China will no longer chase bumper grain harvests and instead make safer foods a priority and boost imports as it bids to tackle its rural environmental problems, government officials said, according to the South China Morning Post.
The shift in emphasis suggests the
authorities are willing to forgo their obsession with agricultural output
growth.
Achieving bumper harvests has long been
considered a political necessity for the world’s most populous country,
particularly after Mao’s 1958 'Great Leap Forward' industrialisation campaign
led to widespread famine.
China has been beset by a series of food
safety scandals in recent years.
These included the contaminated milk
controversy in 2008 when at least six children died after drinking baby formula
containing the industrial chemical melamine.
It had been added to watered-down milk to
distort tests into showing the produce was high in protein.
Han Jun, the deputy director of the Office
of Central Rural Work Leading Group, the country’s top decision maker on rural
policy, said. “In our current grains policy, one of the most important ideas is
to speed up the transition in the way we boost grain output.
“In the past we were exhausting our
resources and environment in pursuit of yield and now we have to focus equally
on quantity, quality and efficiency and particularly the quality of grain
output growth, environmental protection and sustainable development,” Han told
the China Development Forum on Saturday.
The Global Miller
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