Brazil, India and China have all made major investments in their agricultural research systems. EMBRAPA in Brazil, ICAR in India and CAAS in China are large, strong organizations making impressive contributions to the successful development of agriculture — and all three countries have also had strong international partnerships with CGIAR for decades.
Last week, the CGIAR Consortium Board Chair, the CGIAR Fund, 11 Center Director Generals and I were in Beijing for the 4th Global Forum of leaders for Agricultural Science and Technology. The event included a workshop to celebrate 30 years of China-CGIAR Collaboration. Thirty years ago China formally joined CGIAR, but even before then CIP had established an office in China, hosted by CAAS, to collaborate on potato and sweet potato research. Since then, 13 CGIAR Centers have had joint projects with 50 Chinese research institutes – and seven now have offices hosted by CAAS.
CAAS President, Prof Jia-yang Li, called the CGIAR-China collaboration “the most important international partnership for agricultural science and technology for China in the last 30 years” and stated that the partnership is “just as important and relevant today as it ever was.”
China is a super power in agriculture. It is the world’s leading producer for many crops, including rice (a quarter of global production) and potatoes (a fifth of global production). The country has now achieved 98% food self sufficiency, which is even more remarkable because it is not well endowed with natural resources. Compared to the world average, it has only half the arable land and just a quarter of the water resources per capita. Not only has China increased food production, it has done so in a way that has lifted millions out of poverty and has increased the average farmer’s income to $1277 in 2012. Unlike most other developing countries, in China farmers’ income has grown more rapidly than urban income.
“In coming decades, as the population grows and urbanization reduces the availability of natural resources further, China’s food imports are like to grow,” said Prof Jikun Huang, Director of Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy (CCAP), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) during the workshop, “…with food self sufficiency possibly declining to 90 or 80% of demand.” That also means that in the future, China’s food security will increasingly depend on international food security. Given China’s size – international food security will also depend on China. It follows that international as well as domestic food policy is a key topic for China supported by a strong collaboration between IFPRI and CCAP.
Many of China’s senior agricultural scientists received their training through, or have collaborated with, CGIAR over the past 30 years. That has led to successes on many fronts. A close collaboration on rice research with IRRI, for example, helped China to become a world leader in hybrid rice, which can yield 15–20% more than other rice. In the late 1970s, China was the first country to successfully produce hybrid rice for temperate-climate agriculture and the country is now the largest adopter of hybrid rice, about half of all rice produced. About 90% of all hybrid rice grown in China has IRRI parentage.
As with Brazil and India, the relationship with researchers in China has changed significantly over the last 30 years. Collaboration has become a two-way street, with benefits for both sides. For rice, for example, CAAS is now implementing the Green Super Rice project – with funding from the Gates Foundation – to improve and release at least 15 rice varieties to improve income for resource-limited farmers in 7 African countries and 8 Asian countries on 11 million hectares – and increase rice production by at least 13 million tons. CAAS is able to implement this project because it has access to a large number of back-cross lines available from the international rice research community.
China has also rapidly developed critical capacity in genetics, genomics and biotech research. BGI in Shenzhen has become the world’s largest facility for high throughput sequencing, for example, and a key partner for ICRISAT in the sequencing of the genome of 90 chickpea lines announced earlier this year.
During the workshop a book that chronicles “Thirty Years of Strategic Collaboration between China and CGIAR” was presented, which highlights the success stories of the China-CGIAR collaboration and lists projects with individual CGIAR Centers. This book is the first systematic record of the China-CGIAR partnership. An English version will be available in two months.
The China-CGIAR workshop concluded that the partnership is ready to move into a new phase. Just as agricultural science and technology innovation is globalizing, this next phase will be characterized by Chinese researchers and institutes partnering in international, rather than bilateral, programs. Such programs will still benefit China, but they will also increasingly emphasize the contributions that Chinese research and Chinese technologies can make internationally. The reform of CGIAR, that now emphasizes research through global research programs, is a good match for these evolving ambitions. As concluded in the final session by CGIAR Consortium Board Chair, Carlos Perez del Castillo, “Chinese scientists can now collaborate through the CGIAR Research Programs with international networks of scientists – setting and implementing global research agendas, and enabling South-South partnerships.”
The workshop clearly ended on a high note last week. It celebrated a 30-year partnership with many impressive achievements and concluded that both sides are ready to take this collaboration to the next level – a level at which CGIAR’s international networks enable China to play its role as a world-class center of excellence in agricultural research.
Frank Rijsberman is the CEO of the CGIAR Consortium
Photo credit: CAAS