Agricultural Product Quality And Safety Engineering In Jinhua, Zhejiang, China

Issues on agricultural product quality and safety are the keys related to nowadays development of agricultural and rural economy in China, particularly to consumers' physical and emotional health, farmers' income increase, rural stabilization and agricultural development.The Agricultural Product Quality and Safety Engineering Project in Jinhua, Zhejiang, China (Jinhua APQSEP), initiated on the World Environmental Day, June 5, 2002. In the Project, five systems, i.e., Standard system for safe agro-products, Monitoring and inspection system for environment and agro-products, Monitoring and management system for agro-inputs, Marketing system for agro-products and Agricultural Technical Extension system, were constructed. These establishments result in the significant improvement of quality and safety of agro-products in Jinhua.Since the initiation of Jinhua APQSEP, 164 agricultural standards have been formulated. Eighty five demonstration projects of the 164 production standards, among which 6 belong to national standards and 13 belong to provincial standards respectively, have been implemented. Based on the construction of pollution-free and standardization production bases, twenty one brands of agro-products were newly awarded nationally identified "Pollution-Free Agro-Products". In total, in Jinhua there are 65 brands recognized by National Authorities as "Pollution-Free Agro-Products", 37 brands as "Organic Food" and 7 brands as "Green Food".Due to the relationship of issues in agro-product safety to farmers' knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP), the Jinhua APQSEP emphasizes the network construction of village farmer technician leaders and training of rural labor power, to increase their capability of demonstration for new agricultural techniques. Agricultural TV programs, Agri-tech special telephone (Agri-Tech 110) and Agricultural websites have been fitting the diverse, individualized requirements of technical service of the ten thousands of households. Farmer participatory experiments improved farmers' perception of yield loss. Agricultural technical extension section is the main information source for crop-growing technical guideline.KAP survey showed that number of species and number of applications of pesticides, particularly insecticides, decreased since the initiation of the Jinhua APQSEP. Some high-toxic insecticides, e.g. methamidophos, are in use in a neglectable level. Application of chemical fertilizers did not change as quick as pesticides, but the maximum amount of fertilizers decreased.However, the situation of some of the pesticide, e.g. fipronil, imidacloprid, have been the few over-relied insecticides, may induce new pesticide-resistance in the target pests. Such over-reliance and the over use of nitrogen are recommended in the thesis as the targets of the Jinhua APQSEP in the coming years.