2006年生態(tài)農(nóng)業(yè)外文翻譯--通向可持續(xù)農(nóng)業(yè)的市場之路？生態(tài)農(nóng)業(yè)、綠色食品與中國有機(jī)農(nóng)業(yè)

1、<p>　　8600英文單詞，4.7萬英文字符，中文1.4萬字</p><p>　　文獻(xiàn)出處：Sanders R. A market road to sustainable agriculture? Ecological agriculture, green food and organic agriculture in China[J]. Development and Change, 2006, 3

2、7(1): 201-226.</p><p>　　A Market Road to Sustainable Agriculture? Ecological Agriculture, Green Food and Organic Agriculture in China</p><p>　　Richard Sanders</p><p><b>　　ABST

3、RACT</b></p><p>　　To the extent that free markets show little concern for the existence of externalities, they are unlikely to produce optimum outcomes with regard to the protection and enhancement of

4、the natural environment. Accordingly, the increasing emphasis on markets to deliver development in China under Deng Xiaoping and his successors has the capacity to threaten the long-term environmental sustainability of t

5、hat development. While there are good rea- sons to remain sceptical about the ability of market m</p><p>　　INTRODUCTION</p><p>　　This contribution will, from an institutional perspective, examin

6、e recent initiatives in the Chinese countryside to promote the cause of sustainable rural development. Since the early 1980s, study after study by both Chinese and Western scholars has emphasized the degraded and pollute

7、d nature of the Chinese countryside and its fragility in the wake of environmentally inappropriate practices, including the over-use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The Chinese government itself was alive to</

8、p><p>　　The objectives of this contribution are to describe and distinguish between these initiatives and to examine their institutional bases. It will argue that while the early reform process in the late 1970

9、s and early 1980s made the adoption and extension of CEA difficult, the opening up of markets both nationally and internationally as the reform process continued has provided farmers with opportunities to make money by p

10、roducing ‘green’ and organic food. The contribution will argue, however, that </p><p>　　DEVELOPMENT AND ENVIRONMENT IN CHINA: THE CONTEXT</p><p>　　There is general agreement that under Deng Xiao

11、ping’s rule the Chinese government was ‘greened’ (Ho, 2001: 900; Jahiel, 1997: 81; Sanders, 1999: 1206) at least to the extent that a raft of new laws were enacted, new agencies established, new commitments to environmen

12、tal protection made, and new initiatives undertaken. However — and notwithstanding the enthusiasm of western scholars for market-led approaches to the envir- onment (Ross, 1988: 1) — a succession of market-based reform

13、s made under </p><p>　　There have been many reasons for this. Amongst them was the abolition of the communes and their replacement by the reintroduction of family farming based on the ‘household responsibil

14、ity system’ (HRS) in the early 1980s. Despite the many positive impacts on production and produc- tivity, this effectively led to the privatization of trees and other environ- mental resources which, coupled with general

15、 enthusiasm for the market economy, led to a massive increase in illegal logging (Edmonds, 1994:</p><p>　　Ten years later, the situation was a great deal worse, threatening the sustainability of the Chinese

16、rural economy and, as a result, the medium term prospects for food security. Indeed, the situation was perceived as so serious that Qu Geping, the ‘father of Chinese environmental protection’ (Glaiser, 1990: 253) argued

17、that problems resulting from the increasingly intensive use of chemicals on the land ‘not only hamper the further development of agriculture and the realization of modernizatio</p><p>　　In the last ten ye

18、ars, despite some fluctuations, absolute grain output and grain yields have barely increased, despite continued rapid increases in chemical fertilizer application. Column 6 of Table 1 details the output of grain in tons

19、per ton of chemical fertilizer applied (illustrated by Figure 1), providing uncompromising evidence of diminishing returns with the use of chemical fertilizer, even allowing for the fall from 80.3 per cent in 1978 to 68.

20、1 per cent in 2001 in the ratio of grain a</p><p>　　Table 1. Various Parameters Associated with Chinese Grain Production since 1978</p><p>　　Figure 1. Grain Harvest (tons) per Ton of Chemical Fe

21、rtilizer</p><p>　　Figure 2. Chemical Fertilizer Index (amount per unit of chemical fertilizer needed to produce one unit of grain)</p><p>　　SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE</p><p>　　It was a

22、gainst the backdrop of rapidly rising inputs of chemicals in the Chinese countryside in the late 1970s and early 1980s that the Chinese government first realized the need for new initiatives to counter the resulting nega

