26/01/2023

Rome – More than 70 colleagues from across FAO regions met virtually as the Plant Production and Protection Division (NSP) community to review the achievements of 2022, discuss the challenges ahead, and the core activities for 2023. The focus of this annual meeting was on “Optimization and minimization towards sustainable plant production”.

Jingyuan Xia, NSP Director, highlighted ten major achievements of 2022 across various global programmes and actions, activities and events, governance and normative work, production and protection technology as well as promotional activities, communications, and advocacy work. Concrete examples cited by Director Xia included NSP’s leading role in implementing the Better Production Programme Priority Area on innovation for sustainable agriculture production of the FAO Strategic Framework 2022-2031, and collective contributions to the 14 Programme Priority Areas (PPAs).

Director Xia highlighted the major achievements of the NSP community in 2022: the launch of the One Country One Priority Product (OCOP) initiative in five FAO regions; the organization of FAO's first-ever global conference on sustainable plant production and the three regional workshops on Fall Armyworm Control in Near East and North Africa, Africa and Asia-Pacific regions; the provision of seeds to support Ukraine's agricultural production; scaling up agroecology; and the sound management of locusts and Banana Tropical Race 4 (TR4).

Each FAO region was represented by a regional plant production or protection agricultural officer, such as Ana Posas from RLC, Yubak GC from RAP, Jean Bahamas from RAP, Thaer Yassen from RNE, and Piotr Wlodarczyk. All five regions shared their key achievements of 2022 and presented their core activities for 2023. Following the presentation from respective regions, NSP division representatives briefed to the meeting the divisional achievements in 2022 and global technical activities for NSP community in 2023. Among others, the key activities for 2023 are to organize to the first-ever FAO Global Conference on Sustainable Agricultural Mechanisation, and the ongoing observance of the International Year of Millets 2023. The respective presentations triggered a fruitful discussion on how to create closer collaboration.