 Colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon or good morning to all of you wherever you are. Let me warmly welcome you to this seminar. I'm Yurdi Yasmi, the regional representative of Erie for Southeast Asia. I will be your moderator today. The theme of our seminar is the future of food systems in Southeast Asia post-COVID-19. As you all know, since it was declared pandemic by WHO on 11 of March, COVID-19 has affected millions of people in over 200 countries and territories around the globe. In this crisis, safeguarding the food system is critical. The main objective of our seminar is to share information among organizations on the impacts of COVID-19 to food systems in Southeast Asia, one of the fastest growing regions in the world. It is also a forum to discuss initiatives that have been taken so far and what can be done in the future to safeguard the food systems in Southeast Asia. But before we start, I would like to invite Dr. Matthew Morrell, the Director-General of Erie, to give his opening remarks. Dr. Morrell, over to you. Thank you very much, Yurdi, and good day to everyone tuned in. One of the unexpected benefits of the COVID situation is that we've become much more familiar with the technology and the ability to have such webinars. So I want to acknowledge and welcome our esteemed panel from the development sector, government and the private sector. So Dr. David Dore of FAO, Dr. Jiang Feng Zhang of ADB, Mr. Graham Dixie of Grow Asia, and we'll have a message from Dr. Aladdin Rillo of ASEAN. I would also like to acknowledge my colleagues who will be joining us this afternoon, Dr. Jean Ballier, our Acting Director for Research and the Head of Erie's Agri-Food Policy Platform and authority heard from Dr. Yurdi Yasmi who has just recently joined us as Erie's regional representative for South Asia. I'm very grateful to FAO, specifically its regional office for Asia and the Pacific, Mr. Zhang Jing Kim, Officer in Charge and Deputy Regional Representative, as well as Dr. Yurdi Yasmi for having organized this seminar. This current situation, which we're all finding as the new normal pushes us to maximise the use of online platforms while we're still maintaining our social distancing. The current situation also necessitates important conversations on pressing matters brought about by the health crisis, which includes the impact on food security. The agriculture sector has proven to be an integral part of society at most. It is the backbone of most, if not all, economies in South East Asia. Now more than ever, we recognise a significant contribution of research to inform policy measures so that we can ensure no one is left hungry amongst those we serve. The crisis has felt widely, but unevenly, the impacts of the pandemic pose immense threats to the health of communities already struggling with hunger and livelihoods of vulnerable farming groups. Impacts on the food system are already felt in terms of drops or shifts in demand, supply disruptions, labour shortages, trade restrictions, among other effects. Ongoing efforts to curb further outbreak have also severely affected the availability and accessibility of farm supplies needed to support food production. Consumer behaviour shifts are already evident. There have been stockpiling food and other essential items due to the probability of extended lockdown and other shifts in purchasing behaviour. So I'm looking forward to this discussion, which will cover the challenges in food systems amid the COVID-19 situation. The future of food systems in South East Asia after the pandemic and potential measures to safeguard food systems. These insights will certainly inform policies aimed to ensure availability of safe and nutritious food for all. Again, I welcome you to this webinar and I hand you back to our moderator, Dr Yoti Yasmin, to take us through the program. Thank you very much for your opening remarks, Dr Moral. Now allow me to introduce to you our resource persons. I would request them, if possible, to say a quick hi to all of you when I call their name. First, Dr David Dao, Senior Economist, FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific. Hello everybody. Thank you, David. Second, Dr Jiang Feng Zhang, Director, Environment Natural Resources and Agriculture Division, Southeast Asian Department of ADB, Asian Development Bank. Hi, good afternoon everyone. Thank you very much. Third, Dr Jiang Bai, Acting Director for Research and Platform Leader, Agri-Food Policy of Irri. Good day to everyone. Thank you. Fourth, Mr Graham Dixie, the Executive Directors of Grow Asia. Hello everybody. I'm excited to be part of this process. Thank you. Unfortunately, the Asian Secretariat sends its apology. However, I will be reading its statement. At the end of the seminar, Mr Zhang Jin Kim, the Officer in Charge and the Deputy Regional Representative, FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, will provide his analysis on the way forward. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you very much. After a short presentation from each of our panel member, there will be opportunity to ask questions. You can send your questions through the link provided to you. We also encourage you to send your feedback about the seminar by filling in the short survey. Now, I would like to call Dr David Dao, the first presenter, the Senior Economist of FAO to deliver his presentation on FAO's roles in safeguarding the food systems, future development priorities. Dr Dao, the floor is yours. Thank you, Irti, and thank you, Matthew. Good afternoon to everybody. Thank you to the International Rice Research Institute. FAO is very happy to join with Irri for this webinar on COVID-19 and its impacts on food food security in Southeast Asia. What I would like to do is discuss the current risks to food security in the region due to COVID-19 and also discuss a little bit about how food systems will need to adapt going forward. So the most