23、tive environmental impacts. Chinese agricultural policy makers were already worried about the ‘high-input/high-output’ methods (Bian, 1988: 1–3; Cheng, 1994: 407–15; Li, 1994: 40) involved in grain production. Concern ce

24、ntred not merely on the high opportunity cost of mod</p><p>　　Chinese Ecological Agriculture</p><p>　　Other works have explained in detail what CEA has involved (Cheng et al., 1992: 1127–44; San

25、ders, 2000: 66–76). Suffice it to say that in the early days, CEA attempted to develop an agriculture based on sound ecological principles, emphasizing traditional practices such as crop rotations, inter-planting and the

26、 application of organic fertilizers as well as encoura- ging practices directly beneficial to the environment, including afforestation, the prevention of soil erosion, energy conservation,</p><p>　　CEA, more

27、over, attempted to provide a comprehensive solution to the problems of the sustainability of the Chinese rural economy, including satisfying the increasing material expectations of the burgeoning rural population and mai

28、ntaining employment opportunities in the countryside. Above all, CEA attempted to increase absolute levels of agricultural output to provide security of food supplies, increase rural standards of living without a crisis

29、of energy generation and deal with the manifest env</p><p>　　Through the 1980s, the Chinese government promoted CEA largely under the aegis of the National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA, since 1998 r

30、enamed SEPA). Two of the most important advocates of the process were Bian Yousheng, of the Beijing Institute of Environmental Protection and Research, and Li Zhengfang of the Nanjing Institute of Environmental Science (

31、working directly under NEPA); they were responsible for encoura- ging development work in villages, setting standards and monitoring r</p><p>　　Despite these successes and despite a new initiative by the Chi

32、nese gov- ernment to extend it into fifty newly created eco-counties in 1994, CEA per se was not successful in extending much beyond the model pilot sites and into the countryside at large. In 1992 NEPA claimed to have 2

33、000 ‘demon- stration sites’ but very few operated according to the prototype. There have been plenty of reasons advanced for this, not least the need for technical and, to some extent, financial help in the transition<

34、;/p><p>　　On the one hand, the adoption of the Household Responsibility System (HRS) involving households working largely independently on very small, often dispersed plots, created huge practical difficulties

35、for individual farmers, and even for some collective farmers, wishing to adopt CEA. CEA, as initially conceived, involved a virtuous cycle of material recycling and utilization of waste, with, in the best case, communit

36、y-level biogas digestion at the centre. Such developments required central direc</p><p>　　At the same time, markets for the outputs of ecological agriculture were insufficiently developed to provide real inc

37、entives for farmers to adopt it. Indeed the benefits of adopting CEA were, to all intents and purposes, ‘invisible’. The outputs of CEA — mostly grains and vegetables produced in the eco-villages in which CEA was adopted

38、 — were not visibly different from those of conventional agriculture and could not, therefore, command a premium price in the local markets in which they were sold</p><p>　　The early market-based reforms of

39、the 1980s had, therefore, left the extension of CEA in the worst of both worlds. On the supply side, there were formidable problems facing small-scale, newly ‘privatized’ farmers in adopting CEA, while on the demand side

40、, markets were insufficiently developed to provide them with incentives so to do. Thus institutional changes wrought by the early reforms discouraged the extension of CEA as originally envisaged. The state, despite the c

41、reation of fifty ‘eco-coun</p><p>　　Green Food Production in China</p><p>　　Initial Developments</p><p>　　At the very end of the 1980s, and largely as a result of the personal drive

42、 of one of its senior officials, Liu Lianfu, the Land Reclamation Department of the Ministry of Agriculture proposed a series of new initiatives in response to the Eighth Five Year Plan of 1989 (interview with Liang, Chi

43、na Green Food Development Centre, Beijing, August 2000). The Plan had highlighted renewed concern both for environmental protection and the quality of production, including an idea for the development of a</p><

44、;p>　　However, there was one critical difference: while CEA concentrated on promoting principles and practices inherent in a more environmentally friendly agriculture, the Ministry of Agriculture promoted products. In

45、so doing it immediately provided a direct and obvious short-term incentive for farmers to be ecologically minded in their planting. Although the methods by which agriculture was to be undertaken varied little, if at all,

46、 from CEA, Green Food production concentrated on ends rather than </p><p>　　Furthermore, those ends could be identified by consumers through the use of a label, and sold to them at a premium, for the Minis

47、try of Agriculture not only developed standards for food quality, safety and hygiene but also for packaging and labelling with a consistent logo. The Ministry established units at county and provincial level to monitor a

