On November 23, Vice Minister Niu Dun met with Dr. Schneider, president of Bayer BioScience, for exchanges of opinions on China's agricultural development and cooperation between the two sides.
The Vice Minister first introduced China's agricultural development to the guests from Bayer, pointing out that since the reform and opening up, China's agriculture had witnessed huge development, solving the problem of long-term shortage of staple food, drastically changing the rural areas and evidently improving the livelihood of farmers. All this could be attributed to the appropriate policies adopted by the Chinese Government, including input increase to agriculture and highlighting the application of agricultural technologies.
However, China's agriculture was also facing challenges such as shortage of natural resources, frequent occurrence of natural disasters and low level of innovation. In particular, the International financial and economic crises broke out last year have caused remarkable negative impact on China's agriculture. For this, the Chinese Government has adopted various measures to enhance comprehensive productivity of agriculture, speed up agricultural modernization, improve the efficiency of production, and increase farmers' income. The Vice Minister also briefed the guests on the development of China's policies of safety management of GMO.
In terms of the cooperation with Bayer, the Vice Minister pointed out that MOA attached great importance to the cooperation with trans-national companies, willing to work with Bayer on technology development and introduction of research results, and seek win-win solutions under the framework of laws and regulations. He proposed the following principles for the cooperation between the two sides: firs, to work on HR development and enhance the capacity of basic research; second, strengthen cooperation on the R&D of new technologies for constant innovation, and; third, to work on the extension of new technologies to increase the contribution of technology to agricultural production efficiency and farmers’ income.
Dr. Schneider fully agreed with the proposals of the Vice Minister. After giving a brief profile of the company, he pointed out that Bayer had committed to the development, innovation and extension of crop science for a long time, with special focus on the application of bio-technologies to the development of agricultural technologies, making huge contribution to food security and the sustainable development of agriculture, which was in line with China's relevant policies. For years, Bayer's operation in China had been successful and stood ready to work with the Chinese side on the development of bio-technology, the breeding of new crop varieties in all forms and at all levels.
Yao Xiangjun, Deputy Director-General of the Department of International Cooperation, Liu Yan, Deputy Director-General of the Department of Science, Technology and Education, and Zhou Puguo, Vice Counsel of the Department of Crop Farming Administration were also present at the meeting.
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