Dr. Tirol mentioned that some of the things that the team would like to continue next year are to produce campaigns that will promote approved NAPs and share news on family farming issues and experiences; put emphasis in assisting countries with NAPs in terms of implementing a strategic communication plan and provide technical assistance to FFF projects, AFA, and SEWA; and follow up on the outputs of the Participatory Video Production Training, as well as its sharing and utilization. 

Ms. Petunia on the other hand shared that for next year, AFA together with FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific will develop a case study on the process of developing the National Committee on Family Farming and the NAP of the Philippines which could be used by civil society organizations and governments as reference when they plan the execution of a multi-stakeholder committee and design and formulate the NAP. Moreover, she called for strengthening communications on the solutions that family farmers provide on the interrelated crises on COVID-19 and climate change. 

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ComDev Asia, a regional initiative that promotes Communication for Development (ComDev) in the Asia-Pacific region, held a training on Participatory Video Production and Sharing to enhance capacities of practitioners, development workers and family farmers and their organizations to appropriate and apply basic notions for the participatory use and sharing of video for development purposes. The training was held on November 7, 10, 16, and 21 and it was joined by 16 different organizations composed of farmers’ organizations, national government agencies, and a community radio organization in theAsia-Pacific region.

During the training, participants had participated in discussion forums, written scripts and prepared storyboards, proposed production plans, and finally had produced a two-minute video on a certain topic they’ve chosen. On the last day of the training, participants presented their initial participatory video outputs and panel members composed of FAO ComDev Team, Digital Green, and UPLB College of Development Communication gave their feedback. Based on their feedback, participants were asked to revise their outputs in preparation for a mini contest on December 21, 2022.

Reference: FAO & Digital Green (2022) Engage, film and share. A video for development practitioner guide. Unpublished manuscript.

Article contributed by: Vincent Allen Fernandez & Zane Andrei Cortez

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Through the coop-to-coop model, AgriCOOPh participates in bidding for agricultural products or accepting purchase requests from consumer cooperatives, organizations, and community associations. They then forward these requests to producers’ cooperatives that gather commodities from family farmers. AgriCOOPh members then deliver the commodities, ensure these meet the agreed terms and conditions of buyers, collect payments, and pay producers’ cooperatives.

In implementing their Coop-to-Coop model, AgriCOOPh has noted an increase in volume of food procurement, establishment of long-term relationships between cooperatives, cost reduction through standardization of products and service specifications, strong connections between producers and consumers, and improvement in the public and private procurement process.

While AgriCOOPh continues to face challenges in the implementation of their coop-to-coop model, lessons have also been learned since the inception of the Coops4Food Program in 2020. AgriCOOPh also recommends the waiver of payment for bidding from cooperatives, exemption from the 3% withholding tax, more financing and strengthening of farmer-level enterprises.

Source: Asia Pacific Farmers’ Forum. (2022). PHILIPPINES – Empowering Family Farmer-Members through Coop-to-Coop Cooperations. Available at https://asiapacificfarmersforum.net/philippines-empowering-family-farmer-members-through-coop-to-coop-cooperations/?fbclid=IwAR0AUbEauQ3N_sf0h_e1hSK9JKnB_bv3fiNhGFRkzs_WqCysHTlqqAjMZXc

Photo Credit: Asia Pacific Farmers’ Forum and Philippine Family Farmers’ Agriculture Fishery Forestry Cooperatives Federation

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Despite such a towering presence in our food systems, family farmers are not seen receiving their fair share of space in the media. Community radios, with the advantage of proximity to local farmers, are making efforts to change this condition.

AMARC Asia-Pacific is working closely with its members in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Nepal to bridge the gap with local farmers. This is being done by forging a close partnership with representatives of organizations of family farmers for discussing and identifying issues, ideas, concerns, and questions with the aim of developing radio content for broadcast. The effort is aimed at building higher awareness among the common listeners about the contributions of the farmers in the upkeep of the food supply as well as to provide avenues for local farming communities and their organizations to channel their concerns across to local and national policymakers. The fact that most community broadcasters work with national networks of community radios in their countries is instrumental in bringing this idea of nationalizing issues of family farmers to fruition.

This initiative is supported by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations under the aegis of the United Nations Decade of Family Farmers (UNDFF), as part of the radio campaign by ComDev Asia. AMARC Asia-Pacific is one of the founders and steering committee members of the ComDev Asia initiative.