48、nd control these aspects of ‘green’ food production, while establishing a Green Food Verification Committee in Beijing to certify the standards and hen</p><p>　　By 1993, the China Green Food Development Cent

49、re (CGFDC) was finally established in Beijing with forty employees, directly under the aus- pices of the Ministry of Agriculture and ultimately responsible for interna- tional liaison, technical promotion and quality con

50、trol of ‘green’ food in China (China Green Food Development Centre, n.d.: 3). In the same year the Centre was accepted into the International Federation of Organic Agricultural Movements (IFOAM) and in 1995 it formulated

51、 two standards</p><p>　　Extension of Green Food Production in China: Rates of Growth</p><p>　　Extension of ‘A’ standard green food production in China grew rapidly from the start of the 1990s, r

52、einforced partly by the adoption of green food techniques by many of the State Farms operating directly under the Ministry of Agriculture (illustrated by Figure 3). By 1997, there were 892 green food products grown with

53、a total output of 6.3 million tons on a total cultivated area of 2.13 million hectares, representing annual growth rates of 32 per cent, 51 per cent and 75 per cent in each of thes</p><p>　　In recent years,

54、growth rates have continued to be impressive. By the end of 2000, there were 1,831 different kinds of green food products, with a total output of 15 million tons and a cultivated area of 3.33 million hectares, representi

55、ng average annual growth rates since 1990 of 26 per cent, 42 per cent and 57 per cent respectively. Green food products cover a range of categories of China’s agricultural output, including grain, oil, vegetables, animal

56、 products, poultry products, dairy products</p><p>　　Figure 3. Green Food: Annual Percentage Growth Rates 1990–2000</p><p>　　Nowadays, it is difficult to go shopping in China without coming acro

57、ss the Green Food Logo. Green food is currently grown and processed in every province or autonomous region in China. In 1999 the provinces with the most products licensed were Shandong (with 135); Heilongjiang (126); Inn

58、er Mongolia (123); and Fujian (105) (Green Food Development Centre, 1999b: 6). There are now Green Food Offices in twenty-nine of the thirty- one provinces and autonomous regions of China, helping to promote gre</p>

59、;<p>　　Extension of Green Food Production in China: How and Why?</p><p>　　The reasons for this remarkable growth in ‘A’ standard green food produc- tion (as opposed to CEA per se) are not hard to fath

60、om. In particular its popularity with Chinese consumers in an increasingly rich and environmen- tally aware market (‘A’ grade green food is sold almost exclusively in the domestic Chinese market) has meant that green foo

61、d products can be sold at a premium and has allowed farmers (and, of course, a large number of enterprises — mostly TVEs involved in processing and/or tra</p><p>　　One star-performing green food area in the

62、1990s was Qing An County in mid-Heilongjiang, where green rice production was introduced for the first time in 1995. The quality of the rice, and the price that farmers received for it, had been dropping; blaming this on

63、 increased use of chemical fertilizers, the county encouraged farmers to change from conventional to green food methods. They were amply rewarded: the quality of the rice and its yield greatly improved allowing farmers t

64、o reap a premium </p><p>　　This has been the normal route to the development of green food. Farmers were in most cases encouraged initially by the propaganda of county or village leaders to consider green fo

65、od production techniques. However, the prospect of making good money by selling green food to enterprises — which provided guaranteed markets — rapidly became the primary incentive. These enterprises are increasingly eas

66、y to set up in the entrepreneurial culture of contemporary China. Relations between farmers and ente</p><p>　　The deepening of market reforms within a more developed enterprise culture has, therefore, provid

67、ed an institutional setting where greater incen- tives exist on the demand side for more sustainable agriculture in the form of green food production. But there are still problems on the supply side with the extant ‘priv

68、atized’ agricultural system based on the HRS. Most green food farmers outside the State Farms operate in collectives (jiti), rather than as ‘privatized’ households (Liang, interview,</p><p>　　It is clear, t

69、herefore, that green food development has benefited from government encouragement, advice and technical support and that farmers operating collectively rather than privately are responsible for its recent successful exte

70、nsion. On the demand-side, however, green food extension has been encouraged by market forces and by a political–economic climate in which enterprises are encouraged and profits can be made by processing, marketing and s

71、elling its outputs. (So potentially profitable</p><p>　　It must be remembered, however, that almost all green food produced in China (98 per cent) is of ‘A’ standard, not ‘AA’. To the extent that the latter

72、standard uses internationally accepted norms for organic food laid down by IFOAM while the former does not, the statistics might suggest that while the institutional framework of contemporary China, the tastes and purcha

