by Toni De Aztlan (’08)

Two hours north of Beijing, Xingshou is a village overrun with strawberries, literally. Vendors line the streets plying piles of the juicy red berries. The sidewalks are strewn with them and miles of farmland have been converted to produce them.

But nothing captures the farming craze that has turned Xingshou into China’s “strawberry city” more vividly than the Tianyi Farm Strawberry Emporium.

The shiny new store sticks out from the gray background of China’s industrialized countryside. Its cheerful exterior, complete with cartoon mascots—happy strawberry boy and happy strawberry girl—welcomes visitors. Out front, a billboard-sized map shows the half-dozen strawberry farms in the area. If you came to China specifically to find a strawberry farm, this map is all you need. Inside, however, is where you get a real sense for how much berries mean to Xingshou. Busy employees in berry smocks cart in boxes of merchandise: cold strawberry drinks, bags of dried strawberry and baskets of fresh berries. And next to a colorful children’s play area, there is a café that serves, of all things, berry burgers.
Xingshou is best known in China for its healing hot springs. But local government is strongly encouraging strawberry production as another way to attract tourists. Starter strawberry plants are subsidized for area farmers and there’s even a school that teaches local workers how to grow them.

Mr. Lee is one of the converted. He began growing strawberries five years ago and now owns his own greenhouse, a 30,000-RMB ($3,880) investment. Mr. Lee’s greenhouse is one of 69 in a strawberry collective near the Tianyi emporium. Last year, he took top prize at the first annual strawberry festival. He proudly demonstrates the size of his winning berry by holding up his hands in a circle the size of a tennis ball.
Recently Mr. Lee has switched to growing “green food” strawberries, a label that he says has quadrupled the price of his berries from three to 13 RMB per kilogram. Tianyi Strawberry Emporium specializes in green food products.

Green food is a food labeling system that works in a way similar to organic food here in the US. But the guidelines are not nearly as stringent. Whereas “organic” food must be grown without any chemical pesticides or fertilizers, green food crops may be grown with limited amounts of both.

The label is gaining popularity in China. While Green food has been around for over a decade, recent food scares in China have created a new market for food free of dangerous chemicals.

China’s green food industry is not without controversy. Like organic, growers must be certified by a third-party agency. In China, that certification is overseen by the Ministry of Agriculture’s Green Food Development Department. Critics contend the ministry’s current green food requirements are too lenient. Some even call the label a ploy to create a sense of food security.

“We didn’t even know what organic was back then,” says Chen Cong Hong, a former member of the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture. Chen was one of the leaders of the green food development project and worked for years to improve the green food standards. Frustrated, she resigned from the Ministry of Agriculture in 2000 and now owns the largest organic food company in China. “The standards for green food were developed without consulting any international standards,” she says.

In Xingshou, Mr. Lee is unfazed by the critics of green food products. With enthusiasm, he shows the special green food approved pesticide he uses on his berries. In fact, he believes that the green food regulations he adheres to are the reason his strawberries are so big. Because of them, he says, he’s confident he will walk away with another prize at Xingshou’s strawberry festival next year.