vulnerable to food insecurity are those that have lost their jobs, and there's a lot of those people. If there hadn't been substantial action from governments, there would definitely be tens of millions, if not more, people suffering from food insecurity in Southeast Asia. Now, in the short term, aside from controlling the spread of the virus, ensuring economic access to food is really the most urgent task that we all face. In some cases, this may mean giving cash. In some cases, it may mean giving food, depending on the situation. Thankfully, government and private sector and individuals have already been doing this, but I think and that's been a big help, but I think we all need to do a bit more to minimize the impact of COVID-19 on so many vulnerable people. Now in past crises, such as the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and 98, the agriculture played an important role in many countries by providing unemployment to those who had lost their jobs in urban areas. They can still play that role, but they will be able to play much less of a role than they played in the past this time around. It's 20 years later after that crisis, there's been a lot of economic growth since then. There's been a lot of structural transformation of economies, and as a result, agriculture is a much smaller share of GDP than it used to be. In Thailand, for example, compared to 20 years ago, in rural areas, farm income now only accounts for about 35 percent of household income down from more than half 20 years ago. In India, we see a similar trend. Farm income now accounts for just 39 percent of rural incomes down from more than 70 percent more than four decades ago. So agriculture will still have a role to play as a buffer by providing some employment, but we're talking about a permanent change to the buffering capacity of agriculture here. It's just becoming less important to the overall economy, and that substantially increases the importance of providing social protection to people who have lost their jobs. Now while loss of income and employment is the biggest threat to food security in the region, keeping food systems functioning is also of absolutely critical importance. For example, despite the exodus of many people back to rural areas, there may be shortages of labor in agriculture. You may have people going back who don't want to do the hard work of agriculture, who don't have the skills to do it, or who may not be able to move around even within rural areas sufficiently due to checkpoints at different provinces and different municipalities that stop them from getting to the place where they normally used to work and maybe need to harvest or establish the next crop. What farmers reaction then will probably be to resort to mechanization? This will accelerate a trend that has been taking place already. The good thing about this, it will increase labor productivity, but in the short term it may also cause some people to lose employment, and so I think these will also likely to be a permanent change in accelerating us towards more mechanization. Now food supply chains will change as well. All along the chain in fact, farms, processing plants, retail markets will need to incorporate physical distancing, not only in the short term, but also in the long term. More storage will be needed in value chains to deal with disruptions, although it'll be a challenge to get this additional capacity in place quickly, especially if it involves refrigeration of perishable foods like fish and meat and fruits and vegetables. Another change is that food supply chains will likely need to have fewer links in them than they used to in the past. The more links you have, the more places where things can be cut off. For example, some of you may have heard the situation of a Malaysian factory that was making rubber gloves and couldn't ship them out because of a shortage of boxes. So we made the more complex that supply chains are, the more risk there is of things like this happening. Now we'll also want food supply chains to be more flexible in the future, able to deliver food in different types of packaging, to different sources of demand like supermarkets, schools, restaurants, regular markets. However, there may be a trade-off between this additional flexibility and efficiency. It's easy to say that companies in the private sector should sell to a wide variety of markets in a wide range of forms, but doing so involves costs. And so I'll be interested to hear more from Graham if he has time to say anything about how the private sector is likely to deal with these trade-offs. Now in terms of policies, there may be moves towards more self-sufficiency. Although to be honest, food supplies are flowing quite well across international borders. There have been some hiccups, but it really hasn't been too bad for very long. The reason I think that this will be important is because of comparative advantage, which as a concept is much more important for agriculture than it is for the other parts of the economy. A factory can set up in any number of locations or any number of countries. You just need roads, electricity, internet connection, and you're kind of good to go. But you can't efficiently grow a mango or rice for that matter, just anywhere you please. Growing these efficiently relies on climate, on soils, on water supplies, and things that can't be easily changed or manipulated. So comparative advantage in agricultural production is something that's much more important than for other sectors of the economy. But in that regard, I'd kind of also like to mention that most Southeast Asian countries already, all of the bigger ones, produce more than 85 percent of their calories domestically anyhow. So most countries are broadly self-sufficient. The only exceptions to that are Malaysia really and the obvious ones that have no choice, Singapore and Brunei. So let me, I'll stop right there and look forward to comments from my colleagues on the panel and to questions from everybody else later. Thank you. Thank you very much Dr. Dao for your interesting perspective. I just would like to recognize the over 500 viewers of this webinar, both who is following live through YouTube and also Erie staff who is using our own channel. So thank you very much to all of you with your great interest in participating in these seminars. The next presenters is Dr. Jiang Feng Zhang, the Director of Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture Division, Southeast Asia Department of the Asian Development Bank. He will be talking about ADB's investment in the food systems in Southeast Asia, new direction post COVID. Dr. Jiang, the floor is yours. Thank you. Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, colleagues and friends. First of all, I would like to thank Erie and FAO organizing this virtual seminar and inviting me to speak about the ADB's directions on agricultural and natural resources sector operations in Southeast Asia. The COVID-19 pandemic, which has become a major global crisis, is having severe health, social and economic impacts in Asia and the Pacific. On 13 April, ADB announced a 20 billion package consisting of loans, grants and technical assistance to help us developing member countries in Asia and the Pacific, managing the wide-ranging consequences of COVID-19. It is important to keep agro-food system functioning and undisrupted during this difficult time, while travel restrictions imposed in many countries are saving lives, but also creating economic hardship for farmers and consumers. We are pleased to note the joint statement issued by the ASEAN ministers of agriculture and forestry on 15 April reaffirming commitment to ensure food security, food safety and nutrition in the ASEAN region during this outbreak. Promoting rural development and food security is one of seven operational priorities of ADB's strategy 2030. ADB will continue to support farmers and the private sector on agri-food production, processing, transport, marketing and trade to ensure food availability, accessibility and affordability to all during and after the COVID-19. To help mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on the food supply chain and to help build a diverse, competitive, safe and sustainable agricultural and natural resource sector, in the near term, ADB's operations on the sector in the Southeast Asian countries will articulate around the four key themes. The first one is on enhancing agricultural productivity and climate and disaster resilience. The second one is on value chain infrastructure and agri-business development to improve farmers' market connectivity and private sector linkage for agricultural value addition. The third one is on enhancing food safety, quality and nutrition which will not only provide consumers with the confidence in the safety and the nutritional value of the food they are buying but also provide producers with a confident and vibrant market and intent-stimulated production, trade and regional integration. The fourth one is environment and natural resource management for environment sustainability including management of coastal and marine resources. Across the four key themes, based on the country needs and project design, ADB will invest on policy, infrastructure and technology in partnership with stakeholders including, among others, government agencies, development partners, research institutes and civil society organizations. On policy support, as an example, in Philippines we are working on a policy based on the landing to support in the government's key reforms in agricultural trade policy and regulatory framework, public services and finance from the agricultural sector and the social protection for rural families. We appreciate the support from FAO on this program. On infrastructure, ADB will promote integrated water resources management, improve irrigation efficiency and asset management and enhance flood and drought risk management. ADB will also finance agricultural value chain infrastructure such as market access, ICT, market facilities and logistics. To help ensure food safety and quality, ADB will invest in safety and quality control infrastructure and facilities and ICT-based tools for food traceability. On technology, ADB would like to bring advanced technologies into ADB operations, working with the centers of excellence and the private sector. For example, Yuri and the ADB have partnered on developing and disseminating climate resilient water-serving rice technologies. The European Space Agency is providing earth observation services to improve land and water management. The food industry Asia has been supporting GMS countries on strengthening food safety control capacities and piloting barcode-based traceability system. ADB will also promote regional cooperation and integration, private sector development and public private partnership. Regional cooperation and integration plays a key role in ensuring agricultural development and food security through South-South cooperation, knowledge sharing and transfer and trade facilitation. We are starting up a new regional technical assistance to support GMS countries in implementing the strategy for promoting safe and environment-friendly agro-based value chains in GMS, which was endorsed by the GMS agricultural ministers. ADB's private sector operations department is also actively promoting agribusiness development in Southeast Asia and will consider innovative transactions such as partial risk guarantees to banks lending to farmers, supply chain finance, and direct equity investments in agribusiness companies that have long-term financial viability and have the potential for scalable impact. In summary, through exploring and non-soring operations, ADB will help DMCs rebound from the COVID-19 with rural employment generation by supporting the countries' agro-food system prioritizing productivity