By Zhou Qunli, Research Department of Rural Economy, DRC

Research report No.2, 2018 (Total 5277) 2018-1-4

Abstract: With more and more money in their pockets, people living in both towns and cities are shifting their minds from having enough to eat to eating their way to good health. Under such a backdrop, the government needs to ensure the agricultural output and food safety and strive to improve the quality of agricultural products. However, the quality of China’s agricultural products is still low across the board in terms of the food appearance and taste, the processing standards need to be enhanced and some issues relating to food safety remain to be addressed. The major problems restricting the improvement of agricultural products include: First, the current agricultural production in China is mainly featured by small-scale, scattered and non-standardized farming with inappropriate organization mode relating to seed breeding, production, storage and transportation. Second, effective regulation system targeting at small-scale farmers are not in place, the regulation capacity is inadequate and the law is not enforced properly. Third, the small-scale farmers lack funding and marketing capabilities to forge high-quality brands. Therefore, the government needs to bring into play the leading role of flagship agricultural enterprises, flesh out standardization and organization of agricultural system, strengthen the system building of regulations on small-scale farmers and strive to build brand names representing relevant agricultural enterprises and agricultural regions.

Key words: the quality of agricultural products, standardization, brand building, quality regulation