Recruitment, programme records, participant stories, and reviews from the Agroecology Internship.
A year ago, I decided to leave a non-profit organisation dedicated to sustainable agriculture to get onto the front lines of planting. I wanted to observe and reflect on the actual operations of ecological farming, experience rural life as a semi-farmer, and explore the possibilities of practising eco-agriculture. Consequently, I…
At the beginning of 2024, Foodthink launched the recruitment for the third phase of its “Ecological Agriculture Internship Programme”. Our aim is to connect young people aspiring to work in ecological agriculture with established ecological farms. This allows the former to master farming knowledge and techniques, while enabling seasoned farmers…
Foodthink’s Perspective Organic farming is far from a pastoral idyll, a fact for which the young people participating in Foodthink’s Lianhe Ecological Agriculture Internship Programme had already mentally prepared. However, out in the fields, through day-after-day of labour and observation, they gained a completely new understanding of farmers, ecological farming,…
Foodthink’s Lianhe Initiative is inviting young people and established farms to apply for phase three of its ecological farm internship programme across China, with applications closing on 6 March 2024.
Foodthink’s Take In the final episode of the hit TV series *Blossoms Shanghai*, the protagonist, Mr Bao, quotes the famous line from *Gone with the Wind*—’Land is the only thing that lasts’—as he retires to the farmland of Chuansha on the outskirts of Shanghai. Had Mr Bao’s land not been…
In the first part of ‘Notes on an Internship in a Desert Oasis’, I tried to lean into my professional instincts as a business journalist to explore the operational struggles of an ecological farm. But in truth, during my two months interning at the Zhiliangtian Farm in Alashan, my daily…
In May, I quit my job and left Beijing for a while, heading to the Zhiliangtian Ecological Farm in Alxa, Inner Mongolia, where I lived for two months. To my surprise, I spent every single day of my first month there drinking. Two-thirds of the beer in the farm’s coffee…
This spring, before visiting Yan Ping’s “Happiness Fruit Herb Garden” in Guigang, Guangxi, I arrived with a misconception: that the place was remote and untouched, with a pristine ecological environment. In reality, the farm is surrounded by conventional orchards where the use of pesticides, chemical fertilisers, and herbicides is commonplace.…
At the end of 2020, I left the non-profit organisation where I had worked for over seven years. I wanted to explore a way of working that didn’t depend on an institution—one that could bring a relative balance to my mind, body, and spirit—while seeking a lifestyle suited for the…
Before starting my internship at Letian Bay Farm, I had imagined that the customers here were all fervent environmentalists; otherwise, there was no way to explain why these urbanites would travel to the countryside. In an age where everyone is flocking to the cities, taking a path in the opposite…
