This sobering look at global food systems research from @thinink.bsky.social is worth a thorough read.

📑 It's been a while since I did a round-up of interesting reports, so here it is! This week, I dived into a set of reports and papers that collectively expose the fault lines in how we think about food systems, power, and accountability. A few takeaways👇 news.thin-ink.net/publish/post...

We’re opening a small round of support for Myanmar journalists who could really use a hand. We can support up to eight people, and we want to do this as thoughtfully and meaningfully as possible. Please help us spread the word within your networks.

Five years after the coup in Myanmar, @thinink.bsky.social reflects on how that has affected members of the country's media, who have done their best to continue the work of journalism even as support from Western governments and donors has fallen away.

Tomorrow - Feb 1 - marks 5 years since darkness again fell on Myanmar, when the military staged a coup and embarked on a brutal campaign of terror against its own citizens that included dismantling the infrastructure that allowed people to stay informed. kite-tales.org/en/article/f...

That's all the events we have, We are certain there are more Myanmar related events that we haven't seen yet. Will keep looking. Got quite a few highlights. 1st @thinink.bsky.social writes on the coup, the precarious yet amazing work of Myanmar journalists & the work of @kitetalesmm.bsky.social 11/

✍ Sunday, Feb 1, marks 5 years since the military staged a coup in Myanmar, plunging the country back into authoritarian rule & pushing a lively, hard‑won media ecosystem underground. Independent journalism is still standing, but only just. 👉 news.thin-ink.net/p/five-years...

www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/u... What an unsettling but critical read. And what a terrifying thought that these horrible people now have allies in possibly the world's most powerful office.

Thin Ink is 5 years old this week 🎂 I marked it with a light-ish anniversary newsletter looking back (and a bit forward). I reflect on how food systems thinking has gone mainstream (kind of) and what I’ve learned from publishing 242 issues 😅 news.thin-ink.net/p/thin-ink-i...

This week I take a deep dive into how weak competition enforcement shapes food markets in Africa. It's part of my ongoing attempt to demystify & humanise a topic that can sound technical but which should be a cornerstone of fairer, healthier & greener food systems. news.thin-ink.net/p/the-cost-o...

"Behind us, soldiers and police fired their guns, chasing us... "This is it," I thought." This vivid diary from a Shan journalist recounts a day in the Summer 2021 when a protest turned deadly and they narrowly escaped the military. #WhatsHappeningInMyanmar kite-tales.org/en/article/b...

Thin Ink's 1st issue of 2026: I’m reclaiming the word foodie & rejecting purism while I’m at it. Loving food has brought me joy my whole life. But in recent years it’s also come with guilt: Not vegetarian enough. Not climate-perfect enough. Not “doing it right.” news.thin-ink.net/p/the-real-b...

Jan 4 is Myanmar's Independence Day & the military junta may be trumpeting its recent sham elections as progress, but make no mistake, 22,000+ political prisoners continue to languish in jail. A reporter who spent months in the notorious Insein jail gives an insight. kite-tales.org/en/article/d...

Absolutely shocking. A reminder that no international media has been allowed into Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023. Now doctors and aid workers are being kept out too…

Junta-organised elections begin today (Dec 28) in Myanmar, nearly 5 years after the coup. The votes, neither free nor fair, are being held amid civil war. This diary by a Shan journalist about a town's descent into lawlessness encapsulates what's been in happening. kite-tales.org/en/article/n...

Thin Lei Win on changing her Myanmar passport for an Icelandic one. “I don’t think I fully appreciated the mental load of carrying a passport that turns routine immigration appointments into nerve-wrecking ordeals; of being a citizen of a country whose government actively wants to harm you.”

2025 feels like both the longest & shortest year, for reasons personal, professional & related to the general state-of-world-ness. Thin Ink will be taking a 2-week break so this is 2025's final issue. And as in previous years, it takes on a more personal hue. news.thin-ink.net/p/borders-be...

Hunger is often see as a result of factors beyond our control - sudden shocks like disasters & war - or a consequence of chronic poverty that's seen as inevitable rather than political. So Deborah Nelson I made an effort to break down hunger's different facets in this guide. gijn.org/resource/gui...

Are you there, a coherent EU policy? open.substack.com/pub/thinink/... Do read last Friday's piece by @thinink.bsky.social and spread it. We should keep paying heed to her motto: "If we give up, they win.” For starters, let's keep ourselves informed and make thoughtful decisions on what we eat.

In the past two weeks, the EU has postponed a landmark legislation to curb deforestation, is considering loosening rules on pesticide approvals, weakened environmental protection, and relaxed regulations around gene-edited crops. news.thin-ink.net/p/are-you-th...

Big agribusiness diverts the majority of cropland to feed not people - but *factory farms*. 🤔While claiming to be the solution to hunger. It's called HUNGER WASHING (ht @thinink.bsky.social). 🌱Let's feed people, not factory farms! #EUAgriFoodDays #FeedPeopleNotAgribusiness

If you want to learn more about @thinink.bsky.social's work, you can also listen to (or read the transcript from) my interview with her on the @issuesinst.bsky.social podcast, NOT NOW BUT SOON issues.org/not-now-but-...

so pleased that we're able to republish this story from the great @thinink.bsky.social - read about the seed library, then go read more from news.thin-ink.net, and more from globalvoices.org!

In “Famines as Failures of Exchange Entitlements”, published in August 1976, the great Amatya Sen made a novel argument: famines can arise from causes other than not having enough food to go around, or “food availability decline” (FAD). open.substack.com/pub/thinink/...

