The Institutional Environment for Certified Organic Agriculture in China: A review, some landscaping and a framework agenda for more analysis

Summary

From a development research perspective this paper presents a framework for exploring the Chinese case of certified organic agriculture (COA). Departing from an analysis of the globalisation of certified organic agriculture, we first present our theoretical approach and then review the small, but recent existing social science literature on ecological-green-organic agriculture in China. One line of inquiry is exploring how far developments in COA are driven by export aspirations, market actors and their agencies and how far the same developments already involve civil society and domestically oriented government agencies. We proceed to briefly outline the development of the formal institutional landscape of Chinese organic farming. Finally, we present a preliminary analytical framework for further exploring how far COA is institutionally embedded in China and present our agenda for development research on Chinese COA.