Day: August 5, 2020

(Xinhua)10:34, July 31, 2019

HONG KONG, July 30 — Police force of Chinas Hong Kong Special Administrative Region said on Tuesday that 45 people were charged with rioting, assaulting police officer and possession of offensive weapons respectively after a recent illegal assembly.

The illegal assembly was held in the Western District on Hong Kong Island on Sunday, during which the protesters set up roadblocks by umbrellas, wooden planks, bamboo sticks and railings, pried up pavement bricks, demolished roadside fences and damaged street signs and lampposts, according to the police. They also attacked police officers at scene with lethal weapons such as bricks and sharpened iron rods.

Although the police repeatedly asked the protesters who charged the police cordon lines to leave the illegal assembly immediately, the protesters continued to perform various peace-breaching acts and attacked police officers.

After repeated warnings were ignored, the police took dispersal action at around 7 p.m. on Sunday to restore social order, during which the police arrested 49 people including 32 men and 17 women, aged between 16 and 41.

After investigation and seeking legal advice, the police charged 44 people for rioting. Among them, a 33-year-old man was also charged with assaulting police officer. Separately, a 24-year-old man was charged with possession of offensive weapons. All of them will appear in court on Wednesday.

The remaining two men were released on bail pending further investigation, while another two people were temporarily released.

The police stressed that an investigation was underway and did not rule out the possibility of further arrest.

(Xinhua)10:51, July 31, 2019

URUMQI, July 31 — To reach Arizkul Kurbans vegetable store on the Pamir Plateau, cucumbers, coming from submontane cities, have to be transported on long journeys over wandering and bumpy mountain roads, while battling extreme weather and climbing over snow-capped mountains.

Herdsman Arizkul Kurban runs a small vegetable store in Bulungkol Township of Akto County in Kizilsu Kirgiz Autonomous Prefecture, northwest Chinas Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Cucumbers have become the most popular green vegetable in his store.

Twenty years ago, when Arizkul Kurban was 30 years old, he left his hometown on the Pamir Plateau and saw a cucumber for the first time. Faced with its unusual appearance, he struggled to believe that such a thing was even edible.

Reaching out from the center of the government of Bulungkol Township, a radius of 80 km covers a living area for 1,900 herdsmen, cattle and sheep in various river valleys. At an elevation of 3,400 meters and blanketed with barren land, the area is unsuitable for crops or vegetables to grow. Herdsmen here have made a living by grazing for generations.

Arizkul Kurbans store not only offers him a way of making a living but has also enabled him to witness the changes in local peoples lives over the years.

Eating mutton and wearing sheepskin clothes, we herdsmen used to lead a tough nomadic life without any fixed residence, no modern possessions like televisions or mobile phones, and even no green vegetables, said Arizkul Kurban.

In the past, we had long lived in poverty and could only afford carrots, potatoes, onions and other vegetables which were cheap, shelf-stable and resistant to bumps during transportation, he said.

More convenient transportation from outside to the mountainous town has paved the way for Arizkul Kurban to open the store.

It used to take at least a week to ride up the mountain on a horse, according to Arizkul Kurban. Even when a gravel road was later built, it was still difficult to transport the fragile cucumbers to the town. Now, after restoration and expansion, the uphill highway is a perfect road for me, said Arizkul Kurban.

Apart from the improved transport situation, the township government also helped Arizkul Kurban start his business running the vegetable store.

The government built a number of storefronts in 2018 and offered them to low-income families for free as a means of starting their own businesses and earning a living.

Villagers mainly used the storefronts to run restaurants, daily-necessity stores, barbershops and small supermarkets.

The net profit of my family-run shop over 10 months totaled 20,000 yuan (around 2,100 U.S. dollars), said Toyqebek Turdi, owner of a restaurant.

Moreover, all herdsmen of Bulungkol Township have successively moved into the anti-seismic houses built by the local government since 2012.

The government also helped the villagers develop tourism, find jobs in other places and improve livestock breeds so as to increase their incomes.

