After a decade of the burning ban, maize and paddy rice growers in northeast China are still troubled by ridge boundaries, costs, subsidies and the results of incorporation, and burn crop residue within a unified window during spring ploughing.
K Village in north-eastern Thailand does not chase export fragrant rice; instead, it conserves old rice landraces, practises low-input farming, and uses a credit union and direct online sales to keep earnings in the village.
A food entrepreneur who runs a roujiamo shop in a small town in Exeter has found that there is no food-delivery subsidy war in the UK; restaurants keep only just over half of each order, and he believes that at his shop, those who want convenience should pay for delivery.
On the afternoon of 31 May, Foodthink invited Professor Lü Chensheng of Harvard University to the DT51 Bookstore in Beijing to discuss how neonicotinoid pesticides enter soil, fruit and vegetables, and the human body, and how seed companies influence agricultural policy, with in-person registration open and an online livestream available.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, microbiology made home fermentation seem dangerous, and large corporations advertised cleanliness, convenience and safety, pushing factory-produced food onto the table and replacing homemade foods such as pickles, bread and cheese.
In Yijing Market, Wuzhou, Guangxi, the grandmother opened the shop in 1995. The mother later took over, and the daughter helps during the Spring Festival. The mother opens the shop early each morning and returns home in the evening to do the portioning, knowing exactly what regular customers usually buy. The little shop is unlikely to be taken over by the daughter.
From raw nuts and pure dried fruit to roselle stevia, homemade yoghurt, dried pumpkin, nut candy and jerky, these back-to-the-kitchen choices deliver both flavour and good health.
On 26 May 2026 at 19:00, Foodthink will screen “Whose Dining Table, Whose Rangeland” in Nanjing, a documentary tracing how imported frozen meat has driven down cattle and sheep purchase prices around Qinghai Lake and altered pastoralists’ livelihoods. Registration is free for Nanjing viewers.
Foodthink will run a three-day co-learning camp in Yangqiao Village, Lianhua County, Pingxiang, Jiangxi from 4 to 6 June, focused on hands-on practice in soil, compost and liquid fertiliser and return-to-farming case studies, helping farmers already working in or looking to move into ecological agriculture improve their techniques and make sense of yield, quality, cost and sales channels.
In Belo Horizonte, the Brazilian Landless Workers’ Movement has built a sales platform that centralises warehousing, order handling, certification and delivery, enabling dispersed smallholder produce to reach restaurants, shops and government food-procurement channels.
