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$29m fake agricultural materials found

By Lan Tian (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-01-07 11:55

China found about 200 million yuan ($29 million) worth of fake and shoddy agricultural production materials such as pesticides and fertilizers last year, the country's quality watchdog said yesterday.

In 15,714 cases of producing and marketing substandard agricultural materials, officials helped farmers recover direct losses of more than 94 million yuan, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said on its website.

More than 210,000 quality supervisors checked 22,631 companies in the campaign aimed to boost grain production and farmers' income, the statement said.

The quality administration said it would step up efforts to safeguard farmers' interests and focus on the quality of fertilizers this year.

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Companies that are intentionally producing and marketing substandard fertilizers would be blacklisted and exposed, it said.

Zheng Jiandong, head of the laws and regulations division of the agricultural department in Jilin province, said that his province would continue with its measures to control the use of substandard agricultural materials.

"We investigated 886 cases of production and marketing of counterfeit agricultural products in 2008," he said, adding exaggerated advertisements were a huge problem.

"It is also very hard to control the unlicensed peddlers since they don't stay in one place for too long," he said.

Zheng said his department will this week distribute 350,000 pamphlets to farmers informing them of the correct and legal ways to buy and use agricultural materials.

However, experts said the government must take more measures to crack down on shoddy agricultural products.

Luo Haizhang, director-general of the China Crop Protection Industry Association, told China Daily: "Though many measures have been taken by the government in recent years, problems have not been solved totally.

"Law enforcement is slack due to insufficient funds. The punishment for enterprises that make and sell substandard agricultural materials also needs to be stricter," he said.

Luo suggested that the government should fund rural areas for purchasing instruments to test the quality of agricultural materials.

"There are no such expensive and helpful instruments in rural areas. For instance, you would not know the quality of a pesticide without testing it by instruments," he said.