Recruitment, programme records, participant stories, and reviews from the Agroecology Internship.
At Baicaoyuan in Guigang, Guangxi, a graduate with a bachelor’s degree on Foodthink’s ecological agriculture internship spent a month hoeing, picking up waste, carrying water and sheltering from downpours, re-experiencing work in nature and admitting they still cannot do without air conditioning and the city.
Foodthink, focused on food and agriculture issues, has openings for content translation and adaptation, research assistant, and short video production roles. Summer interns must complete at least two months and be available on-site at least one day a week on either Tuesday or Thursday in Haidian, Beijing. Part-time roles can be remote, and full-time conversion is limited to people already based in Beijing.
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 manor in western France, a Colombian brother and sister with expired visas were working in exchange for board and lodging and waiting for residency; a month of work exchange made the fantasy of rural life collide with the reality of labour, kindness, and a lack of rights protections.
Jianing takes part in Foodthink’s Ecological Agriculture Internship Programme at Yinlin Farm in Conghua, Guangzhou, picking blueberries, corn and lychees, observing chickens, birds, black goats and villagers at work, and feeling the living connection between food and land.
At Xiqing Farm in Changziying Town, Daxing, Beijing, a three-month ecological farming internship shows, through repeated weeding, watering and catching bugs, how the land, weeds, insects and crops work together.
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…
Foodthink Says What happens when young people, reluctant to follow the mainstream path of life, come to intern at an agroecological farm? What do they gain? This article shares the reflections of Ze Jun, an intern in Foodthink’s third “Agroecology Internship Programme”, compiled from her talk at last year’s sharing…
