China eyes agricultural innovation

Delegates strut stuff at CFPS

Lionel Labelle, CEO of the Saskatchewan Trade and Export Partnership, has been keenly involved in Canada’s Farm Progress Show since it first began 36 years ago.

He said this year marks a significant breakthrough as CFPS is moving toward increasing global market trends and partnerships.

For the first time, 20 delegates from Jiangsu province in China are exhibiting agricultural machinery from five different companies.

Jiangsu currently has 78 million people and 3,000 agricultural machinery manufacturers. The tractors are unique in stature and much smaller-scale than Canadian tractors.

Some of the crops in Jiansgu are similar to Saskatchewan’s — canola, wheat, corn and rice.

“STEP has been interested in the Chinese market for quite some time,” Labelle said.

Last September, a working agreement was signed between STEP and the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade.

In April, six representatives from Saskatchewan agricultural manufacturing companies visited Nanjing, China, to attend an agricultural machinery show.

“The world is in need of food and the middle class is growing, and so our opportunities (in Saskatchewan) are very, very strong,” Labelle said.

Wang Feng, deputy director of the Bureau of Agricultural Machinery Administration

“WE ARE VERY IMPRESSED WITH THE FARMLANDS (IN SASKATCHEWAN) AND THE SCALE OF HOW BIG THE FIELDS ARE AND ALSO HOW WELL THE CROPS GROW HERE,”

WANG FENG

of Jiangsu, said they are looking for higher performance machinery, as well as larger-scale machinery for canola harvesting and production on their family and state farms.

“We are very impressed with the farmlands (in Saskatchewan) and the scale of how big the fields are and also how well the crops grow here,” Feng said.

Tim McMillan, minister of trade in Saskatchewan, said, “It’s to both of our advantages to show what we do well and to learn from others what they do well.”

“Everybody’s trying to make their farms better to produce more food and that’s something Saskatchewan’s certainly been leaders (in) for a long time,” McMillan added.

Feng said he hopes there is long-term co-operation between China and Canada.

“We hope we can bring the Canadian high-tech machinery back to China,” he said. “There is a real need to modernize our machinery.”

MICHAEL Bell/leader-post Wang Feng stands in front of a Chinese-made Jinma 254 tractor at the Chinese exhibit at Canada’s Farm Progress Show on Wednesday. Feng is deputy director at the Bureau of Agricultural Machinery Administration in China’s Jiangsu province.