Papua New Guinea's top agricultural research chief has highlighted the potential for China's agricultural development experience to benefit his country and other Pacific island nations.
Nelson Simbiken, director-general of Papua New Guinea's National Agricultural Research Institute, made the remarks when attending the 11th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Food Security Ministerial Meeting on Tuesday in Hangzhou, in east China's Zhejiang Province, with other global delegates.
As a flagship event of APEC "China Year" and one of the region's highest-level multilateral gatherings of 2026, the meeting gathered around 200 delegates from the 21 APEC economies, the APEC Secretariat, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, and other international organizations.
Discussions focused on key issues including agricultural and rural development, digital transformation, and food security challenges.
In an interview with CGTN, Simbiken said China's experience in geographic indication and environmental sustainability could be applied in his country.
"I'm pretty sure geographic indication (GI) environmental sustainability programs that have been supported in China can be implemented in Papua New Guinea. We use the program, that system, to establish a resilient ecosystem planning process so that we are able to monitor the environment and weather systems. We monitor the ecosystem survival, the rate of destruction that is taking place and how we can harness those very minute weather data," he said.
"And at the same time, the agronomic data systems will feed into those algorithms that we can use AI, especially mapping, digital soil mapping to come into place so that we can identify agro-ecological systems that supports a production through GI or geographic indication environmental system for premium markets," he continued.
Simbiken also noted that APEC can play an important role in helping economies develop stronger and more sustainable agricultural sectors and rural communities, drawing lessons from China's rural development path.
"We look at China. The Chinese economy was very rural based and is still a developing economy from the rural set up. It's a bottom-up process of enabling food systems being developed well and having that knowledge and lessons that we can learn from our good policy on rural farm mechanizations, good policy on good farm seed systems in the country and at the same time, good policy on dissemination of information across the farming communities," said Simbiken.
"That lesson can be also applied to Papua New Guinea and the greater Pacific because the Pacific Island communities also can benefit from those interactions that we have. We're already entering into that phase in a country where we are connected to GIS (Geographic Information System) here in the country and at the same time, on specific research institutions here, working with us in Papua New Guinea," he added.
Papua New Guinea agricultural expert says AI, Chinese support boost food security
