Qu Dongyu, China’s deputy agricultural minister, was elected [June 23] as the new director general of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, the first person from a Communist country to hold the influential FAO post.
The agency’s 194 member countries convened at the FAO headquarters in Rome to choose a successor to José Graziano da Silva of Brazil for the 4-year term. Qu, 55, a biologist by training, won 108 votes, followed by France’s Catherine Geslain-Laneelle with 71 votes and Georgia’s Davit Kirvalidze with 12, according to official results. The United States had backed Kirvalidze.
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Prior to the vote, Qu said he aims to focus on hunger and poverty eradication, tropical agriculture, drought land farming, digital rural development and better land design through transformation of agricultural production. An expert on agriculture and rural areas, he has worked in the field for more than 30 years.
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