The Seminar on Agricultural Science and Technology Cooperation between China and France was successfully held on June 1, 2021. Co-sponsored by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China and the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation of France, the seminar was jointly organized by the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the Chinese Embassy in France, as well as the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment of France, and the French Embassy in China. The meeting was held in the combined online and offline form, with the main offline venue in Beijing.
Deputy Director-General Zhao Jing of the Department of International Cooperation of the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, Minister Yu Jinsong of the Chinese Embassy in France, as well as Laurent Bili, French Ambassador to China; and Joaquim Nassar, head of the Department for Strategy, Expertise and Management of International Cooperation Programs of the French Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation attended and addressed the meeting. Vice President Sun Tan of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and Director Philippe MAUGUIN of the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment delivered welcome speeches and renewed the framework cooperation agreement between the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment under the witness of representatives of the science and technology departments and embassies of the two countries.
Deputy Director-General Zhao Jing remarked that agriculture was one of the seven priority areas of cooperation identified by the 14th Meeting of the China-French Joint Committee on Science and Technology Cooperation held in 2019. The seminar was an important measure to implement the consensus of the China-French Joint Committee on Science and Technology Cooperation and the video meeting between the ministers of science and technology of China and France, and jointly address global challenges such as climate change and food security. Deputy Director-General Zhao Jing expressed the hope that research institutions of both sides would take this opportunity to deepen cooperation and bring China-France cooperation in agricultural science and technology to a new level.
Ambassador Laurent Bili said that cooperation between China and France in the field of agricultural science and technology had a long tradition and was full of vitality and the meeting was highly relevant in the context of increasingly prominent global issues such as climate change. He said that the French Embassy in China would further promote agricultural science and technology cooperation between the two countries and create more opportunities for personnel and institutional exchanges in the future.
The seminar systematically reviewed achievements China and France have accomplished in agricultural science, technology and innovation cooperation, discussed models of agricultural cooperation between the two countries in the new era, engaged in in-depth discussions on key cooperation fields such as crop science, tropical agriculture, plant protection and agricultural ecology, and extensively exchanged views on other research areas of common interest.
More than 60 representatives from science and technology departments of China and France, embassies of the two countries, the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences, the Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, China Agricultural University, Beijing Forestry University, Sun Yat-sen University, the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment and the University of Montpellier attended the meeting.
