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Calendar » Creating a Center of Excellence for Smallholder Farmers to Scale Up Digital Agriculture Innovations in East Asia & Pacific Region

Creating a Center of Excellence for Smallholder Farmers to Scale Up Digital Agriculture Innovations in East Asia & Pacific Region

Created by Vivek Prasad
June 24, 2021 | 8:00 AM | WebEx based

 

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Meeting number:      172 352 4545

Password                kpR2XuYPH23

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Chair

  • Prasad Gopalan, The Global Sector Manager for Agribusiness and Forestry in IFC

Speakers

  • Mr Mun Pew KHONG, Head of Public Affairs, Science and Sustainability, Asia Pacific in Bayer. 
  • Professor Arif Satria, IPB University, Indonesia

   

Discussants:      

  • Animesh Shrivastava, Lead Agriculture Economist for the East Asia and Pacific (EAP) Region of the World Bank Group.
  • Wei-Li Woo, Lead Innovation at Grow Asia
  • Suresh Sundararajan, OLAM, Managing Director & Group Head, Global Corporate Services

There are approximately 500 million smallholder farmers working on farms often less than 2 hectares in size around the world. Approximately 2 billion people live on about 550 million small farms and many of these farmers are in Asia. And many more depend on smallholders who play an increasing role in supplying and feeding a growing population while being at high risk of poverty and malnutrition. Most of these farmers struggle to provide enough food for their own family’s use. There are no surpluses to trade with or to provide to the value chain.

 

These farmers (often women) are constrained by multiple challenges like, low quality soil, low water availability and high temperatures, limited access to appropriate (smallholder farmer friendly) technologies, limited access to inputs (quality seed, fertilizers, pesticides etc.), limited access to supporting infrastructure, limited access to capital, insurance and other risk reducing tools, and limited access to markets and information. There is also a deficit in farm management knowledge. For a significant number of the smallholder farmer community many of these constraints, however, can be addressed with appropriate interventions, and enough political will. These smallholder farmers have the potential to be the driving force behind rural development, which is equitable, sustainable, and productive.

 

To this end, Bayer, and its partners in Singapore, seek to drive an initiative that will see the establishment of a Centre Excellence (CoE) for Smallholder Farming community of Asian countries with a vision to strengthen food system resilience and improve smallholder livelihoods. The mission of this CoE is to establish a unique multi-stakeholder platform that advances the technology, skills, and knowledge fundamental to improving smallholder productivity & profitability.

 

The Centre of Excellence (CoE) is a cross sectorial, multi-stakeholder initiative of like-minded organizations that aims to empower the smallholder farming community. The primary focus of the CoE will be the subsistence and developing smallholder farmer segments but where appropriate the progressive smallholder segment can be included. The overlying tenets of the Centre of Excellence are sustainability, inclusion, and equality.

 

The multi-stakeholder nature of the CoE allows a “whole of system approach” to ecosystem change and will cover the entire value chain. This “whole of system” approach necessitates that partners in the center will extend beyond the typical agriculture players (input providers and traders), and will include those involved in energy, waste management, investment, environment, nutrition and health, space, etc.  With CoE we build, nurture, and grow a vibrant community of global institutions, government agencies, NGOs, academics, and corporates engaging with smallholders in various capacities.

 

There are three key pillars of CoE, viz, Technology Transfer, Skill Enhancement and Knowledge and Community Building. These three focus areas of the CoE are the impact multipliers for agriculture and sustained efforts will unlock potential, enabling food system resilience in the region.