worship and tomb-sweeping. This year, Qingming falls on 4 April, which happens to be 404. This brings to mind those articles that have been 404 not found. Last year, several Foodthink articles “disappeared” from our WeChat official account—the highest number in our history. Yet,…
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.
Foodthink’s Perspective Some media outlets have dubbed 2024 the “inaugural year of GMO commercialisation” in China. In 2023, 37 varieties of genetically modified maize and 14 varieties of genetically modified soy passed variety certification, and 26 companies were granted permits for the production and operation of GM maize and soy…
