The ninth international conference on agricultural competitiveness was held in Beijing on Thursday.

Sponsored by the editorial office of China Agricultural Economic Review, an academic journal, China Agricultural University, and the International Food Policy Research Institute.

The annual conference has acted as a platform for Chinese and international scholars to share the newest academic findings, which may help tackle pressing problems pertaining to China's agricultural and rural development. The theme of conference this year was "Agricultural Competitiveness in China: Assessment, Challenge and Options".

This year, the conference received more than 190 paper submissions, among which 69 were accepted for conference presentation.

More than 150 participants from 10 countries, such as the United States, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom and Japan, attended the conference to present their research findings.

Their presentations were divided into 16 sections, including agricultural policy, poverty and farmland transfer, rural labor and migration, and food consumption, nutrition and health.

There also were renowned speakers giving speeches at the opening ceremony. Chen Xiwen, a member of the Standing Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultation Conference and deputy director of the CPPCC Economic Committee, shared his views about the causes of the lack of competitiveness in China's agriculture. These included the rise of factor prices, the decline of energy prices and specific government policies.

Fan Shenggen, director-general of the International Food Policy Research Institute, listed some of the challenges faced by global agriculture in his speech and suggested that developing countries, including China, need a new agri-food system that is nutrition and health-driven, productive and efficient, inclusive, business-friendly and environmentally sustainable and climate-smart.

To develop such a system, he said developing countries should take measures, such as promoting climate-smart agricultural technologies and using Information Communications Technology (ICT) to link smallholders to urban consumers.

China Agricultural Economic Review, launched in 2008 by China Agricultural University and the Emerald Publishing Group in the United Kingdom, is the third social science journal published on the Chinese mainland that is SSCI indexed, according to Su Baozhong, director of the journal's editorial office.

The journal has become a bridge connecting agricultural economic research in China and the international academic community and a channel to promote the international reputation of Chinese agricultural economists, he said.