Food Security and Nutrition in APEC Economies. Sharing lessons learned and looking into the future
Dear Friends,
It is a matter of great pleasure to invite you to an online discussion on Food Security and Nutrition in APEC economies.
This discussion is organized in the context of the “APEC Food Security Training and Workshop” that the Agriculture Information Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agriculture Sciences is hosting on September 7-9, 2015 in Beijing, China.
APEC is the premier Asia-Pacific economic forum which goal is to support sustainable economic growth and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region.
The major objectives of the workshop are to promote communications among APEC economies’ food security researchers and experts, build interest on food security strategies, enhance research capacity and offer policy recommendations to improve food security. The training and workshop will identify existing methodologies, tools and best practices of food security researches and improve future research on food security and research issues.
Notwithstanding the regional aim of the workshop, we believe that the knowledge of experts from APEC economies can be of great value to practitioners in the rest of the world on food security and vice versa.
In order to allow the workshop to benefit the food security community as much as possible, our vision therefore is that interested individuals, food security professional, practitioners, researchers and students from all over the world can join this event through this online discussion. On the days of the workshop we will share the write-up and results from the training sessions with all of you, while the inputs received through this online discussion will be discussed at the meeting.
Given the above we would like to invite you to reflect on the following guiding questions drawing on the experience in your country.
- How can smallholder farmers benefit from global value chains?
- What is the most striking example of measures that have improved Food security and Nutrition in your country in the last decade?
- What are the challenges for policy implementation in your country related to food security research?
- How can we ensure the participation of youth in the wider food security dialogue?
If you would like to provide your feedback to this online discussion please do not hesitate to comment on the discussions website or to send your comments to [email protected]. Please also feel free to circulate this information among your colleagues
Comments are welcome in English, French, Spanish and Chinese
Our sincere thanks go to all of you for the active participation and the open exchange of views!
We look forward to meeting you online.
Prof. Nie Fengying
Director
International Division
Agriculture Information Institute
Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences
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Small farmers can benefit from glabal value chain by overcoming some challenges to access training services and develop the technical and managerial capabilities they need to improve their productivity. Economic growth in many countries like China and some asian countries has continued as Scientific and technical knowledge has been used to rise the productivity of labour. In Togo, more than 60% of small farmers have no access to technical knowledge. It's important that government and partners have to play an important role in promoting skill and innovation investment among young people and all stakholders to improve some important determinants of agricultural productivity in the country.
Hello;
How can smallholder farmers benefit from global value chains?
- Govt/business groups of that local/regional can sell report day to day like weather, soil & many that those small farmers can be benefitted.
What is the most striking example of measures that have improved Food security and Nutrition in your country in the last decade?
-Now Bangladesh is thinking to use disaster as an option for development.
What are the challenges for policy implementation in your country related to food security research?
-Too many branches & research is ignored.
How can we ensure the participation of youth in the wider food security dialogue?
-It's better to have mobile research & data updating center for each village.
Regards,
Moshfaqur
4. How can we ensure the participation of youth in the wider food security dialogue?
At Farms & Gardens for the Disabled, we raise the level of the soil to within easy reach. This has several effects on the gardening dynamic.
Youth are more likely to participate in the food security dialogue if gardening is made more accessible. There appear to be three main reasons for this.
1. Gardening is more enjoyable if you can stand upright, move around, and work with others.
2. Success grows enthusiasm.
3. Elevated gardening can happen almost everywhere.Food, herbs and natural remedies can be produced in places where it is otherwise not possible to grow anything.
The passage of knowledge and experience from elders to youth is facilitated, simply because both can work the same beds.
Insect pests, rodent infestation, weeding and watering are all managed more easily in beds that have been raised three feet (one meter) into the air.
1-) Les petits agriculteurs pratiquent l'agriculture traditionnelle avec la houe ou la daba. Quelques rares personnes louent de tracteur pour le premier défrichage. La culture de céréales: maïs, mil, la culture d'oléagineux et de tubercules est plus fréquent. certains agriculteurs bénéficient de prêts agricoles de l'Etat et d'angrais chimiques. Ces prêts sont souvent rembousés en nature après la récolte. Il faut signaler que peu d'agriculteur bénéficie de ces avantages.
pour rectifier, il faut que le projet de prêt soit accessible à tous les petits agriculteurs. Il faut créer les adaptations climatiques favorable à la production agricole rentable. Il faut le reboisement et la protection des forêt et éviter les feux de bousse. La campagne agricole doit viser la modernisation de l'agriculture, la rentabilité en passant par l'énergie renouvelable, l'agriculture mécanisée, d'où le transfert de la technologie agricole.
2-) Pour lutter contre la sécurité alimentaire, le Ministère de l'agriculture a créé un service appelé ANSAT qui octroie les prêts aux agriculteurs et gère les produits reçus en contrepartie. Mais cette année 2015, le prix des céréales sur le marché est très élevé :850Fcfa le bol contre 500Fcfa en 2014. Le changement climatique, la rareté des pluies, des péneries céréalières en sont les causes. Donc la sécurité alimentaire au Togo n'est plus une assurance si déjà au 4 septembre , il n'y a pas encore eu une première pluie pour la petite saison qui commence normalement déjà en Août.
