In june 2016 I visited South China to promote GODAN among agricultural research Institutions. I gave presentations at the Guangdong Academy of Agricultural Science, the Guangxi Academy of Agricultural Science and Information and Documentation Center of the Chinese Academy of Science in Chengdu. The Chengdu Center and the Guangdong Agricultural Academy joined GODAN.

In 2016, GODAN was the first time officially appointed as an Observer to the meeting of the  G20 Agricultural Chief Scientists. I represented the GODAN secretariat at the meeting in   Xian.  Now all important Agricultural institutions of G20 members are GODAN partners (except Russia). Germany announced at the meeting to hold a Linked Open Data workshop in 2017 and to create a German position in the GODAN secretariat

UPM in Kuala Lumpur is the AGRIS center with which my team in FAO has a collobaration of more than a decade.   So it was a special pleasure for me to come here to present GODAN. This was in the context of a meeting on "sharing of scientific information".  I was enthusiastic about the activities of the loca AGRIS center.

It is true for most countries, what the Economists retains nearly a Dogma: democracy and individual freedom go together. But this is not true for nearly half of the worlds population. The democratic India want to punish homosexuality with 14 years of jail; the Chinese autocracy is tolerant towards gays (actually the government campaigns for tolerance in the population.

On April 30 2013,  the G8 organized a summit on open data in Agriculture. It took place in Washinton at the Worldbank. I represented the EC and the EC funded project agInfra.