China Grown

Fruits and vegetables on U.S. tables are increasingly coming all the way from China.
Is it time for California farmers to worry?

By Kathleen Holder

Never mind all those clothes, electronics and toys made in China. Chances are high that the frozen orange and apple juice you mix up, the strawberries in your ice cream, the tomato paste on your pizza and even the garlic you eat at the Gilroy Garlic Festival come from China, too.

California farmers express growing alarm over the rise in China’s exports of fruits and vegetables into the United States and other Pacific Rim countries, said Scott Rozelle, a professor of agricultural and resource economics. “There’s this perception that China is out to steal our markets.I think that’s really a misperception.”

Rozelle, who has studied agricultural policy, economics and poverty in China for 25 years, said the rise of Chinese produce in international markets, rather than being government directed, is about as grassroots as you can get: Tens of millions of poorly educated family farmers grow fruits and vegetables on plots averaging about 1/2 acre. What they don’t sell at local produce markets, they offer to small traders who hire contract truckers to deliver to wholesalers in the cities. Average daily earnings total about $2 for the farmers, $3 for the traders and truckers and $4 for the urban wholesalers.

That snapshot of China’s decentralized food distribution system comes from surveys and interviews conducted by Rozelle and colleagues at Beijing’s Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy in about 500 villages in the greater Beijing region and Shandong Province. Better known as the home of the Tsingtao Brewery, the coastal Shandong province is a major fruit and vegetable producing region—the “California of China,” Rozelle said. He directs the international advisory board of nine economists for the Chinese agricultural policy center, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Over the past 25 to 30 years, China has shifted food production from state-owned to private farms, eliminated tariffs and other market restrictions, and relaxed food-sufficiency policies that required farmers to plant rice, wheat and other grains ahead of other crops. In recent years, farmers—who typically have about seven years of schooling—have increasingly specialized in fruit and vegetable crops, such as strawberries, oranges, apples, onions, garlic, tomatoes and carrots, that allow them to make the most of their primary asset—their own labor.

From 1990 to 2000, land in vegetable production more than doubled in China to 20 million acres—increasing about the size of California every two years, according to a recent paper by Rozelle, fellow agricultural and resource economics professor Daniel Sumner and colleagues from California State University, Fresno, and the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy. Similarly, area planted in fruit nearly doubled to nearly 25 million acres.

Chinese farmers receive little or no government subsidies and no directions, or even extension service advice, about what to plant, Rozelle said. “They are basically making their own decisions. This is all market driven.”

While fruit and vegetable production is up, so, too, is domestic demand for fresh produce as China’s standard of living rises, Rozelle said. And though Chinese farmers likely will continue to dominate the international market for apples and oranges for juice concentrate, they are less able than California growers to meet demands for high-quality, reliable and safe produce—both locally and abroad.

In fact, China may prove to be a real boon for many U.S. farmers. China already is importing increasing amounts of California nuts and plums, as well as California cotton, Midwestern corn and soybeans and foreign sugar and dairy products, he said. Opportunities exist there for producers of other crops. “There’s room for a very aggressive marketing strategy by California growers to market within China.”

Kathleen Holder is associate editor of UC Davis Magazine.

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