Sustainable Food Laboratory

During an 10-day leadership laboratory in China, food system leaders will learn together and explore future collaborations. Approximately one-half of 40 participants will come from China and half from outside China. Participants will come from the business sector, the government sector, and civil society. 

This leadership lab will focus on supply chains that enhance the interests of farmers while also protecting the natural environment and providing healthy and safe food for consumers.  Many Chinese agricultural producers supply local traditional markets. Others have become increasingly integrated into modern supply chains supplying large supermarket chains. Despite these changes, the incomes of farmers have not kept pace with their urban counterparts, and adequate quality systems have not been put in place. This situation is common across the world, and the lab will bring together food system leaders from several countries to share their experiences and address these questions:

• What are the essential steps for family farmers to develop good opportunities in the changing market structure of China and other countries?
• How can market players rapidly share information about changing consumer demands and ensure that an increasingly safe, healthy, diverse, and high quality food supply is produced with fewer energy inputs and negative environmental impacts from all stages of supply chains?
• What will it take for multi-national businesses and local businesses of all sizes to play a positive role in promoting sustainable and secure food systems?
• What is the role of government, including regulations, public investments, and rules for intellectual and real property rights, to support more sustainable and equitable supply chains?
• What is the role of producers’ organizations and NGOs to support the improvement of sustainable supply chains?
• What are the most important ways in which Chinese food system development and food system development in the rest of the world are mutually interactive and dependent?

China’s future development is important for the whole world because China is so large and strategically important, and China’s development path also serves as a microcosm of the challenges and opportunities facing much of the rest of the world. The lab will provide all participants, Chinese and non-Chinese, with many opportunities to see and learn through one another’s eyes, to imagine innovations that might not have occurred to one another before, and to design joint work in a variety of potential areas, including model supply chains, infrastructure for family farmers, food procurement specifications, commodity standards, and public policy.

At the end of learning journeys and retreat, a report will share the key learning of the project.  This report will include both individual and collective learning by participants.