The Fifth China Agricultural Fair ended in Jinan of eastern
Shandong Province on Tuesday with the signing of investment
projects and purchases worth US$4.6 billion, a senior agricultural
official said.
Both the signed cooperation and intention agreements, which
involve nearly US$5 billion, realized a 20-percent increase
compared with last year, said Gao Hongbin, deputy minister of
agriculture.
Foreign investors inked purchases of 4.4 billion yuan (US$583
million) in large-scale deals, accounting for 54 percent of the
total agreements.
The four-day event, with the theme of "Green Agriculture,
Harmonious Countryside", attracted a record 1,600 firms, mostly
green food makers from Chinese mainland and Taiwan, 90 companies
from 19 countries including Japan, France and Britain, and 380
international purchasers.
A bar-coded technology that allows people to read information of
a food item with the aid of a scanner was on display at the fair,
attracting throngs of visitors.
Just scanning the barcode tagged to a food product, a cucumber
for instance, you can see the producer's name, how it was grown,
when it was picked and how it was transported.
More Chinese, especially those in big cities, now prefer buying
organic food products although they are more expensive.
Various green food and products, such as grains, vegetables and
honeydew, sold well at the fair despite some being ten times more
expensive than ordinary alternatives.
To assure domestic and overseas consumers, the government has
introduced recall systems for unsafe food in late August and
launched a four-month-long safety inspection campaign nationwide,
including clampdowns on banned toxic chemicals in farm products and
carcinogenic malachite green and nitrofurans in aquatic
products.
The government has certified a total of 14,339 types of products
from 5,315 manufacturers as green food, according to official
statistics.
(Xinhua News Agency October 17, 2007)
