Recent horror stories about food safety issues within China and the export of tainted foods is helping spur the growth of the organic food market in China, according to Reuters:
This is helping drive sales in another, though still tiny, food sector in China — organic produce.
But a loose regulatory framework and sometimes just plain confusion about what exactly constitutes organic food has proven to be a stumbling block, experts say.
China has 5.7 million acres of certified organic farmland, according to the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements, although that is less than 1 percent of the country’s total farmed land.
Sales grew an estimated 50 percent last year, but a lot of China’s organic produce is actually exported. [Full text]
See also “Going Organic in China” from World Changing (from 2005) and information from the 2007 BioFach China, the international trade fair and conference.
