I. Climate change through the eyes of small-scale farmers: spring droughts, soil, and food storage With only three days until the summer solstice, Yang Xiuyou finally saw the arrival of heavy rain. The downpour began on the evening of 17 June, falling in intermittent bursts until the following afternoon. “After…
Foodthink Says Thirty-one elderly residents perished at a care home in Taishitun Town, Miyun, Beijing. A minibus carrying 14 female pepper pickers in Shanxi vanished in a torrential downpour. Following these record-breaking floods, each heartbreaking story serves as a warning: how are we to coexist with a nature that has…
Eating to Extinction Original Title: Eating to Extinction: The World’s Rarest Foods and Why We Need To Save Them Author: Dan Saladino Curated by: Beiye Books Publisher: Wenhui Publishing House Translator: Gao Yubing Published: November 2023 Foodthink’s Take Eating to Extinction is a work that explores the global crisis of…
Farmer Sun Wenxiang stood in his concrete courtyard to welcome us, his large, calloused feet bare. In early July, Hongya County in Meishan City, Sichuan Province, had just experienced several torrential rainstorms. It was a rare few days of downtime between farm tasks. In another fortnight, the maize in Sun…
Foodthink Says “Six months of drought, six months of flooding.” Farmers in parts of Guangxi are experiencing unprecedented natural disasters. First came a once-in-60-year drought. From November last year to April this year, average precipitation in Guangxi was nearly 70% lower than usual—the lowest since complete meteorological records began in…
Summer arrives, and with it, another season for watermelon. Watermelons are inseparable from summer, just as the farmers behind the fruit evolve alongside their crop. Wherever there is land, you will find the watermelon farmers of Taizhou. Their history of enterprise dates back to the 1980s, forming another chapter in…
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…
I. Returning to 2011 The reserve’s shuttle stopped by the side of a narrow concrete road, flanked by karst limestone mountains that seemed strangely familiar. We passed through a sugarcane grove; in fact, countless bare stone peaks in the area are surrounded by sugarcane. Unlike the black-purple skin of fruit…
As the twelfth lunar month approaches, the ultimate comfort food for people in Shaanxi is a simple bowl of mixed noodles: red-hued wide wheat noodles from Yan Gui Qing, oil-splashed chilli made from Qin peppers, and a topping of minced pork sauce made from mountain-roaming pigs—the true finishing touch. Every…
In mid-April, driven by a desire to learn how to run a farm, I arrived at the Letian Haiwan Farm in Shanghai. Before I knew it, my internship had come to an end after living and working here with my colleagues. Before I left, they asked if I still wanted…
