By 2050, the world’s population will increase by one-third, from 7.18 billion to 9.6 billion people. Urbanization is also accelerating. The share of people living in urban areas will increase from 54 percent to 66 percent by 2050. Economies are growing and incomes are increasing. By mid-century, the world’s middle class will grow from 50 percent to 70 percent of the population.
GHI’s 2014 Global Agricultural Productivity Report® explores the Global Agricultural and Nutrition Imperatives and the policies that can meet them.
In short, over the next 35 years, more people – living in cities, making more money and shopping in supermarkets – will be able to afford increasingly diverse diets and demand more high-value foods. Food systems will need to produce sufficient nutritious affordable food to meet this demand, while also reducing waste and loss, conserving natural resources, adapting to changing consumer preferences, and improving the lives of all those involved in the food value chain. Nowhere is this challenge greater than in China, a nation of 1.35 billion people, whose middle class is expected to top 950 million by 2030 – roughly three times the current population of the US:
In response to this challenge, the government of China is moving towards more productive, sustainable and nutritious value chains, particularly for urban consumers, and examples are being scaled up in the peri-urban areas of Beijing. Many Chinese state-run cooperatives are now producing vegetables, poultry and eggs for the Beijing consumer market. These cooperatives represent some of the most advanced and successful examples of cooperative production in China.
In 2014, I visited a cooperative of 290 farming families on 200 hectares of land where greenhouses are used to cultivate vegetables. These vegetables include sweet corn, eggplant, tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, and many others, and are sold primarily to large retail stores for urban consumers in Beijing. This cooperative program is environmentally sustainable, provides the farmers with increased and reliable sources of income and increases the amount of nutrient-rich foods available to Beijing consumers.
The greenhouses on this farm are technologically advanced and environmentally efficient. They grow vegetables, fruit and lettuce year round, using organic, low input methods.
Urban Chinese consumers are also looking for safe and nutritious sources of protein. The state of the art facilities of DQY Eggs demonstrate how China is beginning to shift towards highly productive and sustainable forms of egg production. DQY Eggs is a massive egg cooperative with over 3 million chickens and 1.9 million laying hens. Each "house" contains 100,000 laying hens in spaces of 600 cubic centimeters, larger spaces than required by European standards. The International Egg Council gave DQY an award for innovation and environmental sustainability, citing its impressive environmental standards and complete lack of pollution.
Consumers trust the DQY brand, allowing it to gain 60 percent of the branded egg market in Beijing. The environmentally conscious and innovative waste-recycling policies of DQY, and its successful cooperation and integration with surrounding villages and cooperatives also gives credence to the Chinese renewed hopes for a sustainable agricultural future. These technologically advanced cooperatives, while by no means representative of the Chinese agricultural system in general, present an appealing route for the Chinese to follow, and will hopefully prove successful in the future even in absence of state management.
China is beginning to lead the way in highly productive and more safe and nutritious food systems. The government aims to extend these practices to more peri-urban areas in the coming decades. These cooperatives demonstrate how the private sector, governments, and producers all along the food and agriculture value chain can work together to make local and global food systems more nutritious and sustainable.
The Global Harvest Initiative (GHI) is a private sector policy voice for improving productivity and sustainability throughout the agricultural value chain. GHI works with private-sector and consultative partners from the nutrition, conservation, and agriculture communities to advance enabling policy environments that help foster more nutritious and sustainable food systems. GHI is invited each year by the Ministry of Agriculture of China and the OECD to participate in workshops that foster the enabling policy environment and innovations for more productive agriculture.