Scenery of terraced fields in Guizhou

Chinese farmers should view product promotion through the lens of “Internet Plus,” said an official with the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) on April 12.

“Innovation has always been key in brand-building. We have long passed the time where farmers only toiled on their land. In our era, ‘Internet Plus’ must be highlighted. China is the world’s largest consumer of meat and crops, with an annual consumption of 50 kilograms and 450 kilograms per capita respectively. It is time that we promote our brand overseas,” said Song Chengmin, a macroeconomic management official with the NDRC, at a conference on agricultural branding in Linyi, Shandong province.

The conference was held by the Linyi government and the People’s Tribune on April 12. Its theme was the proposal made by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2015 to strengthen brand-building for agricultural products.

Hu Xiaoyun, director of the China Academy for Rural Development at Zhejiang University, pointed out that it remains difficult to sell many Chinese agricultural products at high prices, even though they are equal in quality to their overseas counterparts.

“Even at some high-end venues in China, we are served foreign tea instead [of Chinese tea]. This is heartbreaking because tea originated in China and we see a huge amount of tea production every year,” Hu said.

In fact, China is not short of agricultural brands, but is enmeshed in an age of “wilderness,” according to Dang Guoying, a researcher with the Rural Development Institute at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Dang told reporters on the sidelines of the conference that a large crowd of small Chinese brands cannot win out against Western giants. To spur domestic agricultural development, authorities should encourage brand-building rather than offering blueprints.

“On top of the agenda is our mission to find a carrier to hold the brand. It is usually giant agricultural cooperatives that do this job in the West. There are reportedly up to 1 million co-ops in China, which is in fact bad for brand-building,” Dang explained. Echoing the NDRC official, Dang also agreed that access to the internet could bring down the cost of agriculture.

“With the help of the internet, some less developed regions have become known in other regions, and business deals have been made. This pattern could promote basic infrastructure construction,” Dang said, adding that a beneficial cycle could be perpetuated in rural areas to boost sales as well as brand-building.

SOURCE:People’s Daily

Roslin Technologies Ltd. has successfully raised £10 million from institutional investors The British Innovation Fund.

The Agritech start-up is jointly owned by the University of Edinburgh, agriculture-focused private equity advisors JB Equity and The British Innovation Fund, a Milltrust International fund, with cornerstone commitment from The Royal County of Berkshire Pension Fund.

Roslin Technologies aims to commercialise the intellectual property and know-how of the University’s Roslin Institute and The Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, the UK’s leading vet school, revolutionising agricultural productivity on a global scale through ground-breaking science.

Based at University of Edinburgh’s Easter Bush Campus, the company takes advantage of facilities and infrastructure that has benefitted from more than £200m of investment over the past five years, making the campus the largest concentration of animal science in Europe.

Among the first technologies planned for commercialisation are a low-cost manufacturing system to produce therapeutic proteins in chicken eggs, allowing drug discovery for diseases; methods for biobanking poultry germplasm to preserve genetic diversity for future generations; and novel vaccines and diagnostics for veterinary markets to enhance animal welfare.

“This investment recognises the strength of the University’s innovation capacity and cements our position as one of the world’s leading research-intensive universities,” said Sir Timothy O’Shea, Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh.

Mr Griff Williams, co-founder of Milltrust Agricultural Investments and Chief Investment Officer of the British Innovation Fund said, “With a global population increasing beyond nine billion by 2040, innovation and investment in animal science and sustainability will be critical to ensure global food security. Roslin Technologies provides us with the opportunity to couple sustainable impact with generating investor returns.”

Mr Glen Illing, CEO of Roslin Technologies and partner in JB Equity said, “We are thrilled to welcome the British Innovation Fund as partner in our joint venture with the University of Edinburgh. There is incredible demand for innovations that address desperately needed productivity increases in agriculture. This investment allows us to deliver a technology pipeline that spans across The Roslin Institute’s core focus on food, environmental security and animal and human health.

ENDS

Xinhua, April 7, 2017

The Food Price Index of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on Thursday reported that global food prices fell in March amid large available supplies and expectations of strong harvests, and also projected “robust cereal harvests” in 2017.

FAO’s Food Index “shows a decline in March, as sugar and vegetable oils slide,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said at a daily news briefing here.

FAO also released its first world cereal supply and demand outlook for the year ahead, expecting it to be “another season of relative market tranquillity” with grain inventories remaining at near-record levels, Dujarric added.

