The coronavirus outbreak brought to light another unexpected practice: greenhouse farming. Disruptions to farming caused by the pandemic has spurred several areas in China to turn to more modern farming practices in effort to strengthen its food security whilst ensuring safety and quality. Chongming Island is one such example, where glass greenhouses equipped with high-end technology have been set up by professional greenhouse operators FoodVentures to produce sustainable vegetable crops.
Greenhouses are not new in the Chinese agricultural scene—Shouguang, a city in northern China, are pioneers of greenhouse farming and have seen the use of greenhouses since the late 1980s as a way to guarantee a continuous supply of fresh vegetable throughout winter, while Jiuquan has greenhouses covering 1,666 hectares of land in 2019 to combat its cold desert climate. What the pandemic appears to have done is further accelerate the development in the modern agricultural technology; this, coupled with a growing middle class willing to pay more for better quality produce, has reportedly led to a 28% increase in glass greenhouse use in 2020.