✍🏻 I spent much of last week in a freezing cold conference centre, listening & talking to fellow investigative journalists. It was inspiring & exhilarating. Amusing too, whenever I keep hearing a common refrain. 🍝🍜👩🏻‍🍳🥘🤌🏻 “There’s so much food. They keep feeding us.” news.thin-ink.net/publish/post...

What We Eat Is Harming Us news.thin-ink.net/p/what-we-ea... Recommended reading with plenty of food for though, as usual. Thanks @thinink.bsky.social for yeat another thought-provoking post!

We're eating more & more UPFs which are linked to chronic health conditions including obesity, type 2 diabetes, & cardiovascular disease, often displacing whole, traditional foods that could nourish us, according to a scientific study in The Lancet this week. news.thin-ink.net/p/what-we-ea...

Last week's Thin Ink was farm size & land distribution. Afterwards, I got an email from @alanmatthews.bsky.social, widely perceived as the foremost authority on EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which the NYT called one of the world’s largest subsidy schemes. news.thin-ink.net/p/who-owns-t...

Myanmar journalists in exile are "unable to escape the grim realities of the junta's brutality because their days are spent gathering news of the loss, grief, and despair back home" but downplay their trauma, writes our fellow from Kayin State. kite-tales.org/en/article/w...

Quick thread on the BBC and the political and societal significance of recent developments: One of the main reasons the UK has historically been so much less polarised than the US, is that Britain has a shared source of information, consumed and trusted by most people regardless of their politics.

If anyone still doubts how connected our food and climate systems are, this week’s State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA) report from the FAO is a reminder. The 2025 edition focuses on land degradation after two years of emphasis on true cost accounting. news.thin-ink.net/p/who-owns-t...

thank you for all the support; the statement from our union is now live here with some more reporting. now that this is public I can confirm that the majority of today’s layoffs were women of color. there are no longer any Black women working at Teen Vogue.

Yup, this week's title is a play on that famous saying. But my answer differs from the usual one, which is "one bite at a time". This is because we're talking about a different elephant here: power in food systems, who has it, who doesn't, and how to tackle it. news.thin-ink.net/p/how-to-eat...

Read this and was absolutely gobsmacked by the contortions the writer went through to come to this conclusion.

As Artie the Producer said about Hank Kingsley on The Larry Sanders Show, "The New York Times has hit rock bottom, broken through, and fallen down to some new bottom that I'm not aware of."

I love this essay, so much great stuff in here - inspiration, yes, also the deep understanding that comes from years of in-depth reporting.

😬Are our food systems globally a disaster? "I’m not sure I would say disaster, but definitely broken," says investigative journalist @thinink.bsky.social. Listen to her conversation with host Malka Older on @issuesinst.bsky.social's podcast Not Now, But Soon.

If you want to hear more from @thinink.bsky.social, she joined me on the Not Now But Soon podcast to talk about food and fiction and how they intersect in the propaganda of authoritarian governments: issues.org/not-now-but-...

I'm changing gears for this issue: featuring a project & an analysis. Both are about building fairer, healthier & more sustainable food systems from the ground up. After some heavy issues, I needed inspiration & they did the trick. I hope it'll work for you too. news.thin-ink.net/p/markets-me...

"When I first discovered.. I was carrying twins.. our entire family was overjoyed. The early months were brutal with severe morning sickness: dizziness, vomiting, heart palpitations & inability to eat. But our family relied solely on my income, so taking a break from work was simply not an option."

PSA: we're aware that Signal is down for some people. This appears to be related to a major AWS outage. Stand by.

This week, I revisited the ever-growing list of tabs I’ve added to my “Thin Ink” window. These tabs are for the avalanche of interesting stuff published over the past couple of months but which I’ve had to set aside because of that old chestnut: not enough time. news.thin-ink.net/p/our-food-s...

Friendly reminder that Tidal ($10.99) is now cheaper than Spotify ($11.99), delivers better audio quality, pays its artists 2x as much, and generally doesn't allow AI slop. You can move your entire music library over in a matter of minutes.

I'll be in Vienna next week to co-facilitate "Climate journalism in shrinking democratic spaces" workshop on Oct 24. It's an invite-only event, so if you're interested, please contact IPI. Otherwise, drop me a line if you're in Vienna & want to chat about all things food systems (or Myanmar).

Die tolle @thinink.bsky.social hat uns bei der Recherche beraten. Ihr Newsletter ist einer der besten, den ich zum Thema Ernährungssysteme kenne. bsky.app/profile/thin...

kite-tales.org/en/article/b... #WhatsHappeningInMyanmar

An exiled Myanmar journalist on funding cuts: "Last year my newsroom secured money from the United States that meant I could finally begin planning to reunite with my mother. Then Donald Trump began slashing support for independent media & all my dreams unravelled." kite-tales.org/en/article/b...

This week's issue is about a very timely cross-border investigation that illustrated the shortfalls of the current system in protecting a crucial asset of European agriculture: farm workers. Full disclosure: I played a small role mentoring the team behind this. news.thin-ink.net/p/how-europe...

In Jan 2019, a group of eminent scientists, unveiled, for the first time, an ‘ideal diet’ for both a healthy population & a sustainable food system. It recommended a doubling of consumption of nuts, fruits, vegetables & legumes, & a halving of meat & sugar intake. news.thin-ink.net/p/the-planet...

Listen to the latest episode of my new @issuesinst.bsky.social podcast, NOT NOW BUT SOON, in which I talk to @thinink.bsky.social about global food systems, the authoritarian takeover of Myanmar, and other disasters. Search "The Ongoing Transformation" wherever you get your podcasts!