6 July is International Co-operatives Day, and this year’s theme is “Co-operatives Build a Better Future for All”. The co-operative movement is a global social phenomenon. Since the founding of the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers in 1844, co-operatives have evolved over 180 years, taking root and flourishing across the…

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…

I. My Story with Fireflies As a Northerner, I had never seen a firefly before the age of fifty; my limited knowledge was confined to the idiom “studying by the light of reflected snow and fireflies in a bag”. That was until I found myself immersed in a sea of…

I. Who truly cares for the snow leopard? The posthumous work of director Wanma Tsairmatar, which won Best Film at the Tokyo International Film Festival, tells a simple story: on the snow-capped highlands, a herder’s sheepfold is attacked by a snow leopard, resulting in the death of nine sheep. This…

I was born in a small tea-growing village in Hunan. Growing up amidst the tea gardens and mountain forests gave me a particular interest in the tea industry. When I was a child, tea production in the village lacked a formal system; every household ran it as a side hustle,…

Foodthink Says As May arrives, it is once again the season for foraging mushrooms in the mountains of Yunnan. In recent years, wild vegetables and wild fungi have become increasingly popular. Not only are various premium wild greens and mushrooms appearing in mainstream supermarkets, wet markets, and online fresh produce…

More than 20 years ago, a group of pioneer farmers and social organisations blazed a trail for “ecological agriculture” in China. Driven by a desire to ensure food safety and a commitment to protecting the environment, they began experimenting with cultivation free from pesticides, chemical fertilisers, and herbicides. Whether they…

Foodthink’s Perspective As mentioned previously, consumers are often too disconnected from the point of production to truly understand the quality of their food, making it difficult for them to effectively safeguard their rights. To address this, Participatory Guarantee System (PGS) practices have emerged within China. PGS emphasises that various ‘stakeholders’—including…

Foodthink says ‘315’ is the shorthand for Consumer Rights Day. Every year on this date, people instinctively focus on which frauds have been exposed by CCTV. In daily life, however, a product’s value exists in more than just a binary of ‘real’ or ‘fake’; consumers also care about quality and…

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,…