Feed: a food systems podcast

In the 1980s, Deng Xiaoping's government decided not to regulate its fishing sector. What grew out of that space was extraordinary. Today China produces 76 million tonnes of seafood a year, and a mounting environmental cost. This episode follows the small farms and the global infrastructure that connects them, and asks what happens when a government tries to course correct a system it deliberately set loose.
For more info, transcript and resources, visit: https://tabledebates.org/podcast/
episode102
Want to share your reflections on the episode? Send us an email or voice memo to podcast@tabledebates.org

Guests
Han Han, Founder and director of NGO China Blue Sustainability Institute
Xuefei Shi, Researcher at Chr. Michelsen Institute in Bergen, Norway
James Keeley, Food and agricultural development consultant and China specialist
Episode written, hosted, produced and edited by Matthew Kessler. Sound mixing by Martin Palmqvist. Music by Blue dot sessions.

One-third of the world's rice is grown in China, on less than a fifth of the world's rice-growing area, by farmers whose average age is over 55, in a countryside that is slowly emptying. This episode asks how that's possible, and how much longer it can last.
For more info, transcript and resources, visit: https://tabledebates.org/podcast/
episode101
Want to share your reflections on the episode? Send us an email or voice memo to podcast@tabledebates.org

Guests
Lena Kaufmann, Social Anthropologist at Université de Fribourg
Li Zhang, Prof in Sociology and Environmental Studies at Amherst Colleage
Episode written, hosted, produced and edited by Matthew Kessler. Sound mixing by Martin Palmqvist. Music by Blue dot sessions.

Today China produces roughly half the world's pork. Getting there required swine genetics from multiple continents, feed from Brazil, and a disease outbreak that wiped out hundreds of millions of animals. This episode asks how they did it, and what that cost - to the household pig, to the smallholder farmer, and to ecosystems thousands of kilometers away.
For more info, transcript and resources, visit: https://tabledebates.org/podcast/
episode100
Want to share your reflections on the episode? Send us an email or voice memo to podcast@tabledebates.org

Guests
Ron Lane, Agricultural consultant in Beijing
Li Zhang, Prof in Sociology and Environmental Studies at Amherst College
Gustavo Oliveira, Prof in Geography at Clark University
Episode written, hosted, produced and edited by Matthew Kessler. Sound mixing by Martin Palmqvist. Music by Blue dot sessions.

In sixty years China moved from catastrophic famine to feeding 1.4 billion people. This episode asks how that transformation happened - and what it set in motion.
For more info, transcript and resources, visit: https://tabledebates.org/podcast/
episode99
Want to share your reflections on the episode? Send us an email or voice memo to podcast@tabledebates.org

Guests
Michelle King, Prof in Chinese History at UNC
Zhang Hongzhou, Prof in International Political Economy at RSIS
Fengwei Ina Liu, Director of FOLU China
Episode written, hosted, produced and edited by Matthew Kessler. Sound mixing by Martin Palmqvist. Music by Blue dot sessions.

In sixty years, China has moved from catastrophic famine to now feeding one in six people on the planet. Following three foods - pork, rice, and fish - this series traces a transformation that has emptied the Chinese countryside, reshaped ecosystems from Brazil to the South China Sea, and produced the high-rise hog farm model that is being exported across the world. We examine the competing priorities driving this transformation, the distributed costs and benefits, and what it means for the rest of the world.
"Feeding 1 in 6: China and the future of food" arrives in this feed on 21 May 2026.
More info here