Bureaus Exclusive

Agricultural aid program pays off in quake-hit Sichuan

By Huang Zhiling, Yu Jian (China Daily Sichuan Bureau)
Updated: 2010-04-22 13:00

CHENGDU: The program to restore agricultural production in the quake zone in Sichuan Province had been accomplished at the end of last March,

The $2.3-million fund donated by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and the governments of Luxemburg, Belgium, Sweden and Latvia has worked effectively to help farmers in quake-hit Anxian and Beichuan counties and Jiangyou, Mianzhu and Shifang cities restore agricultural production and beat poverty, according to the Sichuan Provincial Department of Agriculture.

Together with China's Ministry of Agriculture, the FAO launched the Sichuan post-quake agricultural restoration and reconstructing program in July 2008, two month after the devastating earthquake, offering financial and technological support for each target county in developing one to two kinds of crops.

The program supplied nearly $1.3 million worth of materials such as sunshades, edible fungus seeds, compounded fertilizer, vegetable and plant seeds, protective suits and manual sprayers for over 10,000 farmers as well as building materials and equipment for rebuilding two small tea processing plants.

It provided 243 free agricultural training sessions for over 10,000 farmers and rural farm technicians.

Thanks to the program, many farmers in the target counties and cities have witnessed the rise in their income.

The program has worked well in Sichuan. And the experience has been conducive to post-disaster agricultural reconstruction in other parts of the world, such as Haiti, said Victoria Sekitoleko, FAO representative in China.