China Redefines Green
by Christine Lepisto, Berlin on 03. 4.06
We all know organic foods have an uphill battle against the cheap industrially produced goods so readily available in the global economy, but here is a new twist on the struggle. The Worldwatch Institute reports that China's State Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) is promoting the development of the organic sector in China. With over 4,000 hectares of land producing goods certified by 30 different agencies, a growing sector which was originally focused on export is now leading to organic grocery stores for the local market. But locally, the organic certified food is facing a unique problem...
SEPA, through the Organic Food Development Center (OFDC), is promoting organic certifications which largely serve the export market and meet the international expectations for "organic" products However, the Ministry of Agriculture has had a "Green Food" labelling movement since 1990 to promote improved quality for foods destined to the local market. The Green Food standard defines foods grown with limited applications of pesticides and fertilizers as eligible for the well-known green label. Worldwatch Institute reports that in Chinese, the word for "green" food sounds better than the word for "organic" food, limiting the success of SEPA's organic concept with the Chinese consumers.
::Worldwatch Institute
photo: ::Organic Food Development Center
I don't know if I buy "sounds better" part of OFDC's explanation. There are nine different words in Chinese for "organic", and 23 different words for "green". (There is at least one word, "jíng", which means both. The words that mean organic all *just* mean organic, while the words for green have varied nuances of meaning.) Many of the words for green in Chinese are the names of families or provinces which rose in power through farming.
After I actually RTFA, I found the symbol they're using to identify green foods. Sure nough, they're using "lú",which means... green, as in chlorine. If you have Chinese characters installed on your system, it should look like &@x6C2F; (otherwise you'll see the hex code as an html entity). I would have thought they would have chose "shéng", which translates as natural, but conveys beauty, purity, and superiority while invoking a very feng shui image. But then, I'm just a yan guày tzé... what do I know.
The characters for the "green food" label literally mean "green color food product".
http://www.greenfood.org.cn/biao.gif
Contrast that with the OFDC label, which says "organic certified" (the characters are a bit hard to see):
http://www.ofdc.org.cn/images/logo.gif
The characters for organic literally mean "exist/possess machine/desk" -- the latter character being a simplified version of the character for "machine" but on its own (not as a simplified character) would mean "desk". Somehow the two together mean "organic".
I can see where the green label would be more appealing, just because it's more lyrical and literal.
Call it green or organic, the reality is that the Chinese are starting to see the value in low and no pesticide food. I was in Qingdao a couple of weeks ago and I asked at a tea store and a grocery store for the best tea to bring back with me to the states. At both places, the clerks pointed out an organic tea and mentioned to me how important that was.