Promote Multiparty Sustainable Cooperation

China Investment: Most of the poor are in rural areas, and the development of agriculture is of great significance to poverty alleviation. How do you see the prospect of China's agricultural investment?

Vincent Martin : Agricultural sector needs investments in research and innovations, and also requires structural reforms and supporting policies. Investments in agriculture grew from US$10 billion to US$75 billion from 1991 to 2014. Still today, many smallholder farmers and other agricultural operators face limited access to finance and have high operational costs.

China is in a transition from input/investment economy to innovation-focused economy, and may encounter new kind of challenges when investing in agricultural sector. During the 13th Five-year Development Period from 2016 to 2020, one of the guiding economic development tasks for China was to initiate the supply-side structural reform to address the challenges coming from the imbalances between the supply and the demand and the need to ensure that the food product is safe and nutritious.

Since China has a dynamic and fast-growing private sector seeking to realize its corporate social responsibility activities, the role of private sector for poverty reduction is increasingly important. An example of innovative investment is FAO’s collaboration with Chinese private sector to work together on poverty reduction. Starting in 2018, Guangfa Securities funds one project “Development of SDG Villages” by donating one million US Dollars to FAO in order to implement activities in Hunan, Hubei, Sichuan and Hainan provinces with the model of “Internet+Agriculture+Rural Finance”. The project directly contributes to poverty reduction and the sustainable development of rural China.

Investments in innovation and technologies in agriculture create a great potential for reducing poverty. Meanwhile, learning from the development of agricultural sector and economic growth of China is highly advantageous also for other developing countries to succeed and grow.

China Investment: Agricultural projects are greatly affected by the environment, climate and have little return on investment. From the cooperation experience of FAO with various regions and countries for many years, what experiences and methods have FAO summarized to improve the efficiency of agricultural investment?

Vincent Martin : Natural endowments including land, water, sunlight, rainfall, etc provide fundamentals for agriculture production. Agriculture investment is therefore very much dependent on the natural resource management, and sometimes has to endure the impacts from climate change. Given the growth cycles of crops, livestock, forestry and fisheries, it normally takes a long time before the agricultural investment can generate returns.

Effective, efficient and inclusive investment requires certain critical prerequisites. For instance, well-designed measures, that benefit both women and men, and complement infrastructure investments, are necessary to ensure that poverty alleviation, food security and pro-poor outcomes can be achieved. It needs to be accompanied by public goods and services, such as infrastructure or a reinforced capacity for local government to deliver public services. It also depends on well-functioning ecosystems and sustainable use of natural resources. In a nutshell, investing successfully means taking a holistic approach.

FAO advocates to adopt a holistic approach for inclusive and responsible agriculture investment. The reasoning and thinking behind this approach is well articulated in the international guidelines developed by FAO with all stakeholders and member countries. One is the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the context of National Food Security--VGGT. Another is the Principles for Responsible Investment in Agriculture and Food Systems – known as RAI, as was endorsed by the Committee on Food Security. A third one is the Principles for Responsible Agricultural Investment that respects rights, livelihoods and resources—PRAI-- that have been jointly developed by UNCTAD, FAO, IFAD and the World Bank.

China Investment: How to attract social capital into agriculture? Do you think agricultural modernization can solve the poverty problem in some rural areas?

Vincent Martin : Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are playing an increasing role in addressing the problems faced by agriculture by reducing the agriculture food print on environment (through precise agriculture, dipping irrigation, etc.), reasonable use of pesticides and fertilizers. The challenges faced by agriculture from climate change alone are enormous and the need for the farming communities to adapt and become resilient is key to feeding the world’s growing population. Social capitals have great potential to adopt the ICTs to explore innovative solutions to the agricultural challenges.

Agricultural modernization and innovations stemming from ICT are definitely key for poverty reduction in rural China. Harnessing the growth and transformative potential of ICTs provides a tremendous opportunity not only for addressing some agricultural challenges, but also for accelerating efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially the SDG1: No Poverty by 2030.

For instance, the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones, and connected analytics has great potential to support and address some of the most pressing problems faced by agriculture in terms of access to actionable real-time quality data. Goldman Sachs predicts that the agriculture sector will be the second largest user of drones in the world in the next five years. The use of drones in agriculture is extending at a brisk pace in crop production, early warning systems, disaster risk reduction, forestry, fisheries, as well as in wildlife conservation.

Sensor networks based on the Internet of things (IoT) are increasingly being used in the agriculture sector to meet the challenge of harvesting, using meaningful and actionable information from the big data generated by these systems.

China Investment: At present, much of the demand for agricultural development funds comes from the government's financial support, financial lending institution and so on. What challenges do there exist in the policies and systems of the agricultural financial system? What aspects need to be strengthened and optimized urgently?

