R.B. Singh
Assistant Director-General and
Regional Representative
Distinguished Participants;
Colleagues from FAO;
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is with great pleasure that, on behalf of the FAO Director-General, and on my own behalf, I welcome you to this Expert Consultation on Agribusiness Statistics.
I am elated to see an excellent response to our invitation. The Expert Consultation is one of the mechanisms we have in FAO for a more focused discussion of specific issues such as the subject matter we have on hand today. It is for this reason that we have purposely limited the number of experts invited for this meeting because we are more concerned with coming out with quality outputs resulting from a lively discussion among experts gathered here. With the interest and prompt reply you have made to our invitation, I am convinced that we will be able to successfully achieve the objectives of this Expert Consultation.
It is likewise gratifying to note that our region, the Asia-Pacific rim, through the initiatives of the Asia and Pacific Commission on Agricultural Statistics (APCAS), is once again taking the lead in setting the foundation for building up the information framework that will support an emerging economic activity that could perhaps provide a long lasting solution to the endemic poverty and food insecurity malaise in the region. This Expert Consultation, I understand, has been convened in order to address the following concerns:
1. To share experiences on the development of agribusiness in selected countries in the region and determine the role of agribusiness in improving national food and agricultural statistical service;Ladies and Gentlemen:2. To formulate an operational framework and identify the components of a functional national agribusiness statistical information system (ASIS) that responds to the diverse information needs of agribusiness stakeholders;
3. To identify priority/key statistics and information that should comprise ASIS, taking into consideration capacity of national statistical organizations; and
4. To develop and provide recommendations on strategies and approaches for strengthening national food and agricultural statistics to support and enhance the development and promotion of agribusiness as a viable economic sector.
We all know that very recently, the global population has surpassed the six billion mark. Sixty percent of these people live in the Asia-Pacific region where close to three billion people live in low-income food deficit countries. We have also in our midst over 500 million people who are undernourished, representing about two-thirds of the global population of malnourished people. Moreover, the region is prone to natural hazards such as floods, droughts, cyclones, typhoons and crop pests adversely affecting foodcrop production. The need for monitoring food production, supply and distribution in the Asia-Pacific countries is, thus, becoming ever more crucial in the context of ensuring food security for all.
Economists forecast that, by 2020, Asia will be the most vibrant economy in the world and some of the today’s developing countries will emerge as the largest economies. Agriculture, in various manifestations, will still be a pivotal component of these economies. Agribusiness will be at the centre of these transformations. Hence we are meeting at the most appropriate time.
Our conventional approach to gathering and providing agricultural statistics is, heretofore, concentrated on production-based information. There are very scarce regular information on the distribution, transformation and consumption of these agricultural products. With the global liberalization of the markets, the restructuring of our statistics and information system has become a primordial necessity if we expect developing countries to be able to engage in a level playing field in the global marketing system. Production statistics we all know, provide only one side of the picture of the supply-demand equilibrium. What happens to the agricultural products after they leave farmgates would be equally important. Unfortunately these information are often not available in many national statistical systems. This imbalance in our national statistical system has undoubtedly contributed to the roller coaster growths of agriculture in many national economies.
The over-reliance we have placed on the conventional production-oriented food and agricultural statistics has also resulted in a gross underestimation of the real contribution of the agricultural sector to national economic growths as measured by the countries’ gross domestic product (GDP). As an inherent process of this economic accounting, agricultural contribution has been unfortunately misconstrued to be limited only to the production of primary agricultural products. A closer analysis of the economic flow of goods and services will bear us out that there will be no food manufactured outputs without available inputs from agricultural production. Fertilizer, agricultural chemicals and pesticides and even agricultural machinery would not have any market if there were no agricultural sector to absorb these products. Even the trade and services sectors would have to rely largely on agriculture as source of their growths. The gaps has distorted or blurred the vision of policy markers in national and international financial systems, including World Bank and Asian Development Bank, in allocating resources to agriculture and rural development. Your statistics can give them light correct these distortions.
I am glad that our ESCAP Regional Adviser on National Accounts has acceded to our request to present a paper on the Agribusiness Satellite Account to put in perspective the proper or alternative way of accounting for the total contribution of the agriculture sector and its forward and backward linkages with other sectors of the economy.
Through your concerted efforts, I am optimistic that we will be able to contribute immensely towards re-orientation of the priorities in our agricultural statistics and information systems.
I am personally attracted to the term agribusiness. By affixing the word business to agriculture, we are, unconsciously perhaps, contributing to providing a human dimension to our statistics. As everybody, I am sure will agree, whenever we talk about business, we always associate it with money, income, prosperity. These are the elements that contribute to improving living conditions and socio-economic welfare of stakeholders in the largely agrarian economies of countries in the region. On hindsight, these aspects are seldom factored in our largely production-based agricultural statistics. Increases in production or even increases in farmgate prices, do not automatically translate to improvement in farm income. Higher production without corresponding markets, often result in production gluts and thus, lower farm prices with the subsequent reduction in farm household disposable income. Similarly, increases in farmgate prices do not always automatically translate to higher profits for the farmers. In many instances, farmgate price increases are triggered either by shortfall in available supply or market imbalances which may not directly result in beneficial effects to the farmers.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
The theme of this year’s World Food Day celebration is “Fight Hunger to Reduce Poverty.” Others say the more appropriate theme should be fight poverty to reduce hunger. Either way, the bottom line of the WFD theme is empowerment. An empowered population can achieve the twin goals of attacking the menaces of poverty and hunger. With the unprecedented developments in information and communication technology, the most powerful tool today for empowerment is INFORMATION.
