More agricultural cooperation between the United States and China is on the horizon, with more imports and investment in the sector from China, according to participants in a virtual agriculture roundtable meeting.

Agricultural leaders and industrial executives from the two countries discussed how to work with each other at the opening session of the roundtable Tuesday.

Hosted by the United States Heartland China Association (USHCA) and Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC), in collaboration with other Chinese and American partners, the monthlong roundtable includes three dialogues respectively on trade and business, agriculture education and between think tanks of the US and China.

Themed "Shared Challenges for a Shared Future: Finding the Way Forward", the series of programs is dedicated to three pioneers who helped transform agriculture: George Washington Carver, Norman Borlaug and Yuan Longping.

Carver was an American agricultural scientist and inventor who promoted alternative crops to cotton and methods to prevent soil depletion.

Yuan is a globally renowned Chinese agricultural scientist known as the "father of hybrid rice". Borlaug was an American agronomist who led initiatives worldwide that contributed to the extensive increases in agricultural production termed the Green Revolution.

"The USHCA strongly believes that agriculture can help accelerate a climatewise recovery for America as well as act as a stabilizing bedrock for the important US-China bilateral relationship," said Bob Holden, chairman and CEO of the USHCA and former governor of Missouri. "Through this global sharing of ideas, we hope to shed a light on a way forward that would benefit China, the US and the planet."

Lin Songtian, president of CPAFFC, said that for reasons well known, agricultural trade between the two countries has dropped dramatically in recent years — roughly 37 percent in 2018 and another 12 percent in 2019 — while China's agriculture imports increased 9 percent for both years from elsewhere.

"The deterioration of the bilateral relationship inevitably forced China to seek more stable supplies of agricultural products elsewhere. The fact has proven that win-win cooperation is the only right choice for the development of both countries. Despite some fundamental differences, dialogue is better than confrontation and conducive for better understanding of each other," Lin said.

Minister Xu Xueyuan from the Chinese embassy in Washington said the fact that China and the US are the largest agriculture importers and exporters, respectively, is helpful for a cooperative relationship.

"China imported $24.5 billion (in) agricultural product from the US in 2020, a 67 percent jump from the previous year. It accounted for almost 20 percent of China's total imports from the US. As China continues to fulfill the phase one of the bilateral trade agreement, China is expected to import more agricultural products from the US.

"There is also great potential in exchanges of agricultural technology and personnel training. All these will provide a driving force for the development of the China-US relationship," Xu said.

US Department of Agriculture Deputy Undersecretary Jason Hafemeister told the audience that "the United States and China share a long history of agriculture cooperation that dates back to the beginning of the bilateral relations in the 1970s". He said those relations "remain vitally important especially as once again China is our top market".

Hafemeister said that the US looks forward to working with China to reach zero emissions in agriculture and is "eager to resume talks with China with specific focus on harnessing new technologies" to feed the globe in a sustainable way.

Ni Ping, president of Wangxiang America and the China General Chamber of Commerce (CGCC)-Chicago, said that the US heartland has become a second home to many Chinese companies, and more will come.

"Despite that the bilateral relationship has hit a very low point, two-thirds of CGCC members have said that they will increase their investment in the United States," Ni said. "These Chinese companies are exporting billions of dollars of US agricultural products to China, investing hundreds of millions of dollars in the US agricultural industry in the Midwest (and) creating a lot of meaningful platforms by which more ideas and information can be shared."

Deputy governors from Hubei and Hebei provinces; Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds; secretaries of state from Alabama and Iowa; and other US officials and executives from companies such as Syngenta and John Deere also joined the opening session and expressed a desire to see more bilateral cooperation.

Sarah Lande, who hosted Xi Jinping in 1985 for two days in Muscatine, Iowa, before he became president of China, and Kenneth Quinn, president emeritus at the World Food Prize Foundation, recounted the people-to-people exchanges between the US heartland and China. Video footage of Xi's visit to Iowa and of various Americans' visits to China was shared at the event.