enhancement, value chain development, food safety and nutrition, and natural resource management. This will lead to sustainable and resilient rural development and food security in Southeast Asia to further reduce poverty, adjust inequality, and promote rural urban linkages. Thank you. Thank you very much, Dr. Zhang, for your comprehensive overview of ADB's investment in the region. I really appreciate it. I would like to request my colleagues, Marco, to present a slide how people can ask questions because there has been a request on this. Thank you, Marco, for showing this slide. I would request audience out there to submit their questions as they hear the presentation through this Menti platform. Marco, Marco, do you... The instructions on how to submit questions using Menti are currently on the screen and you would also love to hear back from the audience with general feedback and that's where the second URL comes in. Please provide us with your feedback on this event. Thank you. Thank you for that, Marco. That's very useful. Again, I would like to acknowledge all the participants who are participating from different places. About five minutes ago, I was informed over 650 participants are actually participating in this live event. Thank you so much. Our next speaker is Dr. Jeanne Bailly, Acting Director for Research and Platform Leader, Agri-Food Policy at Erie. Dr. Bailly will be talking about Erie's research priorities now and in the future. Dr. Bailly, please. Many thanks, Jordy. Good afternoon. Good morning again to everyone. It's a pleasure to be with you. I would like to start by recognizing that one characteristic of this crisis is that we have moved from a local health issue to a global and more multi-sexual crisis. Food supplies have been disrupted due to measures put in place to control the spread of the virus. So if anything, COVID has shown a high degree of interdependence between animal, human and environmental systems. It has stressed the need to revisit the way we understand, measure and respond to risks. It also means that we need to improve our collective preparedness if we want to be ready when the next COVID-type crisis strikes. So at Erie, our ambition is to develop rice-based food systems that are resilient to a variety of known and unknown shocks through technologies, practices and policies. Asia, as we heard, is home to 55% of the world population. It is the rice basket of the world. Research programs in Asia must continue and expand in order to meet demands for food security at all times. Rice consumption in Africa is growing rapidly, yet production is not keeping pace. African countries spent over six billion last year to import rice from Asia. The unification process between Africa rice and Erie will generate a single research program and our ambition is to make Africa rice self-sufficient as a continent. Erie has been operating in research for 60 years now and constantly adapting its research capacity to a changing context. This period is no exception, but first we need to understand, and that's one role of our research, understand the impacts of COVID-19 on the rice sector in particular, but on food systems more in general. We know that the effects are widespread, but they are felt differently in different countries and different families. So we have started some country surveys and partner intelligence to assess rice supply stability. We also want to monitor the situation and whether there are risks of food shortages in the near future or in the medium term. Are there risks of price spikes? We have also studied some modeling exercises and foresight. We want to define scenarios and want to simulate different outcomes on production, consumption, prices, employment, incomes, and of course food security and nutrition security. We have already identified some key research areas in response to these COVID crisis. So we heard that already COVID-19 has led to a labor shortage in many places that can affect many critical stages of transplanting, weeding and irrigation control because these are labor intensive. So IRI is already looking at options to accelerate mechanization to reduce dependency on labor where possible. Transport and distribution channels, networks have been disrupted by the COVID pandemic. So our research will increasingly focus on the role of the middle chain. It is often referred to as the hidden middle, although it is now obvious that it plays an essential role in well functioning value chain. So IRI research will investigate options to build more resilient middle chains to guarantee the supply of inputs for agriculture, seeds, fertilizers, for example. The role of good nutrition to strengthen the immune system is also well recognized. Mosing and iron have documented benefits in presence of viral infections. So IRI is already looking at ways to increase the mineral and vitamin content in rice grain. And we have also seen, unfortunately, countries looking inward to improve their resilience to external shocks while the keyword is cooperation. In its policy-oriented research, IRI will focus more on the role of trade and other forms of international cooperation. COVID has only reinforced the conviction that the future research will require more system thinking around system efficiency and not only productivity and more interdisciplinary research. Our research today goes beyond rice. It embraces the concept of rice-based agri-food systems. We recognize that farmers do not only grow rice, diversification strategy include and will continue to include rice because this crop offers stability and remains a staple of choice. IRI will continue to adapt to a complex reality, a changing world by promoting interdisciplinary research, breaking scientific silos, encouraging and sometimes forcing breeders, biochemists, physiologists, agronomists, engineers and economists to work together and deliver as one team. Looking into the future, IRI's research is articulated