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.
According to local media reports, Barry Friedman says that in recent years Wal-Mart has cooperated with China's Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of Agriculture to help farmers increase revenue, encourage local economic development, secure food safety, protect the environment, and provide cheap and high quality agricultural products to consumers. In addition, it has also worked to cut carbon emissions from retailing products by improving the supply cycle and adopting scientific farming method.
From 2007, when the CAWS program was launched in China, Wal-Mart has set up 11 direct-purchasing bases in many cities in China. With a total area of 150,000 mu, the bases directly benefit as many as 280,000 Chinese consumers.
As one of the first group of retailing enterprises to pilot the CAWS program, Wal-Mart plans that one million farmers will benefit from the program by the end of 2011.
