A challenge facing the developing world is helping 500 million small farmers to better adapt and integrate into external markets for sustainable livelihoods. Given nearly half of the world’s small farmers live in China, the Chinese government has made poverty alleviation one of its aims over the past decade. As part of this, the University of Nottingham Global Challenge Research Fund (UoN-GCRF) was awarded a pilot project – Cooperative ecosystem to empower small farmers in China to address the challenge through case studies in the poor areas of Sichuan which represent the poor areas of west China. As the GCRF project is due for completion by the end of December 2020, with the national campaign against poverty alleviation in rural China ending at the same time, an online international event was held on 3 and 4 December 2020 entitled: Cooperative Ecosystems for Rural Revitalisation in Poor Areas of China
Over 160 delegates from China, UK, Malaysia, India, Indonesia, Australia and African countries attended with, many senior figures contributing to this event including Mr Stuart Dunn, Head of Agriculture, Food & Drink Trade China, Department for International Trade, British Consulate-General Shanghai; Dr Min Tang, State Councillor, Deputy Chair of YouChange China Social Entrepreneur Foundation; Mr David Horlock, Managing Director of Global Food and Retail Supply Chain, British Standards Institution (BSI); Dr Jonathan Snape, Head of James Hutton Ltd, Professor Dave Ross, CEO of Agricultural Engineering Precision Innovation Centre (Agri-EPI).
Other distinguished speakers included representatives from Sichuan Agricultural University, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences; China Agricultural University, Centre for International Knowledge on Development (CIKD), and British Consulate-Generate Chongqing.
They expressed not only interest in the research findings and methodology adopted by the GCRF project in focusing on the challenges and local solutions for poverty alleviation in the marginal areas of China, but also business opportunities to develop UK-China partnerships along the line of sustainable agriculture, rural development and entrepreneurship in less developed regions of China.
This article was published by the University of Nottingham and the full-text article can be found here.
