In the last five decades or so, the diverse archival material, unique research perspective, and impressive research findings of the Intuition of Chinese Agricultural Civilization have attracted numerous domestic and foreign scholars in the field to come discuss and exchange ideas, including Joseph Needham, Francesca Bray, and Amano Motonosuke. Among them, Fellow of the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, Dr. Needham, had made two special trips to visit our institution regarding questions on the history of agricultural science and technology, discussing with experts such as Wan Guoding, Chen Hengli, Hu Xiwen, Li Changnian, and Chen Zugui. He gave high compliments for the archival collection and research work at our institution.
The Institution has always made academic exchange sits priority. Today it is the affiliated institution of the Professional Committee of Agronomy History of Chinese Society for the History of Science and Technology, the Professional Committee of Animal Husbandry and Veterinarian History of Chinese Agricultural History Association, and the Research Society of Jiangsu’s Agricultural History. In terms of world academic exchanges, it has established excellent cooperative relationships with institutes and scholars of agricultural history research in the U.K., U.S., France, Japan, Korea, Canada, the Netherlands, as well as in the regions of Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Presently, the institution has jointly founded the NAU-PU Joint Center for China Studies with Purdue University in the U.S., the Joint Center of Origin and Diffusion of Agriculture with the University of Reading in the U.K., the “Research Center for the Comparative Study of Sino-Japanese Agricultural History” with related institutions in Japan, and the “Sino-Korean Cultural Exchange Center” with the Society of Korean Agricultural History. It has a long-standing cooperative relationship with the Needham Research Center at Cambridge University, and has jointly established the “Collaborative Innovation Center for the Transformation and Farmer Development of China’s Villages” with Center for Farmers’ Development of Zhejiang Agriculture and Forestry University as well as the Rural Economy Research Center of the Agriculture Ministry.