China food security: Syngenta buyout shows Beijing’s haste to plug technology gap with foreign expertise

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Liu Ligang, a farmer from Weixian county in the northern Chinese province of Hebei, was prepared to give up growing crops in 2018, just three years after he began leasing 160 mu (10.7 hectares) of land at an annual cost of about 128,000 yuan (US$19,800).

“I kept losing money, the output failed to increase. I was already thinking about returning the land and didn’t want to plant any more,” Liu said as he sat in a conference room owned by ag-tech giant Syngenta Group China in Weixian.