Beijing - A launching meeting of the Ninth Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Conference was held at Renmin University. More than 100 government leaders, experts, scholars, journalists and farmers participated in the meeting. Prof. Wen Tiejun from Renmin University; Dr. Vincent Martin, Representative of FAO in China; Mr. Ji Shaoqin, Director of Science and Education Division of the Ministry of Agriculture; Mr. Wen Haoyu, Deputy Secretary of Guizhou Education Office of Bijing District in Tongren City, Guizhou Province; and Dr. Shi Yan, Director-General of China CSA Alliance delivered their keynote speeches.

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a way to produce organic food; which restores direct connection between consumers and food producers, and also helps close the urban-rural gap. It is an environmentally friendly model of agriculture which ensures production of healthy safe food. In recent years, the rise of CSA in China has contributed greatly to sustainable agriculture development while promoting a new approach to farming.

At the same time, the CSA model can also play an important role in poverty alleviation and rural revitalization, which will directly bring more profits to the producers and raise farmers' income effectively. Comparing with traditional agriculture, this model is more likely to attract young people back to the countryside, and achieve rural revitalization.

China CSA Conference is the largest and most widely attended social sustainable agriculture development forum in China, which has been successfully held for the past eight years, promoting China's ecological civilization development. The Ninth session of the CSA Conference will be held from 29 to 31 December 2017 in Bijiang District of Tongren City, Guizhou Province with the theme of "ecology-driven poverty alleviation and rural vitalization".

Vincent Martin delivered a keynote speech stressing that the global food systems were at a crossroads. Agriculture must meet the challenge to food security and nutrition posed by population growth, increased pressure on natural resources, the loss of biodiversity, and uncertainties associated with climate changes. Therefore, a transition was needed to more sustainable food systems – food systems that produce more, while delivering increased socio-economic benefits and impacting less on the environment.

Vincent Martin also emphasized thinking out of the box and promoting the agroecological approaches. The model of CSA and the campaign of “have seeds, have courage” would be a magnificent example of innovative agroecological applications in the framework of the newly adopted rural revitalization strategy. He reiterated FAO’s commitment to continuing cooperation with all stakeholders in China in advancing agroecology and sustainable agriculture development.

Dr. Shi Yan reviewed the previous CSA conferences and introduced the panel meetings of the 9th CSA Conference in which many experts and scholars, farmers, ecological social organizations would participate and talk about the social development of ecological agriculture. The meeting then launched a campaign initiative entitled "have seeds, have courage". One hundred ecological food system enablers representing international institutions, new traditional farmers, professors and pupils signed up to this initiative addressing public’s concern for biodiversity (seed) and challenging the new generation of farmers to commit themselves to ecological agriculture.

When the launching ceremony was over, pupils from Hujialou Primary School, school garden teachers and Dr. Shi Yan unveiled a food education handbook "Children of the Earth". This food education project and its related courses for pupils started since the beginning of 2014. The meeting lasting for nearly three hours witnessed passionate and wide-ranging discussions. The meeting in the run-up to the CSA Conference showed emergence of a broad platform of CSA-friendly social groups. It revealed availability of rich resources for CSA researchers and practitioners to provide solutions to citizens’ concerns about food safety and environmental protection. The meeting also outlined a poverty alleviation strategy based on agroecology and rural vitalization.