The United Nations Development Programme's "Poverty Alleviation and Sustainable Development in China" project has been ongoing for over three years and is set to conclude next month.
This project supports three counties (districts) in central and western China designated by the Ministry of Commerce to carry out service system and mechanism innovation with farmers and farmer cooperative organizations as the main body, in order to enhance the organizational level of local farmers and agriculture, promote the healthy development of poverty alleviation industries and socialized service systems.
On the 25th, the representative office of the United Nations Development Programme in China and its implementing partner, the China International Economic and Technological Exchange Center of the Ministry of Commerce, held a summary meeting at the United Nations Building in Beijing to review and summarize the project results, and discuss how to improve the mechanism and promote the experience of the model in the next step, with the hope that the project experience can continue to play a role in China's rural revitalization and sustainable development.
The project was launched in November 2017 with a total budget of 3.468 million US dollars, approximately 23 million Chinese yuan. With the support of the local government, Chengbu County in Hunan Province, Yilong County in Sichuan Province, and Guang'an District in Guang'an City, Sichuan Province, which participated in the project, have respectively established a socialized comprehensive service platform for farmers' cooperative organizations - Minfu Rural Sustainable Development Service Center (hereinafter referred to as "Minfu Center"). Through the Minfu Center, standardized farmers' cooperatives are cultivated and developed to help farmers' cooperative associations carry out agricultural product market docking and credit cooperation, in order to achieve the "trinity" of production, supply and marketing, and credit.
According to project statistics, the three local wealth centers have cultivated and supported 208 compliant and effective farmer professional cooperatives, established 7 farmer cooperative federations, and directly driven more than 3000 households out of poverty and into prosperity.

This is a photo taken in May 2021 of Jiang Shouliang, a member of the Bumiao Forest Beekeeping Farmers' Professional Cooperative in Chengbu County, Hunan Province, using the intelligent beehive provided by the cooperative for beekeeping. (Image provided by China International Center for Economic and Technological Exchange)
Zhang Yi, Deputy Director of the China International Center for Economic and Technological Exchange, stated that the establishment of the Minfu Center is the core achievement of the project, which originated from the Yilong County Poverty Alleviation and Mutual Aid Cooperative Pilot Innovation Project supported by the United Nations Development Programme; In this round of projects, farmers' cooperatives, leading enterprises, social organizations, and local governments have effectively participated to explore and expand institutional innovation, further consolidating and expanding the achievements of poverty alleviation and effectively connecting them with rural revitalization.
The goal of the project is not to directly assist the impoverished population, but to establish mechanisms and platforms to help 'small farmers' move towards the' big market '. Zuo Ting, Vice President of the National Rural Revitalization Research Institute of China Agricultural University, believes that the project has already aimed at effectively connecting poverty alleviation and rural revitalization in the start-up stage, which is also an inevitable requirement for achieving agricultural and rural development under the background of socialist market economy.
Kong Xiangzhi, president of the Chinese Academy of Cooperatives and professor of Renmin University of China, and other experts believe that the project has provided effective solutions to long-term and widespread problems in the development of farmers' cooperatives through innovative service platforms and supporting service mechanisms, and has reference and promotion value.