China and the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) signed on Sunday a US$50 million co-operation agreement to enhance knowledge exchange on agriculture. The aim is to help developing countries in the southern hemisphere build sustainable food systems and “inclusive agricultural value chains”, Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua reported.

Enhancing China’s co-operation with FAO will “benefit agricultural development and progress toward hunger reduction targets”, said China’s Vice Premier Wang Yang, who witnessed the signing ceremony on the sidelines of FAO’s 39th Conference, which started on Saturday, in Rome.

According to Xinhua, the co-operation agreement – and China’s new contribution to the FAO-China South-South Cooperation Trust Fund – includes boosting an exchange programme where Chinese agricultural experts give advice to officials in low-income, food-deficit areas in Africa, Central Asia, the Pacific Islands and Latin America.

The FAO’s Director General José Graziano da Silva – who was re-elected on Saturday – underlined the need for southern countries to “work together”, “empowering one another by exchanging knowledge and tools”, in order to end hunger.

According to Spanish news agency EFE, China has already sent at least one expert or technical staff member to a total of 25 countries in need since the start, in 1996, of the FAO’s South-South co-operation initiative.

UN data quoted by the news agencies suggested that, since 1990, Beijing has successfully lifted 138 million of people in China out of chronic hunger. Beijing is also said to have halved the prevalence of hunger in the country head of UN’s worldwide Millennium Development Goal 2015 deadline.