The current phase of the radio campaign is partnering with five community radios in five countries to produce 30 radio reportages in national and English languages. Radio Pollikontho (Bangladesh), Radio Gurgaon ki Awaaz (India), Radio MMC (Indonesia), Radyo Natin Guimba (the Philippines) and Radio Krishi (Nepal) have partnered with AMARC Asia-Pacific in the radio campaign. While the campaign will run until the end of this year, the partnership forged by the campaign between the farmers and local radio stations will outlast the life of the campaign and continue to benefit local communities for a long time to come.

– Suman Basnet, Regional Director, AMARC Asia-Pacific, https://amarc-ap.org

Photo caption: Meeting between representatives of farmers’ organization and local radio station, Haryana, India. Photo: Radio Gurgaon ki Awaaz, India

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They are participants in the regional workshop Southeast Asian Learning Framework on Inclusive, Integrated, and Innovative Public Policy Cycles for Family Farming advanced by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, led by its Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (FAO RAP) with Procasur, a Latin American consortium, and SEARCA’s Training for Development Unit led by Dr. Nova A. Ramos.

The 18 participants represent civil society family farmer organizations, governments, and academe from Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Philippines, Thailand, Timor-Leste, and Vietnam. Their workshop is the first in-person regional knowledge event SEARCA has hosted in Los Baños since the COVID lockdown in 2019.

Dr. Glenn B. Gregorio, SEARCA Director, highlighted in his welcome remarks the significant roles that smallholder farmers and farming families play in our agri-food system, especially during the periods that there were mobility restrictions due to community lockdowns during the pandemic.

Mr. Pierre Ferrand, Agriculture Officer (Agroecology) and Regional Focal Point for Family Farming Agriculture and Food System Support Group of FAO RAP, asserted the agenda of the United Nations Decade of Family Farming (2019-2028) and shared the strides that the movement has gained since 2019, including development and establishment of national action plans on family farming.

Learning coordinator Dr. Luiz Caudio M. Campos of Procasur explained that the workshop aims to enhance the conceptual, methodological, and instrumental competencies of men and women leaders and technical teams from Southeast Asian family farming actors to influence the cycle of emergence, design, formulation, implementation, and evaluation of effective public policies that address the new challenges facing the rural sector and food systems.

(This article is originally published in SEARCA Website)

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We, 40 representatives of seven (7) regional/international small-scale farmers’ and fishers’ organizations (FOs),[1] with a combined membership of 24 million, 34% of whom are women and 23% are youth, have gathered both in-person and virtually for the 2^nd Asia Pacific Regional Farmers Forum (AP RFAFO) on 26-27 October 2022 in Bangkok, Thailand. We have been accompanied by officials of the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD), led by the Director of the Asia Pacific Division, Task Manager for the regional grant Asia Pacific Farmers Program and Rural Institution Technical Specialist. The AP RFAFO aims to assess the partnership between IFAD and FOs, which started during the 1^st RFAFO in 2018 in Jakarta, Indonesia, and to identify action points towards strengthening such partnership, so that we, family farmers[2] as a sector, can respond better to the current crises we face.

Our Context

Climate change has affected family farmers the most since the 2000s. Massive climate-related disasters in the Asia Pacific region, most recent of which are massive flooding in Cambodia, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Thailand, heat waves and droughts in Cambodia, India, and China, and super typhoons in Fiji, India, Philippines, and Vietnam, have depleted fish stocks, decreased yields and incomes, destroyed billions of dollars of agriculture crops and livelihoods, and even caused deaths among family farmers.

The COVID-19 pandemic, which started in early 2020, has merely exacerbated the effects of climate change on family farmers. The mobility restrictions which governments imposed to arrest the spread of the virus have made inaccessible or closed traditional and export markets even as prices of basic foodstuffs increase. Researches reveal that COVID-19 has widened the poverty and income gap across the region. [3]

The conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which broke out in early 2022, has caused fuel prices to soar, doubling or tripling prices of electricity, gas, water, food, and agricultural inputs, thus worsening the already sorry and battered state of family farmers.

This three-fold crisis—climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the conflict in Ukraine happening simultaneously–has worsened inflation in our countries; increased agrarian conflicts, land grabbing, eviction, and criminalization especially among rights defenders; and severely impacted our rights to work and to food.

