CEF Director Jennifer Turner quoted by Fast Company on Chinese technology firms and agriculture

In the artle entitled "Why Chinese Internet Companies Are Raising Pigs and Growing Organic Grapes," Dr. Jennifer Turner explains why Chinese tech companies are becoming interested in producing safe meat, and she highlights that the China's government is determined to improve food safety in its 12th Five-Year Plan period. 

"There's a big demand for this, and people will pay more for meat that's safe," Jennifer Turner, director of the China Environment Forum at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, tells Co.Exist. Turner explains that it's actually fairly intuitive for a tech company to go after both pork and food safety. China already maintains a strategic reserve of frozen pork for when prices inflate and become unstable, and the government has made modernization of food technology a major imperative in its 12th Five-Year Plan.

"The government is investing in modern agriculture, professionalizing it, and even in food production--the Chinese pig farmer with half a dozen pigs is becoming less common. Factory farms are becoming more common," Turner says. "The food safety supervision in China is really prone to corruption, so projects with these types of [tech] companies is really appealing," she added.

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