The FAO Food Price Index, which measures the monthly change in international prices for cereals, vegetable oils, dairy, meat and sugar, averaged nearly 171 points in March, marking a 2.8 per cent drop from the previous month while remaining 13.4 percent above its level a year earlier, according to the agency.

Cereal prices declined 1.8 percent from February, led down by wheat and maize. It is now roughly par with its March 2016 level.

Vegetable oil prices fell 6.2 per cent on the month. Palm oil and soy oil quotations were both lower in March on the back of improving production forecasts, while those of rape and sunflower seed oils also declined due to higher-than-expected availabilities.

Sugar prices plummeted 10.9 per cent to its lowest level since May 2016 amid weak import demand and expectations of robust Brazilian supplies entering world markets as a result of strong harvests and slower domestic uptake for bio-ethanol production.

Dairy prices dropped 2.3 percent due to buoyant milk supplies, but remained well above its year-ago level.

Meat prices rose 0.7 percent, led by firm import demand from Asia for bovine meat and pigmeat.

Meanwhile, FAO also released its first world cereal supply and demand outlook for the year ahead, saying that worldwide cereal production in 2017 is projected at 2,597 million tonnes, just nine million tonnes short of the record set in 2016.

Global wheat production is expected to fall 2.7 percent in 2017 to 740 million tonnes mostly on price-induced planting cuts in Australia, Canada and the United States.

By contrast, total production of coarse grains in 2017 is provisionally expected to rise to a new record level of 1,353 million tonnes, substantially thanks to a surge in production in Brazil and Argentina along with a rebound in South Africa after last year’s drought.

SOURCE:China.org.cn

April 8, 2026

Kenya is the latest beneficiary of a series of food donations from China that have been provided to African countries to help the continent mitigate food insecurity resulting from changes in weather patterns.

Beijing has announced a donation of 21,000 metric tons of rice worth Ksh2.25 billion ($21.9 million; 20.5 million euros; 17.5 million) to be distributed to hunger-ravaged Kenyans in 23 counties. The first shipment of food is expected to arrive in Kenya in about a month.

According to Henry Rotich, Kenya’s treasury secretary, approximately 3 million Kenyans in both rural and urban areas are at risk of starvation.

The Chinese government responded to Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta’s appeal in February for food aid from the international community, after declaring drought in the country a national disaster.

According to the national treasury, approximately 3 million Kenyans in both urban and rural areas are affected. Children under 5 years and expectant and lactating mothers are highly vulnerable to malnutrition.

“I wish to thank the government of China for the quick response to the president’s appeal,” Rotich said. The grant will go a long way toward supplementing the ongoing government efforts addressing the food crisis.”

Rotich says the Kenyan government is working with the Chinese government on long-term mitigation measures like irrigation programs in drought-prone areas.

Liu Xianfa, the Chinese ambassador to Kenya, says the donated rice will be able to support 1.4 million people for a month on average.

“China has always paid attention to the drought situation in Kenya. For the past three years, we have been mobilizing the Chinese community in the country to support drought victims through food and water donations.

Since late last year, the Chinese government has donated rice to several African countries to help them mitigate the food crisis. Beneficiaries include Uganda, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Sierra Leone.

Toward the end of February, Beijing donated 5,983 tons of rice worth Ksh22 billion ($6.1 million; 5.7 million euros; 4.9 million) to Uganda to support drought-stricken people in the country.

About 10.9 million Ugandans are experiencing acute food shortages, while 1.6 million have no food at all, according to Uganda Food Security Outlook for June through January.

Food security is attributed to prolonged severe drought, which has affected crop production, leading to increased food prices.

In September, the Chinese government donated 19,000 tons of rice worth $24.6 million to Zimbabwe. About 4 million people in the country are in need of food aid.

It also promised to donate 10,000 tons of urea fertilizer to be distributed to the farmers who were to take part in a government maize production program to produce 2 million tons of grain.

Handing over the donation, Chinese Ambassador Huang Ping was quoted by Xinhua News Agency as saying the grant was a fulfilment of the drought-relief pledge made to affected African countries by Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) summit held in South Africa in December 2015.

“Today’s event testifies to the strong ties between China and Zimbabwe as all-weather partners, especially in the area of food security and agriculture,” Huang said.

Chinese Ambassador to Sierra Leone Wu Ping told Agriculture Minister Monty Jones recently that China will donate 6,300 tons of rice, equivalent to 126,000 50-kilogram bags of rice.

By the end of last year, China donated 6,000 tons of rice to be distributed to 271,266 households in 16 of 24 districts affected by drought in Malawi.