Sustainable Food Laboratory

Workshop presentation WS27

For thousands of years, farmers and fishermen, organised in small, often family-based economic units, represented the basis of Chinese and European societies. Their numerical position and their role in the organisation of society has been in constant decline for two centuries. This decline accelerated in the 20th century, and especially the second half of the 20th century, and in China since 1949 and especially since 1978. This decline has a dual nature. Firstly, it is numerical in societies that have become or are destined to become mostly urban. The share of agriculture and fishing in the Gross National Product as much in China as in Europe has constantly declined and has become very much a minority in each of the countries concerned, even if there are still strong differences, including within Europe, between the United Kingdom and Romania, for example. Furthermore, within their own field of activities of agriculture and fishing, the small economic units have lost much of their autonomy and are often only one link in agri-business production chains controlled upstream and downstream by big companies. Likewise for the fishing industry, in which small-scale fishermen compete with and are dominated by big industrial fleets that deploy completely different techniques. Despite the decline on these two fronts, farmers and fishermen remain decisive actors as much with regards to human food as to the maintenance of land, sea and lake ecosystems. Faced with the wearing out and desertification of land, faced with pollution and the increasing scarcity of water resources, faced with the deterioration of land and sea biodiversity and faced with the depletion of fishing resources, farmers and fishermen are both the foremost victims and sometimes those responsible, and in any event the main actors for healthy food and preserved ecosystems. Their abilities to take on this responsibility depend both on public policies and their own evolution. Traditionally dominated and atomised, the world of peasants and fishermen is gradually learning to build international networks to influence public policies and take on its new responsibilities. The dialogue between Europe, which has efficient agriculture and diversified fishing, and China, which is by far the foremost country of farmers and fishermen, can in this way be historic.

View this abstract in French

China-Europa Forum 2007