On April 1, the third of four high-level U.S.-China Agriculture Dialogues took place, lasting almost three hours, titled, “Agriculture Education Dialogue: Together, How Can the U.S. and China Transform Agriculture?” The dialogue brought together the deans and presidents of Peking University, Nanjing Agricultural University, China Agricultural University, Zhejiang University, with UC Davis, Ohio State, the Tuskegee Institute, Oklahoma State and Iowa State University. The overall sponsor was the Missouri-based U.S. Heartland China Association (USHCA). The topic was the state and future of agricultural education — extension services for the farmers themselves in China and the U.S., and educating students for careers in agriculture.
Among the standout presentations, Prof. Sun Qixin of China Agricultural University, discussed 40-year history of Chinese and American colleges exchanging students and training students together — he called this of “strategic importance.” Quoting President Xi Jinping, he explained the identity of food security and poverty alleviation for both China and for the whole world. He said that China’s development policy was to make sure that “we have a good environment for the Chinese people — China will never be a threat to other countries.” Quoting Mencius, he said, “It is better to be happy together with others, rather than trying to be happy alone.” He said that Yuan Longping is a friend of his, and that he had met with Dr. Norman Borlaug in 1992 and in 2002.
Prof. Huang Jikun of Peking University stressed the many hundreds of ag science scholarly papers written jointly by Chinese and American researchers — written in both English and Chinese — the authors pursuing food science with a single universal purpose.
Prof. Kevin Chen, of the China Academy of Rural Development at Zhejiang University described how the Chinese government has 1 million farm extension workers, serving 200 million farm families with small farms, many with aging owners. He reported that only 40% of the farms have access to the internet — a problem to be solved. They have formed the “National Cloud Platform for Grassroots Ag Tech Extension in China” (NAECP).
