Abstract
This chapter demonstrates how state agencies limit their ability to directly address the issues of inflation and food safety and preferentially rely on food-processing enterprises based in rural areas to modernize agricultural production. The chapter explains why these enterprises are the sole stakeholders really capable of addressing the issues of agricultural modernization, compared to NGOs or farmers. This chapter also investigates the recent (while limited) enlargement of this industrial and private-led agricultural sector to other private actors, essentially from downstream of the food chain (retailers) and, to a certain extent, from upstream of the food chain (agrochemical companies).
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Notes
- 1.
“In an ideal-type corporatist system, at the national level the state recognizes one and only one organization (say, a national labor union, a business association, a farmers’ association) as the sole representative of the sectoral interests of the individuals, enterprises or institutions that comprise that organization’s assigned constituency. The state determines which organizations will be recognized as legitimate, and forms and unequal partnership of sorts with such organizations.”
- 2.
In 2012, the average size of land owned by rural households engaged in agriculture (农村居民家庭经营耕地面积) was 2.34 mu (0.15 ha). Other data estimate that the average farm size should be closer to 0.5 ha.
- 3.
Harvesting is made before fruits are ripened, when they are less fragile. Fruits are then stored and artificially ripened depending on demand.
- 4.
There were only 3900 laboratories to test the safety of food products in 2007, or one laboratory for more than 300,000 residents (The US-China Business Council 2007). An interview conducted in Beijing in November 2011 with an agent of the FAO working with food safety controllers confirmed that although progress had been made since 2007, local bodies were still lacking financial and human resources to efficiently control food safety.
- 5.
In the summer of 2011, no less than three main demonstration episodes caused by environmental concerns occurred: in Dalian (Liaoning), residents demonstrated against the building of a chemical plant; in Haining (Zhejiang), city dwellers obtained the (temporary) closure of a solar panel factory; in Haimen (Jiangsu), a thermal power plant project had to be stopped because of protests.
- 6.
As it is the case for most of the foreign NGOs operating in China.
- 7.
An Illumina’s HiSeq 2000 (sequencing equipment), worth between €500,000 and €1 million, was found in one state key laboratory in Beijing doing research in crop sciences (mainly on wheat, rice, maize, and soybeans)—I was told that as a National Key Facility since 2003, the laboratory received 200 million RMB per year to fund the contracted staff and some equipment (the permanent staff were paid as state employees) and could also apply for other fundings for equipment.
- 8.
A total of 39 at the provincial level; 372 at the municipal level; 2071 at the county level; 10,805 at the village level (Source: CABTS presentation held during an EU-China meeting in Tianjin, in November 2012).
- 9.
The name “demonstration site” is quite ambiguous. It can indeed be a technological park oriented toward enterprises (either to attract investment or to sell technology: 农业科技园 nongye keji yuan, “science and technology park”), an experimental base attached to a research center (试验站 shiyan zhan, “experimental station”), a site promoting technology among a wider public (enterprises, entrepreneurs, teachers, political leaders, farmers), usually linked to the local agricultural extension service bureau (农业技术推广站 nongye jishu tui guanzhan, “agricultural technology promotion station”), or a combination of the models discussed earlier in the text.
- 10.
In this particular greenhouse for which my guide gave me the data presented in the chapter, some products (e.g., mushrooms) were also cultivated in dark rooms with artificial light—which could explain the particularly large electricity bill.
- 11.
In 2012, there were still 1786 state farms, producing 33.71 million tons of grain on 4.726 million hectares (National Bureau of Statistics).
- 12.
The enterprise had told me that they had not yet started to harvest their own plot because it was too soon and the fruits were not ripe. However, oranges were already being packed and sent to Z.
- 13.
Original language: “新中国成立以来,事实已经证明任何敌人都不可能用武力征服我们。然而,那种杀人不见血的生物武器则有可能使我们丧失警惕。” (Xin zhongguo chengli yilai, shishi yijing zhengming renhe di rend ou bu. keneng yong wuli zhengfu women. Ran’er, na zhong sharen bujian xie de shengwu wuqi ze you keneng shi women sangshi jingto).
- 14.
Original language: “Ces nouveaux acteurs ont la capacité d’édicter de façon autonome des ensembles cohérents de règles, ayant vocation à s’imposer à un maximum de producteurs, sinon à leur totalité, qui deviennent parfois des référents pour l’action publique, et que l’on peut donc considérer comme des formes de politiques publiques privées.”
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Schwoob, MH. (2018). Enterprises: The New Leaders of Agricultural Modernization. In: Food Security and the Modernisation Pathway in China. Critical Studies of the Asia-Pacific. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65702-8_3
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