Vincent Martin : FAO estimates that incremental resources of up to USD 265 billion a year are needed to end poverty and hunger by 2030. This is 0.3 percent of the average projected world income for the period. Public funding alone is not enough, private investments must be leveraged.

In this regard, China sets a good example, by not only keeping increasing its public sector investment, but also providing strong encouragements, including training and financial incentives, to Chinese companies to motivate them to invest in agriculture development, both in the country and abroad as well. Particularly, As such, the Belt and Road initiative (BRI) launched by China, and its agriculture development component, has the potential to influence the food systems locally, regionally or globally and bring development and market opportunities to remote areas which have largely failed to benefit from the expansion of global trade of the last four decades.

One encouraging trend - already visible in the agriculture sector - is “impact” investment, in which private investors are investing in initiatives that generate profits as well as social and environmental impacts. According to a survey by the Global Impact Investment Network, the world's leading impact investors collectively manage over USD 228 billion in impact assets. That is more than the amount of public funding available in 2017 through official development assistance (ODA).

China Investment: Agriculture production in China is generally relatively small-sized and scattered with limited return on investment. What innovations can be made in the investment and financing mechanism? Can you share some specific cases?

Vincent Martin : Profitable agriculture investment requires perfect match and interaction of multiple elements, including capital, technology, market, and so on. Responsible, inclusive and successful agriculture investment should also take into consideration of sustainability, not only from economic perspective, but also social and environmental dimensions.

Small-sized and location-specific agriculture production could be successful if it meets well with the demand of niche markets. GIAHS serves as a concrete example in this regard. GIAHS is short for the Globally Important Agriculture Heritage Systems. It is a global initiative that FAO has incepted since 2002 to recognize the ancient food systems that have survived and functioned well to date in supporting food security, biodiversity, ecosystem resilience, as well cultural value. China is home to 15 GIAHS sites so far, being the country with the largest number of this recognition. GIAHS sites, for instance the Hani Rice Terarace, the Rice-Fish Co-culture system, have gradually developed into successful business models from all the economic, social and environmental senses.

Certainly, moderate-scale agriculture operation provides opportunities for greater return, economically speaking. As a result of the land use rights reform and demographic changes in the rural areas, there has risen nearly 600,000 family farms, 2.17 million farmers' cooperatives, and 370,000 social service organizations in China. The efficiency of agricultural production has significantly improved under these new modalities and thus better returns are anticipated.

Beyond the provision of fresh agricultural produces, agriculture playsmany other functionalities as well. Integration with the development of secondary and tertiary industries has also proven to be a successful pathway, for agriculture as the first industry to be successful and sustainable. Agriculture processing, rural/ecotourism are prominent examples of agriculture businesses gaining added value and profits.

China Investment: Many agricultural projects are "public welfare projects and market-oriented operation". It means farmers must to adapt to market competition, system and other rules. How to mobilize the enthusiasm of farmers for continuous put into ? At the same time, let farmers market?

Vincent Martin : It remains a challenge for farmers, smallholder farmers in particular, to access to the market. In the marketing chain, it is also challenging for farmers to get desirable returns and benefits like other players.

Both literature and practice hold that grouping or uniting farmers together with developing farmer cooperatives would increase the voice of this disadvantaged group in the market competition. Through cooperatives, the costs of agriculture production could be reduced, better services could be channeled, technical content in agricultural produce could be improved, and market access could be made easier with increased profits for famers along the value chain.

With the rapid development of Information and Communications Technologies, the thriving e-platforms have provided smallholder farmers another useful channel to engage with the market. According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, 77.7% of the counties in China have set up the special units to offer agricultural informationization services. And 64% of counties have established the e-commerce platforms. The e-commerce is boosting up the smallholder famers’ potential in market competition.

Enabling environment and capacity building support to smallholder farmers are also key to ensure that farmers are empowered and better linked to markets.

China Investment: China will get the rural poor out of poverty in an all-round way next year. What problems do you think China should strive to solve in the sprint phase? What is the biggest challenge that we may face?

Vincent Martin : China has set a global example in agricultural development and food sections. While the accomplishments of China in poverty reduction are remarkable, poverty remains a challenge in rural areas: by the end of 2018, there were still 16 million rural people in China living below the extreme poverty line.

Undoubtedly, the last stage of eradicating extreme poverty is the most challenging one. I believe the main challenge currently is to reach the poorest of the poor in China, often living in remote and harsh natural environments, and lift them out of poverty. In addition, not only eliminating poverty is important but also the aim is to prevent people to fall back into poverty.

