Can Consumption Create a Better Natural and Social Environment? | 315 Mini-Debate: Part 3
Foodthink Says
On 15 March (Consumer Rights Day), this article examines the underlying philosophy and current domestic development of PGS, inviting us to reflect more deeply on the social value of our purchasing habits and to make more informed choices going forward.
I. The Core Principles of PGS
The core tenets of PGS are twofold. The first is a rejection of one-size-fits-all production standards. Farming is inherently a practice shaped by local conditions; therefore, rigid, standardised regulations cannot encompass the varied methods used across different regions. Imposing such uniform criteria on producers inevitably marginalises diversified farming systems and disrupts local ecosystems. Furthermore, it undermines producers’ agency, potentially incentivising them to manipulate their records simply to comply with the rules.
Meanwhile, the inspection cycles designed into China’s organic certification framework are fundamentally better suited to assessing large-scale monoculture operations. Many smallholders practise diversified cropping, which requires frequent rotation of different plant species. Since the certification audit process cannot easily align with such fluid farming schedules, this structural mismatch is a key reason why small-scale farmers find certification prohibitively difficult, or simply opt out altogether.
The second proposition is that if uniform production standards prove inapplicable, we must instead seek standards rooted in specific communities or particular collective contexts. PGS maintains that these precise standards should be jointly determined by producers and local consumers. Through fostering mutual understanding, these groups can develop a shared set of practices that all parties recognise and endorse.
This requires open communication and mutual understanding between consumers and producers, enabling consumers to fully grasp what food production actually entails. On this foundation, consumers and producers can negotiate production guidelines—defining what kind of produce we can realistically expect and what constitutes a quality product. Both parties then carry out production and consumption within these agreed parameters. Information transparency is achieved precisely through this process of joint negotiation.
For instance, if consumers wish to eat vegetables and fruit grown without pesticides or chemical fertilisers, producers will explain that such produce may show insect damage, lack cosmetic perfection, or incur higher production costs. A rational consumer would then understand that it is unrealistic to expect food that is simultaneously cheap, safe, and visually flawless, and will make choices suited to their own priorities when purchasing.
II. The Predicament of PGS
The first issue is a misalignment between inputs and outputs; put differently, the triad of rights, responsibilities, and benefits does not flow as seamlessly as it does within conventional commercial, social, and political institutions. Organising PGS entails significant costs, yet there is no corresponding direct economic return. This gives rise to an incentive problem: who is willing to devote the energy to organise a PGS? And, after sinking time, travel, and communication costs into the process, what kind of return is actually on offer?
Consider the differing mechanisms for accountability and reward between PGS and formal certification. A certification system essentially creates market exclusivity. The certifying body receives a direct financial return, while the certified operator gains the certificate—a ticket to enter that exclusive market—and commands a relatively higher price premium.
Participatory guarantee, by contrast, is fundamentally a community endeavour. Consequently, the standards of conduct and outcomes it generates become assets of the wider food community, to be shared by all its members.
Take the Participatory Guarantee System at the Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market, arguably the most mature model domestically. A consumer need not visit a farm herself; if she knows others have attended PGS evaluations, hears them speak well of a producer, or sees photos and reports of farm visits shared on social media, she will still use that accumulated trust to guide her purchasing decisions.
The same logic applies to producers. Not every grower will necessarily take part in peer inspections, but once any single farmer earns consumer approval through this process, that approval spills over to enhance the market’s overall reputation. Everyone operating within that market gets to share in that goodwill.
In short, contributions from both consumers and farmers to the PGS are rarely equal, yet the benefits of this mutual oversight are distributed evenly across the board. This inevitably raises a free-rider problem: if you can reap the rewards without pitching in, how do you prevent participants from shirking responsibility? And who should foot the bill for organising the system? Should it fall to consumers? To the community organisations that bridge producers and buyers? Or should producers who profit from the market’s reputation shoulder a larger share of the cost?
A second constraint lies in the inherent scope of PGS. The high organisational costs and the intensity of required interaction mean it cannot be rapidly scaled or replicated in the manner of impersonal, one-off market transactions. It is only viable within defined communities. In essence, PGS is designed to guarantee the practices of a select group of producers within a niche market, serving a consumer base that is minuscule compared to the mainstream. It relies on cultivating a locally rooted buying community—a relatively stable and tightly knit social network.
Yet the prevailing business model in the mainstream market demands constant expansion; without growth, firms lose market share. Survival hinges on driving down costs and rolling out new products to continuously lure fresh customers. Given this trajectory, can a market underpinned by PGS withstand the pressure exerted by mainstream commercial models built on relentless scaling?
III. Compromises in PGS Practice
The most typical organisational models we currently observe for PGS are farm visits and regular updates on farm production. Both of these activities entail considerable organisational costs.
For instance, before a PGS farm visit, market staff must carry out extensive preliminary preparations, issue announcements, and then accompany consumers to the production site.
