Forum global sur la sécurité alimentaire et la nutrition (Forum FSN)

Dear colleagues,

APEC food security Training and Workshop was recently concluded in Beijing from September 7 to 9, 2015. More than 60 experts and young researchers attended this training and workshop. The participants came from different 12 APEC countries like Chile, Peru, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand and Vietnam and 9 non APEC economies.  As a new beginning, an online discussion has been also created jointly with FAO Food Security network forum where 59 enthusiastic people from different parts of the world contributed to online discussion about the issues related to this workshop. This experience was also highly helpful. As the head of organizing committee, I would like to thank everybody who took part and contributed in this training workshop and also online discussions.

Today, we live in an integrated world and our learning and experiences are valuable to each other. By coming together, I believe, APEC economy has made a noble beginning of sharing experiences. I am pleased to share with you that we were successfully able to share with each other about different emerging issues like food value chain, market and trade, food security and nutrition, resilience and foresights. The experts’ presentation on the workshop is well appreciated and I would like to particularly thank the speakers also.  The presentations are posted in this online discussion for further interactive communication as well.

The training and workshop for food security scholars in the APEC economies is the beginning only and it is a part of the large scale ongoing food security training program undertaken by our institute at CAAS. We look forward to building a scholars’ database along with discussing and putting forward scientific, reasonable and widely used method and system to measure and monitor food security policy in future. We hope our path will cross soon in future.

Thank you all. 

Prof. Nie Fengying

Director International Division

Agriculture Information Institute

Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences

Dear Friends,

It's my honor to participate in the discussion of Food security and nutrition.

With the development of society, people gradually pursuit the physical and mental health not merely emphasis on the mental wealth, which lead to them take measures to prevent from disease, while food security and nutrition is the most basic condition they need. Youths can be as communicators of the knowledge about food security and nutrition to transfer to their families, relatives, and friends and so on.

Therefore, it is of importance to provide a platform for youths obtaining the relative knowledge. Firstly, the platform is easy for them to find. Secondly, the specific measures on the platform can be practiced at ease and convenience.

Yours sincerely

Alphin

Dear all

I would like to respond to the question on; How can we ensure the participation of youth in the wider food security dialogue?

First of all i think for the youth to actively participate in food security dialogues, they need to be exposed to food security issues, and have a clue regarding to whats going on around and how important it is so as to capture their interest. Capturing the interest of the youth to food security issues need them being engaged or exposed to such issues at young ages especially in the early grades of various education systems so that they have an appreciation of food security issues early . The result is that if many of them develop an interest in food security at a young age, then a greater proportion of them will likely be able to take courses to do with agriculture and food security at tertiary level of education and eventually develop their careers around those subjects. For example i have just learnt that in Zimbabwe agriculture has been added as a compulsory subject in primary school, and i think it is out of that consideration to make students grow with an appreciation of agriculture and food security issues. 

Therefore in conclusion, ensuring participation of the youth in the wider food security dialogue should be viewed as a long term process which does not happen over night but starts with developing their interest over time as they grow from childhood.

Kind regards

Comfort Mare

To ensure the youth's participation,  I think we should do something in several aspects. First,  universities, research institutes should give more chances to youngers, such as the APEC Food Security Training and Workshop. Through this event, everyone has learned a lot about food security, and in a more profound way compared to learning with books and papers by ourselves. What's more, it's necessary to improve the awareness of food security of the youth through all kinds of means. Last but not least, the youth themselves should be more active to participate in the wider food security dialogue.

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- Vous savez, l'agriculture africaine repose généralement sur les petits agriculteurs (plus 70% de la population) qui utilisent souvent des terres arables dont ils sont héritiers de leurs parents. Alors, l'utilisation individuelle de ces terres est le principe observable partout. C'est ainsi que chaque agriculteur produit pour sa subsistance.

- Pour aider ces agriculteurs à produire beaucoup pour lutter contre l'insérurité alimentaire, il faut d'abord résoudre le problème de changement climatique qui affecte dangereusement leur cultures, les orienter vers l'agriculture moderne qu'ils ne connaisaient pas: donc les éduquer, les former,  leurs donner un accès facile aux crédits agricoles, aux perticides de qualité, aux angrais. Une assistante tehnique s'impose pour accroitre leur rentabilité. Les ingénieurs agronomes doivent désormais se retrouver aux champs et non dans les bureaux.

- Au Togo, les crédits octroyés aux petits agriculteurs sont recouvrés en nature par la structure prévu par le gouvernement. Mais avec les aléas climatiques les petits agriculteurs se nourissent de la pauvreté, de la malnutition, de l'insécurité alimentaire etc...

- Pour des recherches en matière de sécurité alimentaire, le Togo a des défis à relever.