Their demand for higher living quality has increased along with the rising incomes. Villagers here eat lots of mutton. Now, they buy cucumbers to make salad and have more balanced meals with appropriate portions of vegetables and meat, said Arizkul Kurban.

Enjoying free housing, free education, and nearly 90 percent medical reimbursement, we are able to spend more money on food. At present, green vegetables are becoming increasingly popular, said Melike Ahmat, a local resident of Bulungkol.

Due to our limited ability to maintain freshness, leafy green vegetables rarely appeared on our tables, said Hou Zhenqiang, deputy head of Bulungkol Township.

Considering the altitude and cold weather on the plateau, local government has already grown broad-leaved green vegetables in experimental fields in greenhouses. Soon, residents on the Pamir Plateau will be able to buy more green vegetables with excellent quality and at reasonable prices, Hou said.

Arizkul Kurban has shaken off poverty after running the vegetable store for a year. Now, he drives down the mountain every four days to purchase fresh vegetables. Besides cucumbers, he has also included more varieties, such as green beans and squash, on his shopping list.

(Xinhua)15:57, July 31, 2019

BEIJING, July 31 — China has the largest expanse of irrigated lands in the world, which helps ensure food security at home, a water resources official has said.

China has an irrigated area of 74 million hectares, covering half of the countrys farmlands, said Ni Wenjin, an official with the Ministry of Water Resources, at a Belt and Road forum on irrigation and drainage on Tuesday.

The development of irrigation and drainage is one of the priorities of the ongoing rural vitalization and agricultural modernization drive in China, said Ni.

The country has seen 20 million more hectares of lands irrigated with agricultural water consumption basically unchanged for three decades, using water-saving irrigation technology in 46.3 percent of irrigated lands nationwide.

Pricing reforms for agricultural water are also underway to help economize water usage, Ni added.

China is sharing duplicable experiences with Belt and Road countries in addressing water scarcity.

The ministry has inked agreements or memorandums with over 60 countries regarding irrigation-related cooperation since the Belt and Road Initiative was brought up in 2013, according to Ni.

By SeddiqHussainy (Peoples Daily Online)18:21, July 30, 2019

Chinas agricultural development in past few decades has not been but a miracle. Modernization of farming has been a pillar of Chinas poverty reduction strategy.

With roughly 40 percent of its population living in rural areas, China used this sedentary rustic human capital to the maximum and set the pillars of modern agriculture. This socialist approach to agriculture brought about remarkable results; poverty reduction, optimum agricultural outputs and improved rural life. Chinese farmers average annual disposable income increased from 130 yuan in 1980 to 14,600 yuan in 2018.

The government is vigorously incentivizing all various kinds of agriculture, horticulture and animal husbandry. A senior official in the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs told Afghanistan Times that China has attached great importance to supporting farmers through all means.

Zhao Changbao said that China envisages to build 170,000 hectares of farmlands in 2030. This is as it has already built hundreds of thousands of hectares of modern farmlands all over the country.

Zhao reckoned that incentives and agriculture subsidiary had a massive role to play in bolstering agriculture.

鈥淲e follow the policy of subsidization and incentivization to encourage farmers. Supporting farmers is tantamount to supporting agriculture. We support farmers by providing agriculture technology, machinery, fertilizers and other necessities.

This is exactly what Afghanistan lacks; a nonexistent policy of incentivization and modernization of agriculture, derelict and barren lands, no market for domestic agricultural products and an utter chagrin for the farming population.

Agriculture is an important determinant of economic growth. Afghanistan desperately needs to draw lessons from China in terms of policymaking, budget-allocating, farming modernization and techniques, agricultural administration and incentivization.

As these factors have helped in narrowing the income gap between the urban and rural population in China, development of agriculture will also help Afghanistan improve the lives of millions of desperate farmers and improve its economic status.

The bare minimum the Afghan government can do is to explore more international markets to promote and sell domestic products. There is a huge potential to export dried fruits to China.

Another official in the ministry said that China exports 19.7 billion yuan of agriculture products only to Asia.

Ma Hongtao, Deputy Director of International Cooperation said at a press conference that Chinas agriculture trade volume with Asia was 31.6 billion yuan in 2018. China exports fruits, cotton and fertilizers to the Asian nations.

