Welcome to this week’s edition of The Harvest, the weekly dispatch from This Week in Rural China. This week, we explore the dynamic transformations unfolding in rural China, where communities and agricultural sectors are responding to a range of environmental and economic challenges. Our focus ranges from the professional development of community workers in Liaoning to the cutting-edge technology being used to reclaim salt-alkali land in Hebei. We also look closer at Gansu’s strategic land management practices and the national ‘Big Food’ initiative that has helped lay the groundwork for agricultural modernisation and food security.