SCO Seminar on Food Security opens
DATE:2013-09-05 SOURCE:MOA
SCO Seminar on Food Security was held in Urumchi, Xinjiang on September 3rd. The theme of the seminar is "enhance cooperation on vertical integration in agriculture and jointly safeguard food security'. Vice Minister Niu Dun attended and addressed the Seminar.
At the seminar, it was pointed out that food security was one of the priorities of SCO agricultural cooperation. In the future, SCO member countries will strengthen cooperation and exchanges on the following issues:
Firstly, promote the establishment of SCO food security cooperation framework to enhance policy exchange and harmonize members' position on food security issues; set up agricultural demonstration bases to improve food production conditions in SCO member countries and enhance overall food production capacity.
Secondly, promote agricultural information sharing among SCO member countries. The member countries shall intensify food and farming information exchange, continue to build food and agriculture information systems, and strengthen the exchange of information and experiences on animal and plant disease management.
Thirdly, promote agricultural science and technology exchanges and cooperation. The member countries shall encourage and support cooperation on human resource development, strengthen research cooperation and technology extension in agriculture and agro-processing.
Fourthly, encourage the participation of enterprises in SCO agricultural cooperation. The member countries shall encourage and support enterprises to carry out cooperation in the fields of breeding, agro-processing, and technical service in agricultural production.
During the seminar, the participants exchanged policies, experiences and measures on stabilizing food production and safeguarding food security, discussed models and priorities in promoting cooperation on vertical integration in agriculture,, studied and discussed the effective methods to build SCO food safety mechanisms, and finally reached consensuses on enhancing cooperation on vertical integration in agriculture as well as jointly safeguarding food security. At the same time, the participants also attended the first promotion event of high quality fruits of China under the China – Eurasia Expo. Over 100 delegates from ministries of agriculture of SCO member countries, SCO secretariat, domestic agricultural authorities as well as enterprises from home and abroad attended the seminar.