Since 2000, Song Yiching has been senior research er and program leader at the Centre for Chinese Agricultural Policy at the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS), including programs by UNEP-IEMP since 2016. In 2013, she founded the Farmers Seed Network (FSN China). 

Yiching’s expertise lies in biodiversity and sustainable livelihood, integrating community and ecosystem-based climate change adaptations in the context of socio-economic and climatic change in China and developing countries. In her work, she emphasizes participatory action research and policy analysis with bio-culture and multi-disciplindisciplinary complex system approaches. 

Her decade-long work with farmer seeds encompasses a range of of community-level perspectives, including nature-based management, agroecology, circular farming, biogas, green and low carbon farming, and their relevant gender, social, and cultural dimensions. 

She has served in many roles, including as scientific committee member of the CIMMYT Wheat Program, as an expert in the Resilient Seed and Food Systems in Climate Change Adaptation Group of the Global Alliance for the Future of Food. Yiching holds a PhD in rural sociology and development and has published extensively.