Innovative Poverty Reduction Programme: Specialised Agribusiness Development in Sichuan and Ningxia

Although China has experienced significant economic growth, 43 million people were still living below the poverty line in rural areas as of late 2016, largely in the remote and mountainous areas of the central and western regions. Many of them are smallholder farmers who typically cultivate traditional crops. These farmers face several significant challenges to improving their incomes and job opportunities, including remoteness, poor community infrastructure and limited access to productive assets, markets, and financial resources.

This programme will support increasing poor smallholder farmers' incomes by helping them access finance and new markets, develop agribusinesses, and participate in value chains. The overarching aim of the programme is to reduce rural poverty by strengthening local economies and providing incentives for cooperatives and agroenterprises to integrate poor smallholders into their supply chains.

The programme will directly benefit 198,847 people in Cangxi, Xuanhan, Guang’an, Xuzhou and Yilong counties in the Qinba Mountains in Sichuan Province and Pengyang, Yuanzhou, Sunjiatan, Hongsipu and Xingqing counties in the Liupanshui Mountains in Ningxia Province.

The programme includes several innovative strategies, including connecting smallholder farmers to e-commerce and supermarkets and promoting new benefit-sharing mechanisms between agroenterprises and poor farmers. Because it will operate in two different provinces, the programme will be able to test the viability of these innovative methods across varied contexts and assess the potential for replicating them at a larger scale.