Background

For many years, limited farmland and a fast-growing population have been the contributing factors to China's increasing reliance on intensive agriculture to feed its people. However, the main problems arising from China's current intensive agriculture, intensive vegetable production in particular, are the irrational uses of chemical fertilizers, especially inorganic nitrates, the abuse and misuse of pesticides as well as the inappropriate management of animal waste, which, in turn, exacerbate the pollution of the agro-environment (a.k.a. soil, surface and underground water), contamination of various agro-products, such as vegetables and  fruits, and eventually lead to the hiking cost of agricultural production. 

All these problems have aroused great concern among government agencies as well as the massive consumers in China.