Hunger stems from lack of access to adequate and stable food supply, which in many instances, is brought about by the endemic poverty conditions of the victims of hunger.
Scholars on poverty have identified three closely related barriers that confluence one another: poverty of money, poverty of access and poverty of power. These make the working, living and social environments of the poor extremely insecure and severely limit the options available to them to improve their lives.
In many instances, our poor agricultural stakeholders subsist on meager, seasonal and unstable income. Thus, they are not in a position to accumulate assets, a key ingredient to the creation of wealth and breaking the cycle of poverty. Lack of information and an almost zero understanding of the interplay among key economic factors such as production, distribution and consumption prevent them from reaping desired economic benefits from their toil. Whatever meager profit or savings they may make often find their way in the hands of scrupulous moneylenders, due primarily to their lack of access to formal credit facilities. The lack of economic means to enjoy basic amenities in life such as food, clothing, shelter and education also contribute to their being mired in poverty. Subsistence farmers often are not able to produce adequate and nutritious foodcrops to feed their siblings. There is little information on marketable surpluses at small farms and must know as to how to organize marketing of their products in the ever competitive markets. Your numbers can give the clue.
I am thus glad to note that many countries in the region have given cognizance on the importance of agribusiness as a tool in alleviating poverty and thus reducing incidence of hunger and malnutrition. Through a well-directed agribusiness development program, countries in the region will be able to attain the twin objectives of maintaining stability in food supply and increasing rural households income. An active promotion and support to rural-based agro-processing industry will result in the reduction of agricultural product wastes brought about by production gluts and low market prices. Adding value to agricultural products through small and medium scale agro-processing industries will go a long way in helping improve the economic welfare and empowerment of poor farming households in rural communities.
Production by masses and not mass production by machines, as emphasized by Mahatma Gandhi, is the way of empowerment of the rural masses. Poverty is essentially a rural phenomenon in Asia. Agriculture-led broad based economic growth, rooted in SMEs, is the way ahead to break from the shackles of poverty. Rural markets, their links with other markets, financial institutions, credit, microbanking (Grameen Bank, self-help groups) is all a part of agribusiness. Statisticians thus cannot afford to ignore these aspects in their date systems.
Needless to say, FAO is committed to support this new thrust in the sustainable development of the agricultural sector. In this information age, there should no longer be any excuse why farmers should be deprived of access to information. I place a lot of confidence that this Expert Consultation on Agribusiness Statistics will set the pace in formulating doable statistical programs and activities that are aimed at truly empowering the farmers by providing them the means to access timely, reliable production and marketing information in the form that are within their level of understanding and comprehension.
I am pleased to note that the Agenda for this Expert Consultation is covering various issues that will influence the development of a demand-driven agribusiness statistical information system at the national, regional and global levels. I have made a quick perusal of the resource papers prepared by our distinguished experts participating in this meeting. The papers, I noted, described varied country experiences in responding to increasing pressures from data users for further sophistication in the content and quality of statistical information to support agribusiness development. I have also observed that in the process, you have made clear articulations of the bottlenecks faced by national statistical organizations in terms of constraints in both resources and technological/methodological areas. In many papers, the authors have likewise identified windows of opportunities and made specific recommendations on how national statistical organizations should re-engineer national agricultural statistical systems to address the needs for information by agribusiness stakeholders.
These observations have boosted my optimism that indeed, at the end of this Expert Consultation, we would be able to formulate sets of proposals on how national statistical organizations in the region should proceed in developing agribusiness statistical information systems, taking into consideration individual countries’ capabilities and limitations. It should also be possible to identify potential national or regional technical development assistance that would provide relief to identified national and regional level constraints in the generation and exchange of useful statistics in agriculture and agribusiness development.
The results of this Expert Consultation, I understand, will be reported at the 19th Session of APCAS to be held in South Korea next year. As in previous APCAS initiatives, we envisaged that the fruits of this Expert Consultation will come in the form of user manuals or guidelines on the proper approach to develop and implement global, regional and national agribusiness statistical information systems. A series of national demonstration centers or training workshops may also be planned thereafter. Please give guidance in these aspects. In this context, ESCAP’s collaboration is most welcome.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
Let me reiterate that you have been invited and have come to participate in this Expert Consultation in your personal capacity and not as official representatives of your Governments. The opinions and views you express in this meeting are, therefore, your own. They do not, and, should not reflect, any position of your organizations or countries. Consequently, during your deliberations of the various Agenda Items, I enjoin you to exchange ideas frankly but in a friendly atmosphere. Your constructive views, I am certain, will contribute immensely to the achievement of the objectives we have set for this Expert Consultation.
I wish you all a very fruitful meeting and a very pleasant stay in this Amazing Thailand.
