Green Silk Road and Sustainable Agriculture in Southeast Europe
Institute of International Politics and Economics, Belgrade, Serbia
Abstract
The disruption in the supply of food as strategic resource during COVID-19 pandemic, highlighted the need for countries to provide a more stable internal food supply. The focus of this paper is on the countries of Southeast Europe (SEE), which have significant but underutilized agricultural potentials. The SEE countries need financial, but also technical and expert assistance for sustainable growth in agricultural productivity. China is emerging as the most appropriate partner given the long-term and successful cooperation with CEE countries and its focus on green investment within new concept of Green Silk Road. In addition, China has made a remarkable technological breakthrough in the field of sustainable agriculture, including production and implementation of Smart Agriculture principles and tools.
This paper point to the untapped opportunities of partnership between China and SEE countries in the field of implementation of sustainable food production, with a focus on the concept of Smart Agriculture (SA). The most important questions of this research are: “What specific concepts of Smart Agriculture are the most appropriate for SEE countries?” and “In which segments of sustainable agriculture does China have the most ability to provide technical and expert assistance?” The results indicated great potential of joint projects in the form of application of China`s technical achievements in SEE agriculture, but also of transferring the entire China`s successfully applied concept of “resource and ecologically sound” (RES) agriculture, which seems very compatible with the needs of SEE agriculture.