Despite being a tiny fraction of both the market and the farming, the scale of the organic sector in China is both massive and growing at a rapid rate.
This presents threats and opportunities to everyone else..
At present, there is hardly any organic processed food or meat in China � the latter must surely be of interest to the Irish organic sector, which is dominated by meat and by meat exporting.
China has up to 50 million middle class consumers, 200,000 foreigners who live there, and 65 million visitors annually. These are the people to whom organic food is being marketed at present.
Trade Shows like BioFach China and the Green Food and Organic Food Expo attract increasing numbers of exhibitors.
BioFach China 2009 was attended by 10,400 trade visitors, a 13% increase on 2008.
The bigger Green Food and Organic Food show was attended by 1200 enterprises from 37 different countries, as well as about 50,000 trade visitors.
China's official Organic Food Development Center estimates domestic sales of organic products at about 500 million US dollars every year.
And more growth is predicted: organic certification organizations estimate that production will increase by 30 � 50 % in the coming years and that exports of organic products could rise to a volume of 5 % of total food exports by 2020, as well as 1-2% of its domestic turnover.
However, China could easily start to swamp the world with some organic foods, as it has done with conventional garlic, which now accounts for over 2/3 of the global supply.
In 2000, only 4000 ha of China�s arable land was certified organic. By 2005, the figure was almost 1 million hectares; by 2007, it had reached 1.5 million hectares. Most recent figures suggest that very soon, close to 2 million hectares of Chinese land will be under organic certification. China now has more land under organic horticulture than any other country, mostly for frozen vegetable exports.
All of this in a country that wholeheartedly committed itself to the industrialisation of farming with gusto for the last 60 years. China is the major global user of pesticides and chemical fertilizers in the world.
On less than 1/10 of the world�s arable land Chinese farmers apply about one third of the worldwide production of nitrogen fertilizers.
Indeed, while all of this growth in organic farmland was occurring, from 2002-2007, China's usage of synthetic fertilizers went from 43 to 51 million tonnes.
With recent severe food scandals such as the melamine milk scandal with killed 6 and poisoned 300,000, and a history of chronic pollution, China has an significant image problem in exports and domestic consumption. It is not, for example, on the EU's approved 3rd Country list, which increases the costs and bureaucracy of its exports to the EU.
Dr. Charles Benbrook, chief researcher with The Organic Center, Rhodale (US): "China is a country that has emphasized industrial-driven economic growth and has invested very sparsely in pollution controls and cleaning up air and water," Benbrook says. "As a result, a lot of toxic materials have fallen on the land or are in water resources used for irrigation."
More pertinently for the Irish organic sector is how to supply China. One simple and innovative way to reach high end far flung professionals in catering and hotels is through services like Marketboomer.
Marketboomer links thousands of professionals who want produce with thousands more who seek it, through a website that involves a small commission � certainly compared to using a wholesaler/distributor.
According to Conor Lawlor of Marketboomer's Dublin Office. �We are an on line procurement system for the catering and hospitality industries. Really, its the hotels that dictate the products in terms of both the quality and the lists of items.�
�We have the medium and clients here and overesas, including Starwood Hotels, Intercontinental, Emirates airlines.�
Along with these sorts of innovations, the hard slog of attending the trade shows, and adding organic food businesses to the trade delegations would start the process of opening up this growing 500 million dollar market to the Irish organic sector.
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