From August 18 to 21, 2023, the China Agricultural and Forestry Economics and Management Annual Conference was successfully held in Yangling, Shaanxi Province. With the theme of “Building a Strong Agricultural Country and Realizing Comprehensive Rural Revitalization”, the conference invited nearly 600 experts and scholars at home and abroad to give keynote speeches and reports on academic frontiers, and arranged various forms of academic exchanges, such as the Forum for Agricultural Entrepreneurs, the World Forum on Agricultural Economics, organized symposium, and selected sections.
Six members of UNEP-IEMP were invited to participate in this conference. In the afternoon of August 19, Dr. Yunli Bai organized a symposium titled “Rural Human Capital and Employment” and invited Professor Min Liu of Lanzhou University and Associate Professor Dingde Xu of Sichuan Agricultural University as discussants. There were 4 papers presented in this session and they were presented by Prof. Yu Bai from Minzu University of China, Xinrong Li, from China Agricultural University, and Jiaojiao Wu, as well as Yutong Qiu from UNEP-IEMP. Jiaojiao Wu presented the paper titled “The Evolution of Employment Quality and Occupation Types: Evidence from Rural China”, which provided an empirical analysis of the differences in the employment quality of rural labor force among different occupations. Yutong Qiu gave a presentation on “The impact of Human Capital on the Employment Choice of Rural Laborers”, which estimated the impact of education attainment on the formal and informal employment of rural labor.
Dr. Xiangbo Xu gave a presentation titled “Land operational scale and carbon emissions from cultivation: An analysis based on national rural fixed observation data”. This study identified a U-shaped relationship between land operational scale and carbon emissions from crop cultivation, and analyzed the evolutionary pattern of optimal land operation scale. Xuanye Zeng gave a presentation on “Off-farm Employment, Agricultural Production Activities and Household Dietary Diversity: Evidence from Environmentally and Economically Vulnerable Regions in Asia”. This study investigated the role of off-farm employment in improving household dietary diversity through the substitution, complementarity and income effects of agricultural production activities.
Dr. Bai Yunli and Dr. Xu were invited to serve as discussants for the sessions on “Human Capital” and “Ecology Governance”, respectively.
With above activities, UNEP-IEMP members had in-depth exchanges with scholars from Peking University, Zhejiang University, Renmin University of China, Minzu University of China, China Agricultural University, and other universities and institutes. All their research perspectives were broadened, academic researches and exchange abilities were improved. The conference laid the foundation of cooperation between UNEP-IEMP and other institutions and universities.
