Recruitment, programme records, participant stories, and reviews from the Agroecology Internship.
Three months interning at Guixinyuan Farm in Huizhou — weeding, feeding chickens, studying weeds — then touring farms in Guangdong, Guangxi, and Beijing, Zejun found ecological agriculture offers no single right answer: only a spectrum, and a way of thinking.
In the desert fields beneath the Helan Mountains, one rainstorm cracks the honeydew melons, and a dozen or so shared meals and quarters test an introvert’s endurance. Yet the silver glow of Russian olive trees and the Milky Way overhead give a reason to stay and farm.
Cracked fingertips, farmhands in their seventies doing all the planting across 20 mu, members unwilling to share a thin harvest – at a community-supported farm in Fengxian, Shanghai, three months of labour brought the organic ideal up against the concrete realities of manpower, seasons, and funding.
Five young people interned in succession at Green Me Farm in Jingyang, Shaanxi, learning to drive a tractor, make green manure and work the biscuit line. Through Foodthink’s Lianhe Programme, they experienced biodynamic farming and chatted about surprises and rewards of stepping from the city into the fields.
Editor’s Note I first met Jiang Ziqi at a book fair in Hangzhou in 2023, where she invited the Farmer Seed Network to give a talk on seed saving. At the time, I learned that she and some of her partners in Hangzhou cultivated their own small vegetable gardens and…
Editor’s Note I first met Jiang Ziqi at a book fair in Hangzhou in 2023. She had invited the Farmer Seed Network to give a talk on seed saving during the event; at the time, I knew that she and several of her partners in Hangzhou tended their own small…
In this episode of “Food Talk”, host Xiaojing and Foodthink’s Mei Ying interview two young people who have just completed their internships: An Tian and San Qi. Once nature educators and young teachers, they travelled to Yinlin Village in Guangdong to pursue their agricultural dreams—a place that boasts not only…
A while ago, news about oil tankers mixing different types of edible oils was everywhere, leaving many of us wondering if we had also fallen victim to it. Getting enough to eat has long ceased to be an issue, but eating safely and healthily is another matter entirely. I recalled…
I. Returning to the Countryside: Connecting with Pengcheng Natural Farm I grew up in a Hakka village in eastern Guangdong, and as a child, I often longed for the world beyond. In 2015, I finally made it to the big city of Guangzhou for my studies; I have lived, worked,…
I. Setting Out with Questions In late March, I began a three-month internship at Guixinyuan Farm. Partly, it was to see if I was cut out for a life of agricultural labour; partly, I was searching for an ideal model of farming: what should be the relationship between agriculture and…
