To Win Farmers’ Right to “Sell Dried Goods”, We Submit Suggested Amendments
Last week, Foodthink highlighted the revision of the Measures for the Supervision and Administration of Quality and Safety of Edible Agricultural Products in Market Sales, and the story attracted considerable reader attention. The revision removes “drying” from the definition of “edible agricultural products”, which very likely means that in future, farmers who make and sell their own dried vegetables, dried fruits, dried fish and similar products will face penalties for breaking the law.
Ahead of the 4 June deadline for the public consultation, Foodthink, together with readers, farmers, experts, businesses, media outlets and civil society organisations who care about this issue, jointly submitted a formal proposal. We believe that legally safeguarding smallholder farmers’ right to produce and sell dried products without obtaining a food production licence is essential, and we strongly urge the State Administration for Market Regulation to retain “drying” in the revised definition.
Over the past week and more, in conversations with many farmers, consumers and experts, we have come to recognise that the gradual erosion of smallholder farmers’ rights to produce – regardless of the outcome of this legislative consultation – is a hidden thread running through four decades of change in China’s rural areas and agriculture, and a hidden landmine for whether rural revitalisation can be achieved. The dried products issue that has now come to the fore is merely the tip of the iceberg.
Therefore, submitting the proposal is not the end of the road.
First and foremost, we hope that the public and relevant authorities will develop a deeper understanding of farmers’ circumstances, so that informed discussions can take place and help build consensus among consumers, regulators and legislators to protect farmers’ rights.
In last Thursday’s article, we also gathered a number of views from the farming community. In recent days, major outlets such as Beijing News and Jiemian News have also published articles examining the potential impact of this revision on farmers. The growing attention on this issue shows that our active advocacy has achieved a measure of success. In the coming period, we will also respond further to some of the viewpoints raised.
Second, we are well aware that drying and processing is only a small part of the problem. In reality, virtually all primary processing of agricultural products carried out by farmers operates in a legal grey area unless they hold a food production licence. In practice, whether a processed product is legal depends entirely on the ruling of the local market regulator (formerly the food and drug authority), or even on the tactics of professional counterfeit hunters who manipulate the law. The same product may be lawfully produced and sold in one area, yet face hefty penalties in another. If today it is dried chillies that cannot be sold, then what about chilli powder, dried longan, goji berries or Sichuan pepper – are those legal? If the current direction of regulatory revision continues, the space left for farmers will only shrink further. This is the trend that many smallholders and sales platforms have felt over the past few years.
Relying solely on each farmer to go it alone against enforcement agencies to fight for their own interests is not impossible. But for many farmers, facing regulatory pressure on their own and combing through extensive legal texts is a task that is virtually impossible to accomplish.
- What legal and policy restrictions have you encountered while carrying out simple processing and sales of agricultural products?
- How much in terms of cost and effort have you incurred (or may need to incur) to comply with relevant laws and regulations?
- What channels are currently available for your processed products? Have you encountered any obstacles in sales?
- Which requirements imposed by market regulators do you consider reasonable, and which are unnecessary?
- From both a legislative and an enforcement perspective, what do you think market regulators should do to reflect the realities farmers face?
We, as consumers, farmers, sellers, farmers’ professional cooperatives and civil society organisations who care about agricultural development and farmers’ interests, wish to express our concern and make recommendations regarding the recent revision that removes “drying” as a criterion for edible agricultural products in the Measures for the Supervision and Administration of Quality and Safety of Edible Agricultural Products in Market Sales (Draft for Public Consultation).
We note that the Draft for Public Consultation removes “drying” as a processing method from the definition of “edible agricultural products”. This means that agricultural products which have been dried will no longer be classified as “edible agricultural products”. Under Article 35 of the Food Safety Law, all production of dried products should in future obtain the corresponding food production licence.
In fact, since the Classification Catalogue of Food Production Licences already includes categories of dried products such as dried vegetables, dried fruits and dried aquatic products, in enforcement practice over the past few years, authorities have frequently treated the sale of agricultural products dried and processed by small producers themselves, without a food production licence, as unlawful, imposing penalties under Article 122 of the Food Safety Law.
Once “drying” is formally removed from the definition of edible agricultural products, the last remaining legal basis for producers to contest rulings against their self-made dried agricultural products will also disappear.
