At the organic food counter of the supermarket in Beijing New World Shopping Center, salesperson Hu Yating is busy packaging organic vegetables for customers. Every morning, more than 200 jin of fresh organic vegetables are transported from the suburbs to the supermarket in the city center. According to Hu Yating, more than 20 varieties of organic vegetables and organic coarse grains are selling well, with prices on average about twice as high as ordinary products. She said, “Some people specifically buy organic vegetables, generally for children to eat more. Anyway, quite a lot of people buy them. Most people are quite interested in organic vegetables and feel reassured eating them.”文章源自FOFCC-http://fofcc.org.cn/en/11288/
It is understood that there are dozens of other supermarkets in Beijing that sell organic food like this, such as Carrefour, Walmart, and so on. At present, organic food is slowly entering ordinary Chinese households and becoming a new dish on everyone's dining table.文章源自FOFCC-http://fofcc.org.cn/en/11288/
So what exactly is organic food? Simply put, it is a natural product that is almost pollution-free and does not use chemically synthesized pesticides and fertilizers in the production process. China began developing the organic food industry in 2000. By 2009, sales had reached 10 billion yuan, making it the world's third-largest organic food market.文章源自FOFCC-http://fofcc.org.cn/en/11288/
Mr. Chen Zhao is an ordinary citizen of Beijing and often buys organic vegetables. He said that although these vegetables are more expensive, he believes they are worth the money. He said, “If you think this thing is very beneficial to your health, then paying a higher price to buy it is not out of the question. I think a higher price is certainly related to its costs. With fewer pesticides added, the growth cycle will certainly be longer, and more manpower and material resources will certainly be consumed, so it is understandable that its price is higher.”文章源自FOFCC-http://fofcc.org.cn/en/11288/
It is precisely because they have taken notice of the huge business opportunities in the organic food market that in the past two years more and more Chinese enterprises have joined this industry. Zhenggu Beijing Agricultural Development Co., Ltd., established in 2007, is one of them. The company has a complete industrial chain from production to sales and provides customers with more than 70 kinds of organic products, including vegetables, coarse grains, dried fruits, ecological seafood, and so on.文章源自FOFCC-http://fofcc.org.cn/en/11288/
Mr. Zhang Xiangdong, chairman of Zhenggu Beijing Agricultural Development Co., Ltd., said that producing and selling organic food can not only enable customers to obtain safe and healthy food, but more importantly promote the spread of the concept of sustainable development. He said, “I think a very important point in developing the organic food industry is that it is very environmentally friendly. This characteristic is very obvious.”文章源自FOFCC-http://fofcc.org.cn/en/11288/
He introduced that when Zhenggu Beijing Agricultural Development Co., Ltd. was founded in 2007, its sales were only 800,000 yuan. Two years later, sales had increased more than 50 times, reaching 50 million yuan. At present, the company has 60,000 relatively stable corporate and individual customers.文章源自FOFCC-http://fofcc.org.cn/en/11288/
At present, there are more than 4,000 companies engaged in the organic food industry in China like Zhenggu, and the planting area of organic products has reached 2.6 million hectares. In order to regulate the development of this industry, China has established a relatively complete certification system. Among them, there are 26 institutions engaged in organic food certification, and 4,800 certification certificates have been issued.文章源自FOFCC-http://fofcc.org.cn/en/11288/
The rapid development of China's organic food industry has attracted the attention of foreign media such as Agence France-Presse and Reuters, which have all produced many related reports. At the same time, more and more organic product experts are choosing to come to China to develop their careers. Expert Klaus from Germany told reporters that China has a very good foundation and tradition for developing organic food: “Chinese farmers have known how to produce this kind of organic agricultural product since ancient times. Their ancestors would adopt a farming method different from modern agriculture: that is, allowing various agricultural wastes to return to the soil again, burning them into ash and then spreading them onto the soil. This is a very ancient farming method of Chinese farmers, and it is also a truly natural farming method.”文章源自FOFCC-http://fofcc.org.cn/en/11288/
Mr. Klaus has successively worked at several organic food companies in Beijing. He said that in Germany, the regular consumer group of organic food accounts for 5% of the total population. For China, with a population of 1.3 billion, if it could reach this proportion, it would be a very large consumer group.文章源自FOFCC-http://fofcc.org.cn/en/11288/
But at present, in China, organic food sales account for only 0.02% to 0.03% of total food consumption. Some people still do not know much about organic food, and Grandma Hou in Beijing is one of them. She said, “(I) don't know (about organic food), have never bought it, I buy vegetables at the market.”文章源自FOFCC-http://fofcc.org.cn/en/11288/
In addition, some people still have doubts about organic food. For example, a survey by China's authoritative website NetEase showed that 17% of people believed that “organic food is not trustworthy.”文章源自FOFCC-http://fofcc.org.cn/en/11288/
It can thus be seen that increasing publicity efforts to let more people understand the role of organic food, while at the same time regulating the development of related enterprises, will be important factors affecting the further development of this industry in China.文章源自FOFCC-http://fofcc.org.cn/en/11288/
At present, globally speaking, the organic food industry is a “sunrise industry” with considerable development prospects. Reports from authoritative research institutions in the world show that this industry is growing at an average annual rate of 20% to 30%, and global sales are expected to reach 100 billion US dollars in 2010. It is believed that in the future more and more organic food will enter the lives of ordinary people in China and other countries.文章源自FOFCC-http://fofcc.org.cn/en/11288/