Dr. Aihemaitijiang Rouzi from the Sino-German Agricultural Centre (DCZ), along with Mr. Hu Yan’an, deputy director of the Foreign Economic Cooperation Center (FECC) of MARA, and Ms Zhang Xian, DCZ project manager at FECC, traveled to Binhai county, Jiangsu province to attend the 6th field day by Sino-German Crop Production and Agrotechnology Demonstration Park (DCALDP). The event included a pre-field day opening conference on October 21 and a field day excursion on October 22. Due to Covid-19, many German partners were unable to travel and contributed to the event by video statements. The event was live streamed on the DCALDP Wechat account which garnered nearly 70,000 views online.
On the opening conference, Mr. He Zairui, the general director of DCALDP, and Ms Leely Zhang, Managing Director of DLG (German Agricultural Society) in Beijing, made opening remarks in which they affirmed the contributions of DCALDP in promoting Sino-German agricultural cooperation. Mr. Hu Zhaohui, head of SKIAD, and Mr. Shen Yi, Vice Agriculture Minister of Jiangsu Province also made congratulatory remarks. From the German side, Mr. Bruno Hoffstadt, head of the Department of International Projects at the German Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL), expressed in a video statement his regrets that he could not be there in person due to COVID-19. He appreciated the DCALDP work in Sino-German agricultural cooperation and wished the partnership to blossom. Then Mr. He Zairui introduced the work of DCALDP over the years and what could be expected on the field next day. He also stressed that the attendance of Minister Julia Klöckner in 2019 was a great milestone in recognition of their work. In his presentation, he outlined the achievements of the last five years. The demonstration plot was established in 2015 with an area of 166 hectares of farmland in Binhai county, Jiangsu province, to test the integration of German and Chinese approaches to agriculture and to utilize most advanced German agricultural machinery and agricultural practices to promote sustainable agriculture. After that, Mr. Alejandro Figueroa, the German team leader of DCALDP introduced the “Green Book” via video live stream, a manual on his experiences at DCALDP and on general sustainable agriculture management practices.
On the field day, all participants traveled to the DCALDP fields to see a series of demonstrations of various agricultural machinery and agricultural practices. On site, Mr. Thomas Giese from economic affairs division of the German Embassy in China, made congratulatory remarks and praised the DCALDP’s positive impact on Sino-German agriculture exchanges. After that, Mr. He Yanping and various other practitioners introduced how different tilling, fertilizing, harvesting and management practices are applied to rice production on these fields. This has been done in consultation with German experts and by using advanced agriculture machinery from Germany. They said that these experiments provided knowledge on sustainable farm management to locals and others. On the field, representatives from BASF, BAYER, CLAAS, DEUTZ FAHR, HORSCH, LEMKEN, Müthing, PÖTTINGER and RAUCH, all of whom partly sponsored this project and event, explained how their specific product or machines are contributing to the success of DCALDP and demonstrated live how these machines work in practice.