The FAO 2021 State of Food Insecurity (SOFI) Report indicates that the global price food index in 2022 is higher than those in the past two years. The Report also reveals that out of 828 million hungry in the world, 424.5 million or 51% are in Asia Pacific, even as small-scale family farmers in the region contribute 80% of the region’s food, as much as 35% of the world’s food, as much as 6% of the world’s fisheries products, and 84% of global employment in fisheries.

Current Food Crisis and Global Food Systems

The current food crisis has exposed the ills of the current global food systems dominated by industrial, corporate, chemical-intensive, exploitative, and export-oriented agriculture systems, mainly with a profit orientation regardless of environmental considerations and human rights.   It has left out billions of family farmers who feed the world. Inadequate policies and regulations and lack of support services, such as research, innovation, and extension, and financing directed towards supporting family farmers, have contributed to such ills.

Family farmers as solution providers

Family farmers are solution providers. In spite of limited capacities and resources, FOs at local, national, and regional levels have made efforts to respond holistically to the current global food crisis. In fisheries, FO members use appropriate fishing gear, practice sustainable ecosystem-based fishing, and collectively raise their voices against coastal land grabbing and unsustainable fishing. Herders and pastoralists practice sustainable forest management and agroforestry. Family farmers practice sustainable, integrated, biodiverse, climate-resilient, organic systems in farms, fisheries, and forests.  We note that organic and agroecological farmers who rely on inputs produced on or near the farm and who sell in local markets and acted through their groups suffer less and are more resilient.

Our Recommendations to IFAD

We view IFAD, with a strong mandate from the UN for financing agricultural development, as our strong ally and strategic partner towards increasing our Agency to effectively engage governments in policy work and in providing effective social and economic services to our members.

Following our review of the joint FO-IFAD statement at the 2018 AP RFAFO at the country and regional levels and the current food crisis we face, we call on IFAD to:

On Meaningful Participation of FOs

1. Recognize FOs as a strategic partner in IFAD processes, thereby effectively facilitating the inclusion of FOs at the national level processes of IFAD, including processes cited in the 2018 Joint FO-IFAD Statement (e.g., IFAD COSOP processes in the design, implementation, and monitoring of its country portfolio projects, IFAD’s knowledge management work); as well as facilitating FO-government interactions, and supporting capacities of FOs in policy engagement as needed.
2. Strengthen national farmers’ forum processes and support farmer-led design and implementation of national and regional action plans for the UN Decade of Family Farming.

On Climate Financing

1. Refrain from supporting any project that pollutes and destroys our planet; promote genetically modified crops, land and ocean grabbing, unsustainable use of natural resources; and treat farmers as mere recipients of top-down technologies.
2. Set up regular or permanent grant facility for direct Financing to FOs through ASAP+, if possible, for climate change adaptation and mitigation by FOs with their members and partners.

FOs can use such grant facilities to support their various works:

• Economic services delivery to members include:
  • access to institutional credit and skills trainings from various government institutions.
  • development and implementation of business models.
  • establishment and maintenance of agroecological systems.
  • Developing appropriate technology for small farmers
  • Effective utilization of digital technologies, such as e-platforms for product promotion, marketing, and small farmer-friendly certification.
  • access to local markets.
• Exchanges among farmers such as farmer field schools.
• Provision of revolving funds for enterprises of members.
• Strengthening of partnerships with governments and other development organizations for procurement of sustainably grown and processed products of members.
• Policy-making engagement with governments in VGSSF and VGGT implementation at national levels and in the formulation and implementation of UNDFF National and Regional Action Plans with the right to food, UNDRIP, and UNDROP under the concept of food sovereignty.
• Responsible, accountable, and transparent governance of organizations.

Even as we highly recommend the setting up of such a grant facility through ASAP+, we call on IFAD to:

1. expand ASAP+ allocation for FOs from 15% to 50% or more of the total funds.
2. involve representatives of the FAFO Steering Committee at global, regional, and national levels in a co-construction process.
3. make the inclusion of FOs in the design, implementation, and monitoring of funds as part of the eligibility requirements for government applications for ASAP+.

On Policy Agenda

5. work together with FOs for joint policy agenda, including on:

5.1 Government recognition of FOs.

5.2 Access of farmers to public finance.

Our Commitment

We, as front liners in the work for sustainable, healthy, and just food systems, commit to joining IFAD in resource mobilization and in the wise use of mobilized funds through good project/program management, lending our collective voice as family farmers in the Asia Pacific, and effective engagement with decision makers for pro-family farmer policies and programs. We commit to strengthening our solidarity, knowledge exchange, and movement building through FAFO processes at the national and regional levels.

