China, U.S. Agriculture Heads Restart Dialogue on Cooperation After Eight-Year Hiatus

What’s new: The heads of the Chinese and U.S. agriculture departments met in Washington this week, reviving a channel set up to foster cooperation and trade that has been put on hold for over eight years as the two sides work to ease tensions in an ongoing trade war.

In the first meeting of the China-U.S. Joint Committee on Cooperation in Agriculture (JCCA) since November 2015, Chinese Agriculture Minister Tang Renjian and his U.S. counterpart Tom Vilsack pledged to “cherish, carefully nurture and ensure the stable operation of this mechanism,” the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs said in a statement .