around five major impact areas, nutrition and food security, climate change, the environment, prosperity and social equity. Each one of these challenges is likely to become even more challenging in a post-COVID world. More evidence will be needed to adopt and reform policies to achieve impact at scale in these five critical areas. To me, this only means that we need more research than ever before and at IRI we stand ready for the challenge. Thank you. Thank you very much Dr Bayi for such a very concise and clear presentation on IRI's research priorities. The next speaker is Mr Graham Dixie, the Executive Directors of Grow Asia. He will discuss the small holders and food value chains, a private sector perspective. As we all know in the food system, private sector is a key stakeholders and an important player as well. The floor is yours Mr Dixie. Thanks a lot Nudi. And thanks to IRI and FAO for organising us. It's certainly impressive to get 650 people online. In December we were asked by FAO to do a consultation with the private sector. We spoke to 50 companies right across the region and 11 networks and the points they raised and there was a consensus was their fears about the food system and they talked about environmental degradation, they talked about climate change, they made an emphasis on food, on nutrition, on health, on food safety and they worried a lot about long-term productivity with a declining farming population, an aging farming population and shortage use of labour but they showed extreme prescient by emphasising their deep concerns about disruptive and major events. And I'm very pleased to see that that these these points were raised by IRI and ADB as areas that they were going to work on. But then moving to COVID and and we've touched on very well the fear of prices, the worry of those would be compounded by people not having incomes and the the labour issues but what I wanted to focus on was three longer-term issues which are which need to be resolved that are revealed by COVID as some of our weaknesses in our food systems. I mean the first one has been rural logistics and the problems of getting product from the producer to the consumer. The second one is the issue of cash flow how money is being locked up and it's not getting down the value chain so that people are not in a position to buy their next set of seeds and the the third one is the changing consumer. The consumer has changed the way they operate in COVID. They are going to different shops, they're buying from convenience stores, they're showing greater interest in cooking their own foods, they're particularly interested in fresher products, they are increasingly interested incidentally in local supply chains and if they can they are buying product online and you have the enduring problem of how do you communicate with large numbers of farmers which we've always had and what we've seen is that the governments have responded well in the region after an initial hiatus that they have open food lanes or green lanes and mostly those have been working and the ASEAN secretariat and the group of ministers have committed to keeping the flow going and have asked for multi-stakeholder solutions to develop marketing systems which are resilient and sustainable and robust. So turning then to what is grow Asia doing I mean just to give you a sense we have that we work on the premise that if you can get the public sector the private sector and the producers to work together the balance of probabilities is they can come up with better solutions and that's what we've created across the region in six countries we have something like 500 partners half from the private sector the rest from that mix of government civil society produce organizations they break into working groups they do something like 50 different projects and when we do the numbers this is something like a million farmers are engaged 250 of them we a thousand of them we know have changed their activities increased income of about 80 million and that for every dollar invested in the network we leverage another seven dollars from government and the private sector and the farmers themselves we work at the the country partnership level and mainly there those are working on individual value chains and increasingly moving to national value chains but there something we have been doing is that those country partnerships have been collecting the fragmented information on what's actually happening on the ground consolidating it together and disseminating it not only to their network but engaging in conversations with governments and things like the good practices of food chains and food lanes have been disseminated from Philippines to Papua New Guinea as an example but then there's the issue about how do we work regionally and one of the big issues when you talk to the CEOs of large and small agribusinesses and you say what will positively transform your relationship with the smallholder farmer they pause for a moment and then they say digital they say that they're terrified a smallholder farmers contaminating their supply chains so traceability becomes really important logistics becomes really important how do you lure transaction costs when you're dealing with thousands of smallholder farmers if you are a banker how can you identify which of those farmers are really likely to repay your loan etc so digital is very important but we've discovered something really interesting in the surveys that we've done around farmers and i think it's worth referencing that mostly farmers use their phones as a tool to make calls but also 20 to 40 percent of them operating chat rooms but when you get to digital applications agricultural applications less than one percent are actually using its derisory so the question then comes out is how can we use those chat rooms as a platform from disseminating information whether that's around health or whether that's around improved productivity