Signed:

AFA – Asian Farmers’ Association for Sustainable Rural Development

LVC – La Via Campesina
INOFO – Inter-continental Network of Organic Farmers’ Organizations

PIFON – Pacific Islands Farmers’ Organizations Network

WFF – World Forum of Fish Harvesters and Fish Workers

WFFP – World Forum of Fishers Peoples

WFO – World Farmers Organization

[1] Participants are members and partners of the AP RFAFO Steering Committee namely: AFA, INOFO, LVC, PIFON, WFF, WFFP, and WFO.

[2] FAO has defined family farming as “a means of organizing agricultural, forestry, fisheries, pastoral and aquaculture production that is managed and operated by a family, and that is predominantly reliant on the family labor of both women and men. The family and the farm are linked, co-evolve and combine economic, environmental, social, and cultural functions.

[3] https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/inequality-virus#:~:text=The%20virus%20has%20exposed%2C%20fed,individuals%20and%20corporations%20%E2%80%93%20are%20thriving.

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With the transition, specific groups of people require specific communication needs and capacities for innovation, management, and finance. Furthermore, new opportunities brought by the shift need to be properly communicated to rural people so they can maximize the benefits offered by government and non-government services.

Having said this, Rural Communication Services (RCS) approach has been considered as the main driver to provide sufficient knowledge and information to rural people. This initiative will help promote participatory development / community mobilization by disseminating relevant and significant information regarding the newly adapted form of farming. Also, this will boost and facilitate agricultural development in rural Bangladesh. The utilization of RCS encourages knowledge sharing and enrichment between groups of people in rural areas of the country.

Reference: Hassan, Mohummad. (2018). Rural Communication Services (RCS), an Approach to Development Communication in Bangladesh Context: A Conceptual Exploration.

Photo Reference: Loes Witteveen (https://www.comminit.com/content/inclusive-rural-communication-services-building-evidence-informing-policy

Article contributed by Vincent Allen Fernandez, ComDev Asia intern

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With the theme “Forward, Family Farmers, for a Healthy People and Planet,” AFA will hold its 10th General Assembly and 20th Anniversary Celebration during the five-day event series in Golden Phoenix Hotel, Pasay City, Philippines. It is co-hosted by the Philippine Family Farmers’ Agriculture Fishery Forestry Cooperatives Federation (AgriCOOPh) and Pambansang Kilusan ng mga Samahan ng mga Magsasaka (PAKISAMA) and it will be conducted in hybrid modality, as guests who cannot join in person can still attend via Zoom.

Representatives from different organizations across Asia will be attending the five-day event series. Below is the schedule of activities:

• October 18 a.m.: Women and Young Farmers Committees’ Meeting
• October 18 p.m.: Regional Learning Exchange on Biopesticides and Digital Agriculture, in a hybrid format
• October 19: Field Visit
• October 20, 09:00-15:00: AFA 10th General Assembly
• October 20, 17:00 – 21:00: AFA  20th Year Celebration
• October 21-22: Workshop on Pathways to Climate Resilience, in a hybrid format

Also part of the five-day event series is the 2022 Family Farmers Fair which will be held on October 20-21, 2022 and which aims to showcase products, achievements, best practices, and agricultural innovations of AFA members. The fair includes an exhibit of products, success stories, and photos.

Source: AFA website

Photo: (c) AFA

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According to former Secretary Dar, the action plan emphasizes the whole-of-nation approach to strengthening family farming through innovation, sustained cooperation and development of support mechanisms.

With the former Secretary was Rosanna Mula, the former Agricultural Training Institute Assistant Director and National Focal Person, who reiterated the goals of PAP4FF that will tackle critical areas such as Policy and Program, People, and Partnerships.

Through PAP4FF, family farmers will hopefully gain enabling policies and programs to support their agricultural activities. The PAP4FF also aims to ensure gender equality, socio-economic inclusion, strong farmer organizations, sustainability, climate resiliency, holistic development, and enhanced multifunctional roles for family farmers.

Moreover, the former Secretary emphasized that it’s high time for the farmers and fisherfolk to receive the necessary support from the government and other stakeholders as they have been at the forefront of the country’s food security challenges.

Read more from this report by Gumamela Celes Beharin (DA-AFID).

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