On 10-11 December 2019 Russia chaired a Meeting of the Permanent Expert Working Group On Agriculture in the Member States of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in Moscow.
The participants discussed many aspects of the SCO member states' activities in agriculture. They reviewed matters of further expanding cooperation under a new version of the Programme for International Trade and Economic Cooperation until 2025, the Memorandum of Understanding between the SCO Secretariat and the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, signed on the sidelines of the 2 November 2019 SCO Heads of Government Council (HGC) Meeting in Tashkent.
The participants also discussed a draft Plan to Implement the SCO Food Safety Cooperation Programme and set forth an outline for the group's work through 2020, including measures to implement the Memorandum of Understanding between authorised agencies of SCO member states on technical cooperation to prevent and combat trans-border epizootic disease.
The parties noted the importance of studying various possibilities for further technological exchanges in agriculture in the context of China's efforts to build an SCO demonstration ground for exchanging and mastering agrarian technologies.
After the meeting, the parties signed a protocol and agreed to hold the Meeting of Agriculture Ministers and the above Expert Working Group On Agriculture in the Member States of the SCO in 2020 in Moscow.