Recruitment, programme records, participant stories, and reviews from the Agroecology Internship.
A bachelor’s graduate spends a month on an ecological agriculture internship at Baicaoyuan in Guigang, Guangxi — hoeing, carrying water, weathering a violent downpour — then leaves, unable to bear the heat, admitting they can never do without air conditioning.
Three roles – content translation, research assistant, and short-form video production – are open, based in Haidian, Beijing, with a summer internship of at least two months and the opportunity to convert to a permanent position.
Sustainable food and agriculture content platform Foodthink resumes at Grain Rain, documenting smallholders’ livelihoods, field workers, climate change, biodiversity and policy changes. It clarifies this year’s focus: the International Year of Women in Agriculture, the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists and climate resilience action.
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.
Jianning joins Foodthink’s Ecological Agriculture Internship Programme, picking blueberries, corn, and lychees at Yinlin Farm in Conghua, Guangzhou, observing chickens, birds, black goats, and villagers at work, and sensing the living connection between food and the land.
Over three months at Xiqing Farm in Zhangziying Town, Daxing, Beijing, Tianyi saw how weeds retain moisture, ants herd aphids, and a water-starved sweet pepper turns to flowering and seeding — the living logic of land and crops behind repetitive labour.
From a private school in the city to Zhaixia Village, Longyan, Fujian Province, a couple born in the 1990s are learning to grow passion fruit and peanuts in terraces surrounded by pesticides, adjusting Natural Farming, and opening a micro-shop to sell ecological products.
Through Foodthink’s Eco-Agricultural Internship Programme, this Gen Z intern spent three months at Lexiangu Community Farm in Shanghai’s Fengxian District, raising seedlings, weeding, repairing a roof, tending sheep and dogs, working at market stalls, and gaining the courage to explore the future.
Last April, I arrived at Baicao Garden through Foodthink’s ecological agriculture internship programme. In Wule Town, Guigang City, Guangxi Province, where we were based, almost everything outside of Baicao Garden is chemical-based agriculture. On the drive into town, the sight of people spraying herbicides is a constant presence. I remember…
During a Foodthink internship, an anthropology postgraduate visits over a dozen ecological farms: five mu of hand-tended polytunnels, eighty mu of mechanised open fields, food-forest-style Guiling and Baicaoyuan — seeing new farmers, beyond chemical fertilisers and pesticides, forge cultivation and dwelling with weed-like freedom.
