Chinese seedlings take root in "City in the Clouds"

Liu Wanli, Wang Ping

Asmara, 15 May (2023) - In May, the city of Asmara is drizzling. Liu Yunmin, together with other Chinese agricultural experts, is busy in the fields with local farmers, tilling the land and preparing to plant seeds of oilseed rape and broad beans before the rainy season.

Asmara, capital of the East African country of Eritrea, is more than 2,300 meters above sea level and is known as the "City in the Clouds." Eritrea is located along the southwestern coast of the Red Sea. Driving all the way southwest from the port city of Massawa and passing through winding mountain roads, people could arrive in the city of Asmara in the clouds.

Agriculture is the mainstay of Eritrea's economy, with about four-fifths of the population engaged in farming and animal husbandry. However, the lack of crop varieties and backward agricultural technology seriously restrict the country's agricultural development.

In recent years, China-Eritrea agricultural cooperation projects are quietly improving the life of local people.

China-Africa agricultural cooperation is an important part of the project of reducing poverty and benefiting farmers under the framework of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation. In order to promote the development of Eritrea's agricultural industry, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of China has sent three groups of experts to Eritrea to carry out technical assistance in the fields of legumes, fruit tree gardening and oil, and achieved remarkable results.

China's Sichuan Road and Bridge Group, which has been involved in Eritrea's construction projects for a long time, also sent two agricultural experts to participate in seed selection and breeding and other experimental and demonstration projects in Eritrea under the coordination of the Sichuan provincial government.

High-quality apple farming in Eritrea is still in its infancy. "Locally grown apples are small and taste astringent, so most of the apples sold in the market are imported from abroad. The price of one kilogram of apples is about 70 yuan (about 10 U.S. dollars)," said Liu, head of the third senior agricultural expert group for aiding Eritrea.

In order to help Eritrean people get apples with good taste and low prices, the team brought 210 apple seedlings from China and promoted the cultivation technology of plastic film mulching in light of the drought in Eritrea. After planting for one year, the apple trees from across the ocean are growing well, and the improved local tree species have begun to bear fruit.

Nearby, in a demonstration field of beans and oil crops, broad beans, red kidney beans and oilseed rape have been harvested, with unit yields increasing by more than 50 percent compared with local varieties.

When the rainy season arrives in June, the Chinese team will start a new round of planting and train local agricultural technicians and farmers in intensive farming.

"The seeds that have been tested are the good ones for Eritrea," Liu said. After a series of achievements were made in the trial and demonstration phase of the project, the work of Chinese experts was highly appreciated by the Eritrean side.

"Rapeseed seeds imported from China are very suitable for planting in Asmara," said Ermias Asmelash, coordinator of the China-Eritrea agricultural technical cooperation project. "We have also experimented with planting broad beans and red kidney beans at three sites, and the results are satisfactory."

"I would say the cooperation in the area of agriculture is going from good to better, and I am sure as we are preparing for the fourth team to come, it will go from better to best," Arefaine Berhe, Eritrea's minister of agriculture, said in an interview with Xinhua.

A few hundred meters away, in the Sichuan Road and Bridge Group demonstration field, bean seedlings are already covered with green beans.

After the Eritrean government implemented nationwide planting, local people no longer need to buy this popular vegetable at a high price equivalent to tens of yuan a catty (half a kilogram).

"We have introduced many vegetable varieties, including rape and chili, in the hope of providing more and better choices for local people's menus," said Feng Jun, an agricultural expert from southwestern China's Sichuan Province.

After years of war, all industries in Eritrea are waiting for recovery and prosperity. The Eritrean government looks forward to learning from China's development experience in agricultural cooperation with China, so as to help the country achieve sustainable development.

"In any developing country, for people to get out of poverty, it starts from agriculture," Berhe said. "If there is no food, there is no development."

"Achieving food security is the No. 1 human rights achievement," he said. "So China's experience is fantastic, and it is very relevant to us."

(Xinhua reporters Deng Min and Wang Guansen in Nairobi also contributed to the story.)