Green Food Development in China: Experiences and Challenges

China feeds approximately 22% of the global population with only 7% of the global arable land because of its surprising success in intensive agriculture. This outstanding achievement is partially overshadowed by agriculture-related large-scale environmental pollution across the nation. To ensure nutrition security and environmental sustainability, China proposed the Green Food Strategy in the 1990s and set up a specialized management agency, the China Green Food Development Center, with a monitoring network for policy and standard creation, brand authorization, and product inspection. Following these 140 environmental and operational standards, 15,984 green food companies provided 36,345 kinds of products in 2019. The cultivation area and annual domestic sales (CNY 465.7 billion) of green food accounted for 8.2% of the total farmland area and 9.7% of the gross domestic product (GDP) from agriculture in China. Herein, we systemically reviewed the regulation, standards, and authorization system of green food and its current advances in China, and then outlined its environmental benefits, challenges, and probable strategies for future optimization and upscaling. The rapid development of the green food industry in China suggests an applicable triple-win strategy for protecting the environment, promoting agroeconomic development, and improving human nutrition and health in other developing countries or regions.