I have spent the last 10 days touring several regions in China with a group of international Nuffield scholars, trying to get a feel for the true potential of the country and what its place is in the global agricultural picture.

China is the world’s second largest economy after the US, and its 1.4bn people are mostly concentrated in the cities.

The image of farmers and rural dwellers in China is generally quite poor with farmers seen as little more than peasants.

China is a society of opposites.

From the Miao people of the Guizhou province, farming rice in one or two Mu (666 sq meters) of terraced hillside, to the large agricultural companies growing maize on 10,000ha of fertile steppe in Harbin in the north east of the country.

The Miao people we visited were struggling with the repercussions of flash floods a few days before which had saturated the riverside paddy fields and washed out a good proportion of their already sparse crop.

On the other hand, the Harbin grain company explained to us about the lucrative contracts they had to store 1m tonne of feed maize for the Government, at 200 Yuan/tonne (approximately €30/tonne).

The Chinese government seems to be anxious to stimulate the indigenous farming economy. It offers large grants to convert to profitable crops such as Kiwi fruit.

The difficulty for the smaller subsistence farmers is access to capital and that they cannot afford to do without their rice crop, two thirds of which goes directly to feeding their families.

The government is also anxious to improve the image of farming and address the issue of consumer confidence in the safety of domestically produced product.

China is ramping up environmental standards and focusing on water quality by trying to tackle farm pollution, and the overuse and incorrect use of fertiliser and pesticides.

This is having the result that many farmers, including larger producers, are considering the organic option. This is seen as an easy way of complying with the regulations and following the money that is being offered for conversion.

Of course, the lack of enforcement of already existing regulations will do little to inspire the confidence of consumers in the produce of these new converts.

And how this will help the cause of further self sufficiency and the feeding of 1.4bn people by 2030 is hard to figure out.

On the positive side, there is a huge appetite for imported food of all descriptions, and we saw plenty of very affluent consumers on the city streets. They have plenty of disposable income and they are ready to embrace the western lifestyle.

One of the most eye opening experiences we had was visiting the vegetable and meat markets in Hong Kong.

Contrasted with this was a visit to Grand Farms in Harbin, a large scale livestock producer and meat processor. They have modern meat processing and cold chain facilities, and they are actively investing in improvements to their plant. They are getting a premium price for their value added prepared food products.