A relatively small city, Yan鈥檃n, in Shaanxi province witnessed a total output of more than 24 billion yuan in 2018.

The per capita disposable income of rural residents in Yan鈥檃n reached almost 11,000 yuan.

Chinas marketing policy is so robust that it ensures a constant stability of sales for agricultural outputs. In Yanan alone, there are over 1,890 e-commerce enterprises and more than 25,000 online stores and micro stores, guaranteeing a smooth flow of agricultural trade within and outside the province.

Chinas feat is not merely confined to agriculture. Forestry, fishery and animal husbandry have seen exponential growth as well and have resulted in high economic benefits both for the rural community and the government.

Afghanistan can learn from China鈥檚 policy stability. Leadership capacity, accountability and competence and quality assurance are other recipes for bolstering the agriculture sector in Afghanistan.

Another major predicament is that farmers are engaging in subsistence farming for self-reliance. What the country needs is to switch gears from mediocre low-scale farming to mass-scale agriculture where lands are utilized to the maximum extent for optimum outputs. The government can also adopt the cooperative modality to ensure value chain and unite the farming communities. Subsidies and incentives should also be initiated and regulated in large scale. This is simply a paradigm China has been pursuing over past decades.

Organic farming is more charming. The government should give subsidy to farmers to support investment in agriculture.

Because of the derelict agriculture mechanism and primitive farming techniques, there is a dire need for mechanization of agriculture. The government can allocate more budgets to supply machinery and technology to farmers to encourage mass-scale production.

The central government can have the private sector shoulder some of this burden by involving private enterprises in investing in farmlands and mechanization of farmlands. Public private partnership will make agricultural enterprises more profitable and serve as a solution to budget scarcity.

This could also be a remedy to the hassle of marketing. This allows farmers to partner with private entrepreneurships to sell their products.

If agriculture is sustainable, it ensures a continuous flow of revenue for millions.

Poor rural infrastructure and lack of cool storage facilities are among other deterrents bedeviling farmers all over Afghanistan. Farmers continue to incur losses on account of having no storage facilities to keep their products. This calls for need-based enhancement of refrigeration capacity. Decay of fruits and agriculture products is still a major problem which has been daunting millions of farmers countrywide forcing then to seek inexpedient alternatives. Many end up selling their products at highly low prices. Cold chain logistics should be provided and facilities should be erected to facilitate optimum storage of fruits and vegetables and ultimately a reliable and stable market.

Training could be construed as important as finding markets for agricultural products. Efforts should be made to enhance the capabilities and capacities of farmers. Afghan farmers have experience in traditional and ancient farming which was not as productive and efficient as modern agriculture has become. Farmers need to be trained in new farming techniques and methods.

The author is a journalist working for Afghanistan Times in Afghanistan and is currently participating in the China Asia Pacific Press Center 2019 program in Beijing.

By ChrisNhlane (Peoples Daily Online)18:23, July 30, 2019

“Zero Hunger by 2030” is the second target among the 17 ambitious United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2015.

However, four years after adopting the SDGs the world body now panics over a surging global hunger crisis that puts at risk its agenda to eradicate starvation and malnutrition in the world in the next eleven years.

According to a February 2019 UN regional food security and nutrition index, Africa, for instance, had 257 million hungry people (out of 820 million worldwide), adding that sub-Saharan Africa held the biggest share of the continent’s non-food burden at 237 million people.

This is a cause for anxiety especially when as further UN statistics say hunger could hit 2 billion people by 2050 unless countries fix their food and agriculture systems urgently.

Malawi, ranked 87th out of 119 qualifying countries on the 2018 Global Hunger Index (GHI), faces recurrent maize production and consumption gaps due to floods, fall armyworms and frequent dry spells propelled by El-Nino fluctuations

With a 2018 GHI score of 26.5, Malawi is categorised as a serious hunger prone nation hence the need for more technologies and investments in high-yielding rice cultivation to cushion such periodic maize deficits.