A vast nation characterised by small-scale farming is the fundamental reality of our agricultural and national circumstances. Beyond producers who can obtain a food production licence, a large number of ordinary farming households, family farms and farmers’ professional cooperatives also produce dried products. Many of these entities lack the scale and financial resources to apply for a food production licence. This change will directly affect the vast number of agricultural producers, particularly those smallholder farmers who rely on dried agricultural products as their main livelihood, effectively excluding them from the drying and processing stage.
We believe that legally safeguarding smallholder farmers’ right to produce and sell dried products without obtaining a food production licence is essential. Our reasoning is as follows:
First, dried agricultural products are a vital part of smallholder livelihoods, and banning them would leave many smallholders unable to sustain their livelihoods. As is well known, processed food requires a food production licence – a standard that is beyond the reach of many smallholder farming households. Even as a second-best option, obtaining a small-workshop certificate requires an investment of time and effort. For smallholders already under pressure from production and business operations, this would compound an already difficult situation. At present, China has 210 million smallholder farmers, and across the length and breadth of the country, smallholder households depend on dried agricultural products for their livelihood – dried fruits and nuts in the northwest, dried aquatic products along the coast, tea and traditional Chinese medicinal herbs from mountainous regions, and dried chillies and Sichuan pepper in the southwest.
In particular, smallholder farmers who process their own produce do not need to purchase raw materials from external sources; they simply sun-dry or oven-dry the agricultural products they have grown themselves. The dried products carry higher added value and avoid the costs of centralised factory processing, significantly boosting their income. Specifically, products such as jujubes, goji berries, walnuts and certain edible fungi can essentially not be sold in fresh form; they acquire edible and commercial value only after drying, and the vast majority of farming households dry and sell these products themselves. Removing “drying” as a criterion for edible agricultural products will impose a heavy economic burden on these smallholder farmers, and may even threaten their livelihoods.
At the same time, smallholders’ self-made dried products do not alter the fundamental properties of the food nor introduce additional food safety risks. Most drying is carried out in natural conditions. These products not only have distinctive textures but also rich nutritional value. Admittedly, there have been cases involving sulphur-fumigated goji berries and dried fish treated with preservatives, but these are the actions of individual producers – and some of those producers are even large-scale operators holding proper qualifications. A blanket ban on individual smallholders merely places pressure on small farms without actually eliminating food safety risks. Moreover, forcibly classifying these products as processed foods arguably fails to reflect their actual properties.
More importantly, a blanket ban on dried products made by smallholders is impractical within the current market distribution and regulatory system. Most smallholder-made dried products are distributed through traditional channels such as farmers’ markets, characterised by a wide range of sources, multiple tiers and difficulty in tracing origins. Removing “drying” as a criterion for edible agricultural products will hardly prevent smallholders’ self-produced goods from circulating in farmers’ markets and similar venues; instead, it will place enormous pressure on grassroots enforcement officers and provide a legal pretext for so-called “professional counterfeit hunters” to abuse the law, target smallholders, disrupt markets and tie up enforcement resources.
We therefore strongly urge the State Administration for Market Regulation to retain “drying” in the definition of edible agricultural products, to protect the interests of smallholders and to promote rural revitalisation and sustainable agricultural development.
We further believe that relevant laws and regulations should more broadly protect smallholders’ right to process their products, not merely for dried products alone. Cancelling and restricting smallholder farmers’ rights to process edible agricultural products contradicts the basic governance logic of China’s social co-governance of food safety, and runs counter to the international consensus reached on smallholder production and development.
First, the basic governance logic of social co-governance of food safety in China is built upon the deep involvement of smallholder farmers in food safety governance. Removing or restricting smallholder farmers’ rights to process edible agricultural products would weaken their sense of responsibility in ensuring food safety and increase the costs of administrative governance and grassroots enforcement. The ever-maturing food safety supply chain can hardly conceal the fact that smallholder farmers are excluded from core decision-making in transactions. Yet in the Chinese context, the significant responsibility that smallholder farmers bear in safeguarding national food safety is wholly disproportionate to their fragile rights to development and their economic position – they are too often treated merely as basic input suppliers at the tail end of the supply chain, or as outsiders excluded from value distribution at the end of the value chain. The fraud in edible agricultural products that has surfaced in some provinces is rooted precisely in the fact that smallholder farmers cannot obtain sufficient rights to development from the production, processing and marketing of edible agricultural products.