3-) Des recherches au Togo portent sur les semences rentables mais il reste beaucoup à faire sur le plan technologique, les terres arables, les pecticides non nuisible à l'homme etc...
4-) Pour impliquer la jeunesse dans le dévelopement agricole, il faut une politique agricole orientée vers une formation agricole, une modernisation de l'agriculture, un recrutement des jeunes dans le secteur agricole avec toutes les garanties de sécurité sociale, une adaptation climatique avec l'énergie renouvelable, le développement de la technologie et de la science.
Regarding question one, I should say two things can help them in my point of view, first giving them opportunity to get organic, biodynamic etc. certificate or produce crops with high quality (because they have mostly small field or farm) therefore they can sail their products in higher price and even export to developed countries, in this way government and big company invest in rural area and cover their lands. Secondly, it is necessary to establish post harvest companies in rural areas to do it and packaging their products.
About question two, there are different successful stories in my country, but most striking example could be develop fish culture in dryness area instead of vegetables and crop cultivation.
One of most important challenges regarding Food Security Research in Iran is ignoring quality of food. In other words, most research work only have pay attention to amount of production even by unsustainable methods and unhealthy materials like GMO. Another negative point in Food Security Research is lack of economic analysis in research works either ecological or financially. For example, most of researchers don’t calculate virtual water in their analysis! in spite the fact Iran is located in arid and semi arid area and face to climate change and global warming nowadays!
In my view, for involving youth in agriculture ei. food security, we should make it more interesting and use of modern technology in this sector. We, in YPARD Iran, are developing a concept entitled "ECO- FRIENDLY VILLAGE" which you can find attached. We can change our rural area more environmental friendly to achieve our goals in Food Security by young researcher by following "ECO-FRIENDLY VILLAGE CONCEPTS".
I would appreciate if you assist me to improve the concept!
I would like to answer the second question.
I am interested in China's " Nutrition Improvement Plan" for rural students during nine-year compulsory education. As big part of China's long-term educational reform, the plan aimed to solve the nutrition problems of pupils in rural shools. The program subsidized every child with 3 Yuan per day in 2012, and the total expenses on each child was 600 yuan per year. By using the money, many schools provided their students with "a carton of milk and an egg" per day. Due to poverty, many rural students in western China could rarely eat those two foods before that, so the program had a significant effect on their's nutrition and health. According to a survey, the anemia rate of rural students in western China decreased around 3%, and their weights and heights increased about 0.3 kg and 0.3 cm respectively since the program was implemented, and they got higher scores in exams as well. Since the total expenses of the program only made up 3% of central governmental budget, I think the program couldn't be a big burden for the goverment. Desipte there are some problems in the implementation, I think the chronic infulence of the program will be tremendous compared with the limited cost.
Looking through the comments list I thought that a good method for addressing question 4 will be through schools. If today they take time to teach children in schools be tolerant to different members of the society, such as refugees, sexual minorities, or people of all religions, then teaching the importance of food security should certainly be included as well. IB (international baccalaureate) diploma schools have a subject called CAS (Creativity, action, service) where the students can implement social work and get credit for it. Why not to include the issue of food security as a topic there?
From my point of the fourth question, I think to ensure the participation of youths in wider food security issue need bidirectional efforts.
In one respect,strenghthening agricultural education is essential and vital for youths.Through this way,it makes they have preliminary understanding to food security.In order to enhance propaganda,provide some novel ways to attract young people's attention.Such as using the internet platform to push a lot of relevant videos or interesting pictures.
In other respect,the youths must set up a good awareness ,a correct attitude and spend their spare time to pay attention to the problems of this field.After all,this is closely related to life.If you have the opportunity to participate in the discussion, treat it actively.Everything has its own charm,I believe that everyone will gain a lot.
Therefore,with the joint efforts of both sides,this thing will be promising.
When it comes to the nutrition topic, we did a field investigation regarding the health status of the left-behind children by CAAS in 2007. We used the indicator--BMI (Body mass index) to capture the children's health in migrant and non-migrant households in rural Anhui province. Among the 432 sampled children, only 31.48% are in good health.
As stated above, I consider that:
1. government should make certain prevention measures to strengthen the children’s health education and nutritional intervention, by formulating corresponding policies and regulations to enhance the popularization of nutritional knowledge.
2. great attention should be paid to dietary habits with a focus on forming healthy behaviors.
In recent years, women have been more involved in agricultural production in rural China and played more and more important role in income generating for household. Women are generally responsible for the food preparation for the household, and if they have an income, they are more likely to help the household to improve the status of food security. In addition, more typical examples show that women have participated in value chain to improve their livelihood, therefore, it is necessary to find a way to encourage women to take on new roles in value chain, which can help them to capture more revenues.
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