In the past three years, hunger affected over 9 million people (6.5 million in 2016 and 3.3 million last year). These figures exclude the record high 1949 and 2002 famines that allegedly killed hundreds of foodless citizens in selected parts of the country.

According to UN’s integrated food security phase classification, famine exists if; at least 20 percent of households suffer from acute food shortages, when 30 percent of the population is acutely malnourished and if two in every 10,000 people (or four children) die of hunger daily.

Increased rice demand

Malawi’s current 17.5 million population has lately increased citizens’ maize consumption patterns and consumer needs for rice whose 2018 value estimates stood at $480 million (about K366 billion), according to the National Rice Development Platform (NRDP).

Figures from the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Water Development show that Malawi produces 360,000 metric tonnes (MT) of rice a year, but has potential to produce 2.5 million tonnes.

However, insufficient modern technologies and inadequate funding cut the rice output potential and it cannot meet the growing local and foreign demand. Instead Malawi imports more rice from China, South Africa, Tanzania and India.

Limited access to farm inputs, climate change, shortage of improved seed varieties and shortage of good markets have also decreased rice yields over the years.

But during a stakeholders meeting in Lilongwe recently, NRDP Chairperson, David Kamchacha disclosed that demand for Malawi rice, including Kilombero, exceeds 800,000 metric tonnes (MT) on the global market but the country’s export capacity is only 20,000MT. He said under-production costs Malawi a lot in terms of forex earnings.

“What should be done is helping the farmer increase production. One of the issues is to look at the seed aspect, the implements that the farmers are using, and the whole value chain and address those gaps so that Malawi can increase rice production,” Kamchacha said.

Figures from Export Development Fund (EDF), a financing institution for export business, show that the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Zambia were each looking for 100,000MT while Zimbabwe wanted 56,000MT.

But Director of Crop Development in the Agriculture Ministry, Godfrey Ching’oma hinted earlier that government is putting in place strategies that would increase rice production in Malawi.

“Rice requires enough irrigation facilities to reach large scale production and currently government is investing in irrigation. Very soon, there will be the Shire Valley Irrigation Transformation Project which will use over 40,000 hectares of land, part of which would be for rice production,” Ching’oma said.

Lessons from China

On its part, China’s long history of rice cultivation has since the 1990s boosted yields for the cereal crop through scientific and technological improvements and boosts production and domestic consumption for its population.

Generally, agriculture food system contributes about 23.3 percent to China’s gross domestic product (GDP) and 30.1 percent to employment, according to the 2019 China Agriculture Sector Development Report.

Zhang Ning, director for the South-South Fund Program in the Chinese Ministry of Commerce told an international summit on China-Africa Rice Cooperation in Beijing in July 2019 that Malawi and other African countries need more agricultural technologies to boost rice productivity.

“There are obvious complementarities and potential in the China-Africa agricultural cooperation, especially in the rice value chain… The development of the rice industry is the foundation of a prosperous and stable Africa, Zhang said.

US-based Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation sponsored the event while Thomas Arokoyo, head of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (Agra) led the African team from Mozambique and Nigeria.

Ex-UN Secretary-General Koffi Annan founded Agra in 2006 to champion food and nutrition sufficiency in Malawi and seven other African countries.

In his speech, Arokoyo asked the Chinese government to introduce more agriculture demonstration facilities in Africa and boost the use of mechanised agriculture.

At the First China-Africa Trade and Economic Expo held in June in Changsha, the capital of central China’s Hunan Province, Malawi government officials and their counterparts from other African countries signed many agreements aimed at boosting cooperation with China, including modern agricultural technologies to help Africa achieve food security by 2030.

Certainly, Malawi can emulate China’s example on rice cultivation in the rice-growing field at Bwanje in Ntcheu, Bua in Nkhotakota, Madisi in Dowa, Santhe in Kasungu, Wovwe and Hara in Karonga and Limphasa in Nkhata Bay to build self-sufficiency for rice and curb future imports.

The author is a journalist working for Nation Newspapers in Malawi and is currently participating in the China Africa Press Centre 2019 programme in Beijing. The article reflects the authors opinions, and not necessarily the views of People’s Daily Online.