Second, in the global transformation of food systems, the right to lead and participate in the processing of edible agricultural products has become a shared policy objective for food security, food safety and nutritional security, and has been continually refined and updated in United Nations-level reports. For example, in the 2022 report The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations formally introduced Agency as a new dimension within the concept of Food Security. In this framework, Food Security encompasses not only food supply security, food safety and nutritional security, but also the security of rights. Agency, therefore, emphasises that farming households should have the capacity to determine for themselves what food they eat and what food they produce, and to ensure how they produce, process and sell food within the food system, as well as to participate in the policy-making and governance processes of the food system.
Thus, for smallholder farmers to lead and participate in the processing of edible agricultural products – particularly the in-depth processing of local specialities – is a fundamental requirement for safeguarding their agency and autonomy across the entire value chain, for maximising the enhancement of their rights to development, and for enabling them to take food safety responsibility as a matter of their own will. Going further, this requirement is highly aligned with the holistic food concept, which calls for “developing food resources comprehensively and through multiple pathways, and cultivating a rich diversity of food varieties.” This, in turn, allows the heterogeneity of smallholder farmers to become a key driver in implementing the principle of “growing grain where grain is best suited, cultivating cash crops where they thrive, grazing livestock where pastures allow, fishing where waters permit, and cultivating forests where forestry is the right use”, and of “seeking food from forests, from rivers, lakes and seas, and from controlled-environment agriculture”, so as to truly enable farmers to profit – and to profit more. Only when farmers profit more can genuine social co-governance of food safety take root, reducing the costs of administrative governance and grassroots enforcement, and achieving the ultimate goal of strengthening food safety at source.
We therefore also urge market regulators, in the process of formulating laws, regulations and policies affecting farmers, to ensure:
(1) Proactively publish the basis for revisions
The State Administration for Market Regulation’s current public statement on this revision of the Measures for the Supervision and Administration of Quality and Safety of Edible Agricultural Products in Market Sales already includes detailed explanations for the vast majority of the changes. However, no explanation has been provided for the modification to the definition of edible agricultural products. We also understand from the revision notes that the State Administration for Market Regulation collected extensive feedback for this revision, including voices from the grassroots.
Given the interests of the many smallholder farmers involved, we recommend that the relevant authorities proactively disclose the research findings and stakeholder feedback behind this particular revision, particularly research results based on small-scale producers. We will also, in due course, formally apply for government information disclosure through official channels.
(2) Clarify the scope of “edible agricultural products” and leave room for smallholders to process their own products
Regardless of whether the “drying” provisions are ultimately revised, we hope that the State Administration for Market Regulation will subsequently issue guiding documents that more clearly define the scope of “edible agricultural products”, direct grassroots enforcement to adopt differentiated management measures for different categories of processed goods, and protect farmers’ right to produce certain simple processed items on their own.
(3) Establish long-term mechanisms for differentiated management
In the long term, we recommend adopting differentiated management approaches for producers of different scales. Even among producers of the same product, small-scale producers who process their own farm-grown agricultural products should be treated differently from large food enterprises that process externally sourced raw materials. This is also a widely accepted regulatory model internationally.
For example, a separate classification for minimally processed agricultural products could be introduced – managed distinctly from the two broad categories of edible agricultural products and processed food – with appropriately lower barriers to entry for producers. In terms of product categories, options should be chosen from traditional food types that can safely be processed by producers themselves and carry lower safety risks. In terms of determining producer eligibility, consideration should extend beyond the processing process itself to include the producer’s attributes as a business entity, the origin of materials, and similar factors.
Authorities could also consider optimising the existing small-scale food workshop system across various regions, introducing a registration or filing regime as an alternative to the licensing system, thereby protecting farmers’ legitimate interests while easing regulatory pressure.
We hope the State Administration for Market Regulation will take seriously the concerns of the public, listen attentively to views from all sides, and develop more evidence-based and proportionate management measures that ensure food safety without imposing an undue burden on smallholder farmers, while also encouraging and supporting smallholders to improve their production standards and offer consumers safer, healthier agricultural products.
We thank the State Administration for Market Regulation once again for its attention to our proposal, and look forward to more extensive and direct dialogue.
Editor: Foodthink Editor