During the visit, organisers also need to guide consumers through the farm’s entire production process, with the farmer explaining each stage in turn. Once the visit concludes, they must still gather feedback from consumers. From the organisers’ perspective, this demands a significant investment of both time and staff resources.
By contrast, on some other platforms, the PGS format has been so greatly simplified that it is hard to distinguish it from more conventional marketing tactics. For instance, live streaming may replace farm visits where consumers could participate in person, or updates on farm production conditions might be omitted entirely. Alternatively, when a new producer is onboarded, their narrative is paired with soil and product test reports, which are then used to substitute for continuous tracking and follow-up of production practices. In truth, this approach bears a strong resemblance to Whole Foods Market’s marketing model: “staging” information transparency to present consumers with curated visuals of specific production processes, while keeping them fundamentally distant from the actual producers.
IV. The Dilemma of Consumer Participation
In my experience, women account for at least 60 to 70 per cent of food-related decisions in the household. Whether they are stay-at-home mothers or working parents, they share one common duty: they shoulder the responsibility for sourcing and preparing meals. Yet their domestic roles extend far beyond the kitchen and shopping list.
Many female consumers note that they only began seeking out organic produce after having children. This implies that parenthood acts as a major watershed in their lives; once a child arrives, childcare quickly becomes a central thread around which their entire routine is woven. In China, raising children is intensely demanding, particularly for the middle class, where highly meticulous parenting is the norm. Almost exclusively, women bear the brunt of this care work, leaving mothers with tightly packed, exhausting days.
Yet, on the other hand, this labour is rarely acknowledged or valued within the home. I once asked a mother, who devoted such careful attention to her child’s diet—and indeed the whole family’s meals—what her husband’s stance was on the matter. Her reply was telling: “As long as the father doesn’t get in the way, that’s enough.”
This response struck me as sobering. It highlights not only the disproportionate share of domestic labour shouldered by women, but also how the value of this work remains invisible—unrecognised by wider society, and often even by their own families. Under these circumstances, female consumers rarely have the bandwidth to engage with a PGS. Even when they express interest, their families may dismiss it as unnecessary, arguing that any spare time would be better spent escorting children to tutoring classes.
Constrained by these factors, most consumers can at best form a broad impression of organic production through one or two farm visits, interactions with the producer or PGS organiser, and routine encounters at local markets or online.
While this may place their understanding ahead of 99.9% of urban consumers nationwide, such an impression is rarely grounded in rigorous production knowledge, or indeed in agricultural science itself. Without a foundational grasp of organic farming, many consumers visiting a farm do not even know what they are meant to look for. They tend to take a cursory look, notice whatever strikes them as novel, and struggle to critically assess the information producers share.
In such circumstances, consumers’ judgments are often “relational”. They draw on accumulated interpersonal experience or cultural habits to make assessments rooted in personal connection and emotion. A producer might make a particular remark, strike a distinctive pose, or demonstrate a specific process, leaving a strong impression that validates a consumer’s existing view or preconceived notion. This alone can be sufficient for some to decide whether the producer is trustworthy.
The consequence of this approach is that if consumers are not evaluating a producer’s credentials through agricultural knowledge, then the foundation upon which producers build their market reputation is not purely their technical expertise, but rather the personal image they project within these specific interactions.
Wang Xin of Beijing’s Xiqing Farm has pointed out that while the marketing pitch for agricultural techniques is simple to learn, not every farmer who picks up the script can actually put the methods into practice. At the same time, he notes that consumers find it difficult to distinguish between genuine agricultural know-how and mere sales patter.
Put simply, PGS risks becoming just another symbol of transparency, with the core of participation diluted. As long as sellers can stage any activity that superficially resembles PGS—even if it lacks participatory principles or the genuine intent to share knowledge—it will still leave consumers with the impression that “this is PGS,” or convince them that they understand quality metrics well enough to make the right choices. In reality, however, neither producers nor consumers end up truly empowered. This phenomenon has grown increasingly evident over the past few years, amid the proliferation of short-form videos and live-stream shopping.
V. Is PGS Still Necessary?
What makes PGS alternative is not merely its proposal of a different quality paradigm, but rather that consumption is not its primary aim. Consumption serves to build community bonds. We do not engage with PGS simply to buy better products; rather, we hope to forge stronger relationships between producers and consumers, or among producers, consumers, and civil society organisations. We believe that good relationships yield good food, and that consumption itself should be a daily practice of nurturing these better connections.
This mirrors the agroecology that PGS supports: agroecology is not solely about producing safe agricultural products, but about fostering a harmonious, rather than destructive, relationship between farming and the environment.
Choosing to participate in alternative food consumption represented by PGS, in pursuit of ethical and sustainable natural and social relationships, is fundamentally different from being driven by consumerism. If we no longer believe that scaling up production is the only thing that matters, and if we recognise that our relationship with nature and with other members of society can be reshaped, we might well reconsider what consumption is truly for. In this sense, PGS offers a window for rethinking models of social relations.
Editor: Tianle