Sharing Best Agriculture Practices in China

Led jointly by LDC, the Louis Dreyfus Foundation and China Education Support Project, our ‘Sustainable Agriculture Future Change-Maker’ project in China was launched in 2020. The objective was to develop the knowledge and skills of talented university students in the country, encouraging them to enter the agricultural sector and promote more sustainable production methods that would benefit China’s environment, public health and agricultural productivity in the long term.

The program kicked off with training on modern farming methods delivered to students from Beijing and other provinces. After completing their online curriculum, the students traveled out to rural areas across the country to conduct surveys on local farming conditions and challenges. Accompanied by agricultural experts, they passed on their knowledge to farmers, training them to increase their income and productivity through more sustainable practices, shifting away from overuse of fertilizers and pesticides that leads to soil erosion and pollution, water scarcity and loss of biodiversity.

In 2021, 109 students joined the second year of the program (from over 500 who applied) and spent time working with farmers and collecting data, accompanied by LDC employees and field technicians. Together, they disseminated knowledge on good production practices to more than 200 farming households.

The project will pursue its plan to engage and train more students across the country, adding innovative agricultural methods and techniques to the curriculum, such as use of bio-organic fertilizer to reduce rates of chemical fertilization, improve soil fertility and enhance crop yield and quality. As a next step, the project will engage with 10 new student groups who will submit research projects on scientific seed selection. Students will conduct field research in rural areas on suitable local seed varieties, including endangered species, with the overall objective of increasing the income of small and medium-sized farmers.

Key Numbers

215: total number of students engaged to date

50: farming households informed on fertilizer application and water retention in 2021

2,250: total number of farmers who benefited from the project so far, directly or indirectly