China Moves to Implement More Sustainable Ag Practices, Which Is Good for Everybody
Author: Andrew Amelinckx | Published: February 9, 2017
On Sunday, the Central Government released its Number One Central Document, the first policy statement of the year, and as in the previous 13 years, it focused on agriculture and rural development. While previous Number One Documents have included mentions of sustainability measures, this year’s had a particularly strong focus on developing “green” policies.
“Green production and sustainable farming practices, under the overall framework of supply-side reform, was one of the highlights of this year’s document. ‘Green’ actually becomes one of the most frequently used words in the document,” Vincent Martin, the representative for China from the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations tells Modern Farmer. “The gist of supply-side reform in China’s agricultural sector is to increase the output of high-quality products based on green and innovative production.”
China is now the fourth largest consumer of organically-produced food in the world, so expanding domestic organic production makes sense. The Central Government plans to push organic products in part by promoting favorable taxes for start-ups in rural areas, and by creating innovation centers to help support the production of high quality farm produce, according to Reuters.