A third cohort of the Pakistani Prime Minister's Initiative for Capacity Building of 1,000 Agricultural Graduates in China began, with 107 Pakistani agricultural professionals set to undertake three months of modern agricultural technology training at Northwest A&F University in Yangling, Shaanxi, China.

The opening ceremony marked the latest stage of Pakistan's initiative to train 1,000 agricultural personnel in China, China Economic Net (CEN) reported on Monday.

The programme is intended to strengthen the technical capacity of agricultural professionals who can support farmers and agricultural development after returning to Pakistan.

Muhammad Akbar Khan, director of agriculture extension at the Punjab Agriculture Department in Lahore, Pakistan, visited the China Yangling Agricultural Hi-Tech Fair on Saturday, considered it important for building the capacity of younger agricultural personnel.

Khan is spending three weeks in China undertaking training, with visits to different cities before his stop in Yangling.

He said the training had exposed him to technologies and methods that could be useful to Pakistan's farming sector.

At the fair, he singled out an artificial intelligence-based farmer-support system, saying that new technologies and better-organised agricultural information could help farmers improve production.

Khan told CEN that the programme was intended to develop young professionals who could support farming communities at provincial and national levels.

He also identified agricultural extension and modern technology as areas with scope for further cooperation between China and Pakistan.

The challenge, he said, was to translate training into projects and practical results.

Asked about outcomes from the programme's first two cohorts, Khan cautioned that it was too early to draw firm conclusions.

He said results would take time because participants and institutions needed to plan projects, develop them and move towards implementation.

While training could benefit individuals, broader effects would depend on how the knowledge was applied.

Khan added that the Pakistani government was seeking to make training and capacity-building efforts more collaborative by engaging different stakeholders.

For Pakistan, this includes reaching smallholder farmers, who Khan said needed to be more involved in productive agriculture.

Credit: Independent News Pakistan (INP) — Pak-China