The 6th international forum of organic agriculture of the Chehe community, 
themed "Organic agriculture and high quality development", was recently held in 
Datong of north China's Shanxi Province, gathering related experts and scholars 
to discuss the development of organic agriculture.

Experts pointed out that developing organic agriculture is an important move to 
boost high quality development of Shanxi agriculture featuring organic dry 
farming. The organic agriculture model in Chehe, a village-level community in 
Lingqiu County of Datong, is an outcome of planning in advance, industrial 
support, market operation and social participation.

With an arable land of 1,213 mu (about 0.81 square kilometers) among its 27 
square-kilometer area, Chehe, where farming is a major source for income, has 
32 registered poor households involving 77 of its 182 villagers.

Based on the natural ecological resource advantages and with the pilot Chehe 
organic agriculture comprehensive development project, Lingqiu has been 
striving to build organic agriculture parks since 2013.

By adopting the development mode of "organic agriculture plus ecotourism plus 
village reconstruction", it has encouraged the county's largest key industrial 
enterprise to invest in organic agriculture, establish a company specializing 
in the management of organic agriculture, and carry out organic farming, 
breeding and other agricultural transformation projects.

Land transfer has played an important role in Chehe's construction, bringing 
income for the villagers covering land transfer, tourism services, labor 
services and company surplus dividends.

So far, the transfer of the 1,213 mu of arable land has been finished in Chehe 
where 200 mu (about 0.13 square kilometers) of land has been newly developed, 
500 mu (about 0.33 square kilometers) of land has been renovated, and 700 mu 
(about 0.47 square kilometers) of organic farming of coarse cereals, 
vegetables, etc. has been developed.

Serving as a communication platform for organic agricultural practitioners, the 
Chehe international forum of organic agriculture has not only collected the 
wisdom of experts and scholars, but also helped Lingqiu to attract investment, 
changing the impoverished mountainous area in ideological concepts and 
industrial formats, said Zhang Qiang, Party chief of Lingqiu County and deputy 
director of the Standing Committee of Datong Municipal People's Congress.

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Source: Xinhua Silk Road Information Service