ANSO Online Open Conference on Agriculture and Food Security

11 05, 2021

The challenge of global food security is straightforward under the pressure of increasing population, climate change and continuous effects of the global pandemic. To be of assistance in meeting the increasing demands of rice production in developing countries, the People’s Government of Sanya City, ANSO and the Bureau of International Cooperation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, co-organized “The 4th China (Sanya) International Rice Forum and the Belt and Road Food Security Corridor Forum” in Sanya City on 21-23 April 2021. More than 300 participants from China, Pakistan, Nepal, Georgia, Nigeria, etc. attended the forum on site, and the meeting also attracted over 10,000 audiences online as recorded by the live stream with more than 60% of them being international participants.

A parallel session of the forum called “ANSO Workshop on Agriculture and Food Security” continued starting from April 23, which was hosted by The Alliance of International Science Organizations in the Belt and Road Region on Rice & Wheat Variety Technology Innovation and Transfer (ANSO-RWIT). The forum aims to exchange information and viewpoints of national/international food policies, and share the latest technologies and innovation on hybrid rice with high productivity and quality. Prof. Jinghua Cao, Executive Director of the ANSO Secretariat, delivered a keynote speech themed on “Science and Technology for Global Sustainable Development: ANSO’s Actions and Challenges”. He emphasized that facing the dual challenges from climate change and global pandemic, food security has become a particularly severe challenge for the developing countries and calls for international cooperation to address it. He elaborated the ANSO’s persistent policy in supporting sustainable agriculture and a series of projects and activities on food security that ANSO supported in the past two years. He particularly mentioned the Innovative Cooperation Programme between ANSO and the United Nations Commission on Science and Technology for Development (UNCSTD) on training experts and officials from developing countries to make agricultural policy and food importation policy with remote sensing and spatial information.

The ANSO training workshop, scheduled to last for 10 days, had the participation of over 20 foreign visiting scholars and international students. The training course aimed to enhance capacity building and to help the trainees to gain knowledge and some hands-on experience in improving hybrid rice production in Asian and African countries. The topics covered the cultivation of rice and other major crop varieties, and the application of the related cutting-edge technologies.