73、s- ing power of Chinese consumers and the pragmatism and recent experiences of farmers are favourable to sub-organic, relatively </p><p>　　Organic Agriculture in China</p><p>　　Initial Developme

74、nts</p><p>　　The first units in China to turn their attention to the development of organic agriculture (farming without using any chemicals such as fertilizers, pesti- cides or herbicides) were the Resource

75、 Environment Division of the then Beijing Agriculture University and the Rural Eco-System Division of the Nanjing Institute of Environmental Science (NIES), working directly under NEPA from 1984 onwards. As early as 1988

76、, NIES had acceded to IFOAM and began to participate in its deliberations, becoming it</p><p>　　Despite the years of Maoist grain monoculture and the Green Revolution, there were many instances of organic fa

77、rming in China, although these were largely in remote mountainous areas where chemical fertilizers were expensive and difficult to obtain. Nevertheless, it was recog- nized that for organic agriculture to develop, it wo

78、uld be necessary to develop basic standards in accordance with international (IFOAM) require- ments, to establish new demonstration sites and organizations responsible </p><p>　　Given the nature of the prod

79、uct and its market, inspection and certifica- tion have become the critical tasks that OFDC now performs. Certification is, of course, vital to green food producers, to farmers and processors alike, but the certification

80、 of green food is domestic, carried out by the Ministry of Agriculture, and consumer confidence in the certification process and in the Green Food Logo is a function of Chinese confidence in the domestic regulatory syst

81、em generally. Certification of o</p><p>　　Originally funded wholly by SEPA, the OFDC’s income is nowadays partly self-generated, earned as fees for carrying out certifications. To that extent, the OFDC itsel

82、f has been partially commercialized, operating com- petitively in the marketplace alongside other international organic certifiers such as Ecocert (of France), Skal (of Holland), the Soil Association (of the UK) and OCIA

83、 (of the USA), as well as the many Japanese certifiers. To its advantage, the OFDC functions as the OCIA chapter in</p><p>　　The Extension of Organic Agriculture in China: Rates of Growth</p><p>

84、;　　The development of new sites for organic agriculture after 1994 has been a relatively slow process, partly given the obligation to convert farmland back to wholly chemical-free status before new planting can begin (in

85、ternational organic food standards normally demand that land must be chemical-free for three years before organic certification can be granted). Inevitably, in the early 1990s, therefore, initial successes were confined

86、to those remote areas where organic farming had already been in</p><p>　　The first export of organic food was organic green tea from southern Zhejiang province to Holland in 1990, with Dutch certification. B

87、y 1996 the total value of exports of organic food had risen to US$ 7 million, by 1998 to US$ 10 million, and in 1999 to US$ 12 million, with over fifty different products involved, including potatoes, rice, maize, wheat,

88、 tea, various kinds of beans, herbal medicines, vegetables, sesame, honey, eggs and peanuts. The main overseas markets were Japan, USA, Holland, C</p><p>　　By 1998, there were five research institutions, twe

89、lve trading companies and over twenty food processing factories involved in organic food devel- opment (OFDC, 1999: 1–7). The number of organic products certified, the acreage devoted to organic agriculture and the quant

90、ities produced have all risen substantially since 1995. In 1999, the OFDC certified 105 organic products, having certified only four in 1995 and, in the same year, per- formed the certification for OCIA for another sixty

91、-eight pr</p><p>　　Since 1999, the acreage certified by OFDC as organic has continued to soar: from 37,429 mu in 1999 to 158,964 mu in 2001, aided by the certification of 114,238 mu of natural bamboo in Fuji

92、an Province. Meanwhile, OFDC certified organic-in-conversion acreage in 2001 stood at 289,557 mu (121,555 mu being accounted for by the Maotai liquor company’s decision to begin organic conversion in Guizhou Province in

93、2000). For 2005, the total OFDC certified organic acreage is therefore likely to be above 5</p><p>　　One additional indication of the spread of interest and participation in organic farming in China in the

94、late 1990s and early 2000s has been the number of delegates to the annual workshops organized by the OFDC on organic agriculture, to which all interested parties (farmers, traders, processors) are invited. At the first w

95、orkshop, in 1994, there were less than twenty delegates; in 1998 there were seventy; and in 2002, 248.</p><p>　　Table 2. OFDC Organic Certified Acreage, Output and Product Numbers in China</p><p&g

96、t;　　Source: Figures compiled and supplied to the author by Xiao Xingji, Director, OFDC, Nanjing (2000)</p><p>　　Table 3. OCIA Organic Certified Acreage, Output and Product Numbers in China</p><p&g