In Lanhe Town, Nansha, black-skin sugarcane prices have fallen from 99 yuan per dan to a low of 5 yuan; clearing a mu for free means a loss of over 6,000 yuan. After “non-grain conversion” campaigns cleared out bananas, 30 years of continuous cropping leaves only one crop.
The old village in Heilongjiang holds only seven or eight households; my mother wept before the dish shelf and soured-cabbage crock in the collapsed-back-wall courtyard. Those left in Beijing try—with a crock, a bag of salt, a few cabbages—to re-stitch days bound to land and neighbours.
In the small fishing villages of Satun and Trang in southern Thailand, fishers walk into mangroves for crabs and shellfish, run bamboo-raft tours in national parks, and co-run a restaurant and chilli paste workshop—turning the sea they fought for into a family livelihood.
The northern girl growing sugarcane, the blogger laughed at by farmers, the tea science specialist who chats with ride-hailing drivers about rural life, the entomology PhD who calls herself a primary school student in the field — their passion for crops is real, but even they cannot say for sure whether what university teaches will take root in real farming.
In Andaman Sea mangrove villages, Muslim fishers, working with NGOs, have established community-managed protected areas—repairing seagrass beds destroyed by channel dredging, fighting for dugongs’ food, and shaking their heads at carbon-sink projects fencing off mangroves.
In Youmi Village, north-west Yunnan, left-behind women, including Yuting and Ga Tu, are trialling water-saving upland rice. The NGO Farmers’ Seed Network, through Jinghong-based restaurant owner Haimei, found an old Jino variety, Sickler Rice, from Xishuangbanna, leaving a spark for staple food and rice-growing culture.
Nearly 10,000 EU farmers hurled potatoes at the EU headquarters building in Brussels to protest the Mercosur free trade agreement. Ukraine’s grain price collapse, Brazil’s deforestation for cattle, and China’s smallholder green transition dilemma point to one question: who bears the cost of structural transformation?
The three Food Talk hosts reveal their own mealtime viewing lists and, drawing on research showing that being absorbed in devices during meals increases calorie intake by 15%, ask whether this virtual side dish is healing loneliness or quietly eroding health.
From Trang to Satun Province, fishers’ associations and grassroots NGOs build community-protected areas—countering trawls, patrolling, and advocating for fisheries legislation to balance conservation and livelihoods—then plot responses once the fine-mesh provision is approved.
Oyster sauce, salad dressing, “No Added Sucrose” drinks—added sugar is embedded in four-fifths of supermarket products. Spot the disguises on the ingredients list, see how the Bliss Point turns sweetness into addiction, to protect yourself in a world besieged by sugar.
