China’s Food Economy Benefits Small Holder Farmers

The phenomenal horticultural development over the last 15 years in China has changed the face of the country's agricultural economy.  During this time period, modern supply chains have also emerged. A study recently published in the Review of Agricultural Economics reveals that the recent changes in China’s food economy have contributed to an improvement in poverty reduction of small farmers. The authors, however, warned that there exists a great challenge to ensure delivery of a safe product.

To describe the emergence of production and marketing structures, Jikun Huang, Scott Rozelle and colleagues used a dataset collected in 2007 from representative sample of fruit farmers in Shandong province. The researchers found that small and poor farms are able to sell into traditional marketing channels. There is no evidence that poor households are getting less access to horticultural markets.

However, the researchers acknowledged that ensuring the safety of China’s fruits, particularly apples and grapes, is a daunting task. Since almost all transaction are in cash and done on a spot-market basis, it is very difficult to track fruit shipments back to the farm. After selling their output into the market, farmers in China’s horticulture economy are literally free from all accountability.

Read the complete article at http://www.wiley.com/bw/press/pressitem.asp?ref=2017 Subscribers to the journal can access the paper at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9353.2008.00421.x