Recovering the Good Earth: China’s Growing Organic Market

Abstract

People whose impressions of Chinese food exports are colored by reports of contaminated pet food or pesticide-laced dumplings might not expect China to have much of an organic market. They would be wrong. According to “The Greening of China’s Food: Green Food, Organic Food, and Eco-labelling,” a paper presented at the May 2008 Sustainable Consumption and Alternative Agri-Food Systems Conference, 28% of China’s arable land—just over 34 million hectares—is devoted to “eco-foods,” a designation that includes organic certification as well as China’s unique “green” and “hazard-free” categories of food. In an increasingly global food market, unexpected opportunities for farmers around the world are opening in unlikely places, such as China’s experiments with organic food. The world market for organic foods has soared, with sales growing by more than US$5 billion annually and doubling between 2000 and 2006, according to the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM), an umbrella organization based in Bonn, Germany. That international trend explains why China and other countries—despite relatively little domestic demand for organic food—have become big players in the organic market. Organic farming in China is largely an export-oriented industry, with the main products for both export and import being cereals, soybeans, and tea, followed by some vegetables, fruits and meat. Yet, although China has instituted several eco-food certification systems, reports of lax inspections persist. “Regulation is an imperfect substitute for the accountability, and trust, built into a market in which food producers meet the gaze of eaters and vice versa,” author Michael Pollan writes in his 2008 book In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. In situations where farmers and consumers can’t meet face-to-face at the farmer’s market, however, some form of inspection is all that’s left to serve the interest of public health. How, then, is China adapting to secure the safety of its exports and the health of its own citizens?