These challenges can be solved through forward thinking, innovation and well-coordinated policies and partnerships. Agricultural sector is transforming through a long-term vision with investments in agriculture research, promoting sustainable practices, implementing structural reforms and supporting policies, which are continuously needed.

I believe that we need all actors to work together: society, government, private sector and social organizations, to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to eradicate poverty and hunger by 2030. For FAO, committed partners are an essential part of success in our projects and programmes. We also focus on creating solid partnerships with both public and private sector. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs as well as leading Chinese institutions such as International Poverty Reduction Centre in China (IPRCC), China Internet Information Center (CIIC), China Agricultural University (CAU), China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation (CFPA), Tsinghua University as well as some private sector companies are FAO’s key partners in poverty alleviation activities, to test innovations and to scale up good practices. Innovations are critical in alleviating the remaining poor in China. There is a need to find and create innovative solutions and tools to support the agriculture modernization and encourage sustainable practices that have less impact on the environment, use less water and energy and preserve the agrobiodiversity. These technologies will become more important than ever.

China Investment: Some of China's rural poor are people who have become poor due to illness, which is also a "hard bone" in China's poverty reduction. How can rural areas cope with the challenge of poverty reduction brought about by the growth of the aging populations?

Vincent Martin : The United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development aims to end poverty in all its forms. FAO China works towards these goals by supporting policies for achieving food security and improved nutrition, better articulating agriculture and social protection, and increasing access to basic services for the poor. When supporting the living conditions of an aging population in rural China, better health services and social protection schemes are key elements.

One of the many factors I have identified to be a key component in eliminating poverty, especially of the most vulnerable, is engaging multiple stakeholders and industries together for sustainable collaboration. Connecting different sectors, such as health care, social protection, education, agriculture development and environmental conservation, is essential to engage in successful pathways to tackle multidimensional poverty. I believe we can gain the best results by bringing together several stakeholders including the private sector and civil society.

⬆On September 19, 2019, an FAO expert team makes field studies of a Chinese white ginger farm in Tianmen Township, Tongling City, Anhui Province and conducts on-site-exchange on protecting, inheriting and managing agricultural heritage.(CFP)

Editor | Zhang Pan

Design | Sun Ziyue

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《中国投资》杂志创办自1985年，由国家发改委主管，国家发改委投资研究所、中国国际工程咨询有限公司主办，是我国投资领域唯一的中央级刊物，业界最早专注于投资领域趋势报道的核心期刊。创刊三十多年以来，杂志以全球视角看中国投资，涵盖宏观经济、行业分析和企业投资案例，同时以全球市场为坐标，聚焦特定国家、地区和重大国际趋势，目前已经成为世界各国政府官员、各类投资机构、专家学者、企业家以及记者媒体的专业对话平台。

《中国投资》杂志每期覆盖包括上市公司在内的200多家央企国企和10000多家中国民营企业、1000多家中央与地方政府决策部门和机构、1000多家行业协会和商会、300多家主要金融机构等，是了解宏观经济环境、行业趋势前景和企业投资案例的重要参考。

自2016年始，在中联部等相关机构的共同支持下，《中国投资》非洲版面世，为非洲各国与中国持久的大规模合作，提供一个专业而强大的对话平台。

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China Investment, founded in 1985, is a monthly under the supervision of National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) China’s macro-economic management agency, It’s jointly operated by Investment Research Institute under NDRC, China International Engineering Consulting Corporation. Enjoying an exclusive position under the central government, China Investment is the core journal which started the earliest among similar magazines to focus on the investment trend. Over the past 30-plus years, China Investment has been in line with theglobal market as its fundamental coordinate with a strategic focus on specific countries and regional markets and those major international propensities. China Investment is a key dialogue platform for officials from different countries, investment agencies, experts and scholars, business people and journalists.

China Investment has been a key source of references for the better understanding of macro-economic environment, sectoral and industrial outlook, and cases of investments, thanks to the fact that each of its new issue touches upon activities of more than 200 Chinese SOEs, listed or non-public, 10,000 private enterprises, 1000 decision-making bodies at the central and local governments, 1000 trade associations and chambers, and 300 strong major financial institutions.

Starting from May 2016 and under the auspices of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Department of the Central Committee of Communist Party of China, China Investment African Edition came into being, providing a professional and powerful platform of dialogue for the ever-growing and sustainable cooperation between China and the African countries throughout the continent.

Inspired by Belt and Road Initiative, China Investment Belts & Roads Edition was born in May 2017, which provides forward thinking for the cooperation and mutual learning between China and related countries. It also aims to share the innovative ideas in various trades and industries and explore a shared future in building a common community formankind.

原标题：《Promote Multiparty Sustainable Cooperation》