Imagine the vegetables on your plate didn’t come from a farmer with mud-stained hands working in a field, but were instead a technological marvel grown inside a vertical farming tower made of metal and plastic. How would you react? While in Berlin in 2018, I was captivated by the vertical…

Power generated above, crops grown below—one piece of land yielding two streams of income. “Agrivoltaics” claims to deliver multiple benefits, including clean electricity, efficient land use, agricultural modernisation, and rural development; it is often viewed as a win-win technological innovation to simultaneously address food, energy, and climate issues. According to…

In media reports over the last few years, it has been common for street vendors to be fined for selling produce such as chives and celery with pesticide residues exceeding legal limits, with penalties ranging from 5,000 to tens of thousands of yuan. The performance of high-end supermarkets and premium…

Torrential rain, flooding, typhoons, droughts… under the threat of climate change, farmers are always the first to suffer. Yet, it is often overlooked that they are also the most proactive in taking measures to mitigate these losses. Last year, the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), the Farmer Seed…

I grew up in New York City, and from a young age, I loved all kinds of pickles. Little did I imagine that those delicious, crunchy, garlicky pickles would one day lead me on a journey of discovery and exploration. In truth, besides pickles, fermented products such as bread, cheese,…

I. The word ‘fermentation’ always evokes a sensory longing for foods with rich, mellow textures. Yet, rather than being a culinary art, fermentation is more akin to a gift from nature. As experience and knowledge accumulated, humanity learned to make slight adjustments to external factors, such as ambient temperature, working…

Before flowing east into the urban areas of Beijing, the Yongding River forms several U-shaped bends following the mountain terrain; Longjiazhuang and Shuiyuzui villages are situated on opposite banks of the river. A road bridge connects the two villages. Between 29 July and 2 August, extreme rainfall across the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei…

Recently, news that Singapore is introducing grading for sugary drinks and an imminent ban on advertising for milk tea and juices has sparked heated debate in China. In truth, Singapore is not the first nation to intervene in the sale of sugar-sweetened beverages. Over a decade ago, policymakers began introducing…

Over the last forty years, and particularly the last decade, China’s food system has undergone seismic shifts. Many of us have observed and experienced this: traditional wet markets are quietly vanishing from mainstream life, replaced by fresh-food e-commerce and online shopping as the primary sources for urban dwellers; cheap delivery…

You have almost certainly come across the ‘cocklebur’—small, oval fruits with hook-like spines at the tip. Once mature, they cling to clothing and animals; a single walk through the fields can leave your trouser legs covered in them. Although the native cocklebur has a long history of growth in China,…