- Bien que la jeunesse de la zone rurale a souvent la volonté de se consacrer à l'agriculture, la non maîtrise du climat, les pluies qui se rarifient en saison pluvieuse, les mauvaises saisons les découragent et beaucoup d'entre eux se convertissent en conducteurs de taxi - moto. Donc, pour les redynamiser il faut lutter contre le changement climatique, developper une politique de reboisement, lutter pour la reforestation, assurer la production agricole, motiver les agriculteurs, eduquer et former les jeunes et professionaliser l'agriculture avec tout les atouts liés de la vieillesse. Les groupements agricoles sont aussi un bon canal pour la jeunesse. Et pour se faire entendre, c'est mieux que les petits agriculteurs se constituent en associations d'agriculteurs.

>> English translation will be available soon <<

Bonjour,

Merci pour l'opportunité.

Pour moi, pour que les petits agriculteurs soient écoutés et mieux pris en compte, ils doivent se constituer en groupes pour pouvoir faire le poids. Par exemple, si nous prenons un produit agricole qui doit être vendu, plus les offreurs sont nombreux, plus les acquéreurs (peu nombreux généralement dans les zones de production) auront la chance de monopoliser le marché. C'est un exemple parmi tant d'autres pour dire que la promotion des coopératives/groupements agricole serait un véritable atout pour les petits producteurs. Ceci sera possible quand les agriculteurs seront éduqués et informés. Quand ils verront leurs intérêts en jeu, ils décideront eux-mêmes.

L'exemple le plus innovant dans mon pays le Togo au cours de ces dernières années en matière de sécurité alimentaire est sans doute le PNIASA (Programme National d'Investissement Agricole et de Sécurité Alimentaire). Composé de trois grands projets, ce programme du ministère de l'agriculture a permis au pays de tout relancer dans l'agriculture. Contrairement au passé, on voit de plus en plus l'implication de l'Etat dans les questions de développement de l'agriculture. En effet, à travers des actions concrètes d'appui direct aux agriculteurs, tout le monde commence par prendre au sérieux l'activité. La preuve, il de nos jours des centaines de micro-entreprises agricoles.

Toutefois si nous voulons parler de la sécurité alimentaire au Togo, je dirai que mon pays est encore à ses débuts. Avec généralement deux repas par jour, les Togolais vivent la malnutrition et la sous nutrition. Cette déclaration du ministre de l'agriculture du Togo en 2008 je cite: " 1/3 de la population togolaise souffre de malnutrition chronique" est une confirmation. Qui parle de sécurité alimentaire évoque la disponibilité, l'accessibilité et la qualité des aliments dont se nourrissent les populations. Les efforts entrepris et que je salue personnellement doivent continuer et s'accentuer pour le bonheur de tous.

Merci.

ALLADO Koffi,

Ecole Supérieure d'Agronomie de l'Université de Lomé.

What I would like to share relates to the first question on How can smallholder farmers benefit from global value chains? and partly to the second question on What are the challenges for policy implementation in your country related to food security research?

I will refer to our experience at the German Development Institute, where I am leading a project that evaluates the impact of agricultural economic corridor development on poverty, employment, land tenure, productivity and food security. Although my main focus is on the Nacala in Mozambique, one component of my project is the comparison of the Nacala corridor with the Greater Mekong Subregion East West Economic Corridor (GMS EWEC) that traverses Myanmar, Thailand, Lao PDR and Vietnam. I will also refer to our recently concluded project on enterprise upgrading where we looked at factors that affected the growth of micro and small enterprises in the Philippines, Egypt and India. Finally, I will also refer to another recently concluded project on FDI in retail in India.

Smallholder farmers benefit tremendously from being integrated into global value chains. The learning that occurs when farmers are integrated into GVCs is a key component to their growth. Farmers learn about standards (for example, on chemical use), how to increase productivity (on seeds, farming techniques and practices), new technology (on machineries or mechanization) and even on communication (for example, the benefits of cooperatives, networking, ICT for agriculture). The downside of this is when smallholders could not be integrated into GVCs because they simply could  not change production systems to adapt to higher standards or higher productivity levels because it is expensive, complicated or time intensive. However, even in this sense, policy makers could help farmers be competitive by supporting their venture into other employment opportunities such as becoming traders or self employed into non-agricultural or semi-agricultural businesses. Global value chains simply open up doors for smallholders and provides them the option to select what they think will improve their situation.

The problem is the HOW. Firstly there needs to be more high-quality tailored food security-related research in APEC. More funding should be provided to conduct relevant research that translates into implementable policies for the region. These researches should set out from the beginning, a monitoring and evaluation element as well as a pathways to impact component, such that, from the beginning the research envisions what kind of impact (and to whom) it will create. Secondly, knowing that food security research in the APEC is uncommon, knowledge management is critical. I am not aware if there is a consotium or an institution that gathers and manages all the food security knowledge that is available for the region. This should be one of the priorities in the APEC.

Thank you very much!

Dr. Aimée Hampel-Milagrosa

Senior Researcher

 

I think the key to the participation of youth in the wider food security dialogue is that youth have to know "what is food security" , "why does people have to face food insecurity" and "the situation of food security".  We have to take some measures to attract their attention to food security. So the question is "what measures should we take to attract their attention" ,"how to attract their attention" or "What condition should we create for them to pay attention to food security". The condition maybe television  commercials, brochures about food insecurity, or a course in school and college.