and then turning finally to covid itself you know what we do is that by bringing those disparate parties together you can make better decisions so on May the 15th in partnership with the world economic forum and the ASEAN secretariat we will bring together about 80 partners for a conference call in which we will talk about the problems of covid and the private sector will step forward and talk about what they can do and how they can they can help and solve some of the problems and i think what will come out of that is four working groups one will be around rural logistics part of that will be around you know if we could only apply the creativity that has been applied to urban logistics to rural logistics you know how can we fill in backhalls by consolidating loads then there's the issue of cash and you know at the moment farmers can't take credit card payments so mobile money becomes really important not only to release the flow of money in the cash flow but also enabling farmers to operate in different ways maybe to sell directly online and we have these wonderful examples in Cambodia and Myanmar of wave money wing money which is really sort of operating at the same kind of level that we've seen in Kenya and then there's the issue of digital enhanced marketing you know farmers had difficulty when the food and beverage sector cut off to them they need to be able to switch quickly and have a robust and flexible marketing system and then finally there's the issue of how do we get messages out to farmers maybe using the chat rooms and using some of the interesting developments that come out of the commercial sector where they have learned how to use influences that can walk the chat room and guide the conversation so that we can get out technical and health messages. I'll leave it there Yuri. Thank you so much Graham very interesting presentation colleagues ladies and gentlemen as I said earlier ASEAN sends his apologies but we received the statement from the ASEAN secretariat which I will read very briefly such statement has also been recognized by Dr. Zhang from ADB in his presentation below are some of the excerpts from the statement statement of the ASEAN ministers on agriculture and forestry in response to the outbreak of coronavirus disease to ensure food security food safety and nutrition in ASEAN. We the ASEAN ministers on agriculture and forestry express our deep concern of the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 which has affected the lives of people and economies including food agriculture and forestry sectors in ASEAN and globally. We emphasize the importance of food agriculture and forestry sector and urge to ensure that essential safe and nutritious produce can continue to reach ASEAN markets during the outbreak of COVID-19 in order to contribute to overcoming the challenges posed by COVID-19 outbreak and to ensure sustainable supply of sufficient affordable safe and nutritious food that meet the dietary requirements of ASEAN population we agree to reaffirm our commitments in the implementation of the statement of ASEAN ministers on agriculture and forestry on food security and nutrition to improve storage preservation transport and distribution technologies and infrastructure to reduce food and secure insecurity food nutrient loss and waste minimize disruptions in regional food supply chains by working closely together to ensure that markets are kept open and transportation of agricultural and food products are facilitated and that quarantine and other non-tariff measures do not impede or slow down the free flow of agricultural and food products in the region. So these are some of the excerpts from the ASEAN statement as I mentioned we will see about making this available online somehow so that you can actually see the full statement online. Okay with that we have completed all presentations from the presenters now I will be asking one question to each presenter before we address various questions that we already received from the audience. I will start with Mr. Dixie. Well Mr. Dixie what do you think is the most important role of private sector to safeguard food systems? Okay thanks for the question. I'm reminded of some fascinating research findings which that if you track the number of people who die of starvation from 1860 to the current day between the period of 1860 and 1960 on average 500 people per million died from 1970 that has dropped to 130th to about 13 and that has been achieved by two things one is the increase in productivity and the other one is the post harvest systems now if you drill into more detail about productivity that's the result of research the plant breeders the fertilizer the mechanization and if you look at the post harvest that's roads that's trucks that's ITC infrastructure so you can move production away from areas of surplus to areas of deficit. All of those it shows a great problem if you're trying to disentangle what is the private sector and what's the public sector so the first point I would make is actually it is a public private producer solutions that we need to be working with. The the same thing is that when you get those to work you need to have a shared vision of what is the future that you want and and I think it's worthwhile thinking of the scenarios I mean do we want lots of smallholder farmers organic production small supply chains would that feed the cities or do we want a carter of younger better farmers who can make a reasonable livelihood as farmers or are we thinking of a few big farms or even some of the thinking of moving a farm of food production into factories I think if we have a clear mental image of what we would expect to see coming out and I do emphasize that I think that there will be less farmers but we need to be able to get better farmers and that they need to be able to make an income and that is going to be based on productivity but lowering transaction costs lowering their input costs