Ministers from the G7 nations yesterday agreed to promote agricultural innovation and investment, as farmers face the twin challenges of an aging workforce and extreme weather at a time when international food demand is increasing.
“Motivated, skilled and enterprising farmers are essential for the growth of the agricultural sector,” the ministers said in a joint statement after two days of meetings focused on food security in Niigata Prefecture, Japan.
“We will help farmers enhance their capability and skills” by facilitating access to information and communication technologies, precision farming and agricultural innovations, they said.
The average age of growers in developed countries is now about 60, according to the UN. The average age of Japanese farmers is about 67, government data showed.
“We have so much more in common than we have in differences,” US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said in a joint news conference. “In this particular meeting, we really focused on those things we have in common”
The meeting was also attended by agriculture ministers, including Japan’s Hiroshi Moriyama, Germany’s Christian Schmidt, Italy’s Maurizio Martina and Canada’s Lawrence Macaulay. The UK was represented by parliamentary under secretary George Eustice, and France by its ambassador to Japan, Thierry Dana.
For Saturday’s dinner Moriyama served the guests premium Kobe beef, which Japan wants to promote overseas, and sake from 90 breweries in Niigata, Japan’s largest rice producing region. The menu also included dishes with vegetables grown in Fukushima Prefecture to showcase the recovery of agricultural production in the area hit by a record earthquake and a nuclear disaster in March 2011.
The ministers agreed to: Increase opportunities for women and youth in the agricultural sector to stimulate development; expand farmers’ participation in food value chains and encourage them to participate in food processing, distribution and service sectors to boost income; fight against animal and plant diseases, and biological threats; establish a cooperation framework for technical information sharing among veterinary authorities in order to tackle the global common challenges in public and animal health; reduce food loss and waste, and support international research cooperation for climate change.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day