中欧社会论坛 - China Europa Forum

Authors: Tan Xuewen

Date: septembre 2007

Published by Rural Development Institute of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

I. Overview

With 9.5% of world arable land and freshwater resource that is only 31% of world average, China has successfully fed 22% of world population. From 1978 until 2006, the Engel Coefficients of Chinese urban and rural residents have declined respectively from 57.5% and 67.7% to 35.8% and43%, and the food of the Chinese has also turned from shortage to abundance. The above development shows that China has contributed greatly to world food security. However, the developmental process of food supply has the characteristics of “pollution first and then elimination”, which means the process is inevitably accompanied with relatively serious problems of pollution and food safety. At present, when the food industry has entered buyer’s market and the demand structure of consumers is upgrading, to enhance the sustainability of food supply chain becomes the major task of food supply chain management.

The concern on food supply chain is because many problems existing in food supply cannot be ascribed to certain firms or a certain link in food supply chain. At present, discussions on food supply chain in China are mostly for securing food safety and increasing the economic efficiency of food logistics. However, a sustainable food supply chain still has two other characteristics besides the above two, i.e., reasonable value increment during food process in finished food and reasonable distribution of profits among the different links in food supply chain, and also minimization of pollution caused by food supply.

With regard to the above four characteristics of a sustainable food supply chain, the status quo of food supply chain in China can be summarized in three aspects as following: (a) The food supply chain is unsustainable as a whole. There are hidden dangers of food safety, there is serious pollution in food industry, the food supply chain is not integrated and profits are not reasonably distributed along the chain; (b) China is making great efforts in food logistics, food industry, agricultural industrialization (i.e. vertical coordination), and governmental supervision on food safety, and the food supply chain is improving; (c) The improvement of food supply chain is imbalanced and step by step.

This document in different languages

• English: doc_628.pdf (150 KiB)
• Chinese: doc_629.pdf (140 KiB)

Page translations:

• 中国可持续食品供应链的现状、问题和展望