U.S.-based Starbucks Coffee Company signed memorandum of understanding deals in China to assist local farmers to develop better sustainability practices.

Herbalife Ltd. held a ground-breaking ceremony in Changsha, Hunan, for its state-of-the-art extraction facility for botanical extracts, powders and pure compounds to be used in its inner and outer nutrition products.

News from a meeting of Tibet's Political Consultative Conference held in Lhasa is that Tibet plans to build 400 rural retail stores in the autonomous region's agricultural and pastoral areas to address the problems of the local population in purchasing commodities.

Barry Friedman, the vice president of Wal-Mart China, has stated that Wal-Mart will actively push forward the "Connecting Agriculture With Supermarkets" program in China, benefiting one million Chinese farmers over the next three years.

The China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation has formally initiated a program to provide fund assistance to 10,000 people who live in extreme poverty in China.

Guangdong provincial government has initiated a new program for poverty alleviation which aims to help 700,000 farming households out of poverty in three years.

Operating similarly to micro-enterprises, China's first chain village inns will open in May 2009 in Dujiangyan, Sichuan.