A joint China-UN multi-million dollar project is expected to provide millions of Chinese farmers with greater access to latest agricultural technologies and help them boost their meager incomes.

The two sides inked an agreement, on Wednesday in Urumqi, to increase their joint investment in a rural poverty alleviation project for technology promotion.

The project brings together the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), China's Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), and the China International Center for Economic and Technical Exchanges (CICETE) under China's Ministry of Commerce.

According to the Wednesday agreement, an additional US$3.4 million – US$480,000 from the UNDP, US$2.4 million from MOST, and US$520,000 from Stora Enso, a multinational paper products company based in Europe - will be invested in the project.

Named "Alleviating Rural Poverty through Innovative Technology Transfer", the four-year project aims to introduce farmers to innovative, environmentally-friendly technologies in order to increase their income and promote sustainable rural development.

Launched in April 2006 with a starting budget of US$4 million (US$1 million from the UNDP and US$3 million from MOST), the project will support China's Technical Task Force (TTF) initiatives. The TTFs will become a critical element in diverse market-oriented systems that will seek to meet the needs of farmers, farm systems and rural communities.

"The Technical Task Forces focus on introducing market mechanisms to traditional agriculture," said Liu Yanhua, vice minister of science and technology.

Liu pointed out that since 2002, a total of 593 counties across 24 provinces have launched pilot projects on the new market-oriented TTF mechanisms.

According to Liu, 23,000 TTF personnel were dispatched to implement the project and 5.84 million farmers received technical training in 2005 with an average income rise of 20 percent for the farmers concerned.

"The project is very timely as it is closely connected to the Chinese government's commitment to building a new socialist countryside by applying scientific development approaches," said Khalid Malik, UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in China. "I believe the project will not only help farmers develop new business models to increase their income, but also assist China in establishing new models of production to sustain its high growth rate," he added.

(Xinhua News Agency September 14, 2006)