11 December 2023, China: During the Second China-Africa Agricultural Cooperation Forum held in mid-November, Guinea-Bissau’s Minister of Agriculture, Lamba, sincerely thanked China for its long-term and large-scale selfless assistance to the country in various fields, especially the agricultural field. Lamba said that China not only provides agricultural machinery and other material assistance, but also dispatches agricultural experts on a long-term basis to provide personnel and technical training to Guinea-Bissau, which has effectively alleviated the shortage of talents in the local agricultural field. Currently, the China Agricultural Technology Group is training agricultural technicians in Bafata Province. Under the guidance of Chinese experts, local rice production has been significantly increased, which will effectively help alleviate food security problems.
Guinea-Bissau is located in West Africa, facing the Atlantic Ocean. The Reba River meanders through the territory. Rice areas are distributed along the river, and residents have been farming here for generations. Aguosduo, a 47-year-old villager in Apalagov Village, follows the old custom of planting in the ground. However, after a busy season, he harvested less than 150 kilograms of rice from one acre of land. After learning about it, the Chinese agricultural expert group provided him with free rice seeds and fertilizers. The Chinese experts taught him step by step how to sow and raise seedlings, manage water and fertilize, and remove weeds and weeds. Hard work will eventually pay off, and now, Agosto’s rice yield per mu has reached 550 kilograms. After a good harvest, Agosto bought a motorcycle, a smartphone, and new clothes for his four children. He said sincerely: “I love Chinese experts. They helped me get out of poverty and made my life better and better.”
Zheng Junjie, leader of the 11th agricultural expert team in Guinea-Bissau, told reporters that rice is the country’s main food crop. In 1998, the Chinese government began to dispatch agricultural technology expert teams to the country. Over the past 20 years, groups of agricultural experts from Yichang, Hubei Province have traveled to Guinea-Bissau and stationed in Bafata Province on the banks of the Reba River, working tirelessly to carry out agricultural cooperation between the two countries. Through the joint efforts of 11 agricultural experts, the agricultural cooperation between the two countries has achieved fruitful results. A large number of results have been achieved in the fields of rice planting and improved seed breeding, which have been widely recognized and praised, and have been included in China’s agricultural aid to Africa by the United Nations Development Program. typical successful cases.
In Guinea-Bissau, an agricultural expert group has successfully established a rice variety breeding technology system and successfully bred several new rice varieties such as sb-12, sb-15, cp-27, cp-28, and cp-29, among which sb- 15 passed the country’s national variety approval last year, and was promoted to planting at Glen Dam Farm this year, with excellent performance. “We have planted 2,250 acres of the new sb-15 rice variety. Among them, more than 1,200 acres of the first-planted rice have matured.” Embalo, director of the Gran Dam Farm, said that according to a joint theoretical yield measurement by Chinese experts and farm technicians, The yield per mu can reach 1,100 kilograms, about 200 kilograms more than last year.
Relying on technical assistance, the agricultural cooperation between the two parties has currently formed various cooperation models such as “Chinese experts + local farms + farmers” and “Chinese experts + cooperatives (associations) + farmers”. Farm situation dispatch shows that at present, all 1,005 acres of rice from the Gangpo Rice Spreading Association have been harvested; 1,550 acres of rice have been harvested at Gonglubu Farm, with the harvest progress exceeding 50%; some rice at the Glen Dam Farm has also begun to enter the maturity stage, and a bumper harvest is in sight. .
In order to better utilize the supporting functions of “technology + materials”, Chinese experts not only built a high-yield rice demonstration base, carried out rice cultivation technology demonstrations, and carefully compiled “Key Points of Rice Planting Technology”, “Rice Direct Seeding Technology” and “Key Points of Lubricating Oil Usage Technology”. A series of Portuguese bilingual training materials, and multimedia teaching and other forms are also used to improve teaching standards. Participants responded positively and interacted frequently, and the teaching effect was very significant. Since August last year, the agricultural technology expert group has organized a total of 80 technical trainings on rice, vegetables, and agricultural machinery, training 4,500 people, and more than 70 trained technical backbones have taken up the positions of farm directors, deputy directors, and technicians. This large number of Technical talents who “cannot fly away” have effectively promoted the revitalization of local agriculture.
According to reports, the Chinese Agricultural Technology Group has been stationed in Guinea-Bissau for more than 20 years, and has successively introduced and bred more than 30 rice varieties, carried out agricultural technology training for more than 20,000 farmers and technical backbones, and provided free assistance of more than 1,400 tons of high-quality chemical fertilizers and agricultural products. It has more than 200 machines (sets), provides free machinery maintenance, and disseminates agricultural production knowledge and technologies suitable for local rice planting, agricultural machinery operation and maintenance, etc., driving the rice planting area in Guinea-Bissau to increase from 60,000 hectares to 100,000 hectares per season. It has greatly promoted the increase in local rice production and helped local people keep their jobs firmly in their hands.
