A fresh look at food safety

China’s food value chain has a huge number of small farms and other stakeholders. This structure makes it hard to standardize production and establish traceability systems for food safety and quality. In 2017, we launched a research project with a group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The work focuses on Chinese management of agricultural produce sourcing. 

This year, one of the MIT students, Wenjia Wang, documented the team’s findings so far. She wrote her Master’s thesis on ‘Organizational Models in Smallholder Farming and Implications for Food Safety’. The text examines farmer organizations' implications for food safety, and consumer responses to food safety information.

SFSA recently filmed an interview* with Wenjia. Here are abridged adaptations in English and Mandarin.  

Read more about our Policy work on food safety and sourcing in China.

What do you think about this topic? Let us know via syngenta.foundation@syngenta.com

*If you would like to watch the full video interview and/or read a transcript (both in English only), please contact us via the same address. 

Interested in sourcing in general (i.e. not just in China)? Then you may also like to know more about CONSUS. This digital tool helps food companies make production and buying decisions. We supported its development. In February 2018, the CONSUS team published a paper in ScienceDirect.

The Syngenta Foundation works with students on numerous topics. Here are recent examples of their work on radio extension in Kenya and smallholders supplying McDonald's in Peru. (Both texts are available in English & German)