Introductions, activities, progress updates, participant records, and reviews related to the Lianhe Programme.
From meat shops in county towns in the pastoral areas of Qinghai and Gansu to ranches in the Brazilian Amazon created by deforestation, low-priced imported beef and mutton push down local grass-fattened meat prices and affect herders’ income from livestock sales and their livelihoods.
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.
Recently, irregularities in the transport of edible oils by tanker trucks have once again sparked public concern over food safety. From production to processing, and from transport to sale, every link in the chain affects the safety of our food. The workers, managers, regulators, researchers, and capital interests behind each…
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…
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…
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…
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…