and probably farming a larger area but I suspect that they will be increasingly supported by a network of local businesses flying the drones doing the plowing providing the labor gangs let's create a clear mental image of what we want in the future let's not step back but let's step forward to create a an inclusive business for a farming system which incorporates farmers but also the way the food demand is changing over thank you Graham very interesting and of course to create this mental image of the future we need to involve all the stakeholders we will have to make sure that no one is left behind thank you thank you for your answer Graham I would like to ask the next question to Dr. Dao from FAO could you please elaborate the policy options that the government should consider in safeguarding food systems and why do countries need to work together as urged by the United Nations David thank you Yurtie um countries need to work together today for the same reason that it's always been a good idea to work together and that's so that we can all learn from one another the virus has shown us if nothing else there is a huge amount that we don't know we're really quite ignorant about a lot of things and the only way we can reduce this ignorance is by learning from each other but it's not just countries that need to work together we all need to work together and in particular I think as I'd like to emphasize what Graham was saying earlier and that is collaboration between the public private public and private sectors will be essential to navigate this crisis most of our food is distributed by private firms whether that be micro small medium or large-scale enterprises and when we put in place virus containment measures there will be problems there will be disruptions that need to be solved and the only way to solve these is to get everybody talking to one another and figuring out a way to get around the problems so that's why it's really important to work together now in terms of policy options I would like to mention several I guess one is to expand social protection there's so many people out there who have serious problems accessing food to avoid export restrictions there's been a few fits and starts but overall I'd say southeast Asia seems to be doing pretty well on that score so far the situation is much better than it was 10-12 years ago during the world food crisis three we all need to collaborate as I mentioned earlier and four I would say don't forget the importance of long-term investments in solid scientific infrastructure to conduct research generate innovations in food production and all along the value chain innovation has always been essential and it's even more so now when we are faced with such tremendous uncertainties thanks thank you very much David for your clear and really important answer to this question my next question is to my colleague Jean Bailly Jean Rice is such an important staple for four billion people so the question is do we need to worry about rice availability this year I'm talking about 2020 do we have do we have enough rice for everyone thank you Yordi for the question well many things can happen in a year it's a long period of time we we we need to distinguish in my opinion the short term let's say the next three three four months and the medium term let's say four to 12 months so in the short term there is evidence that there is no reason to expect supply problems in the last rice harvest we're good even better than expected globally stocks are high higher than ever before and much higher than what they were in in 28 and 2011 so to take examples in China which is both the main producer and consumer of rice stocks are rich records high of 110 million plus tons and just below the level of annual consumption but it's massive in India the second largest consumer and world largest exporter stocks are sufficient to cover several months of consumption so a shortage of rice in the short term is unlikely however the picture can change rapidly in the medium term so any I was said before any short term production that could result in a lower than expected harvest could trigger a price crisis likewise a massive surge in demand fueled by panic buying for example could also trigger a price rise or decisions as as as was recalled by many speakers before me limiting the flow of rice within countries and between countries including export bands and overtreat restrictions could all precipitate a price surge and in that in spite of good markets fundamental so the combination of supply and demand side effects and wrong yes wrong policy decisions could result in an ever price crisis of the sector it's possible it's not likely but it's possible so the potential impact of uncoordinated measure here again cooperation matters so governments decided export bands could be catastrophic so it is reassuring to see that Vietnam and others have resumed their exports they are moving away from this trend of you know being uncooperative lessons have been learned from the previous crisis we know that there is still a risk of collective action problem whereby the decision made by one government to improve its own situation in the short term can make the situation worse for all the others so there is also a risk that when government decides to adopt a competitive behavior rather than cooperative it will be followed by other governments triggering a chain reaction so when when government take unilateral decisions they can fuel the problem rather than solve it so by contrast we have also learned from the previous crisis that good coordination in policies straight facilitation partnerships talking to the private sector can relax the tensions in markets so so again we have to work collectively together private and public sector and make sure we share information thank you great many thanks Dr Bayi for your answer to this important question now i will go to Dr Zhang of ADB there is a huge interest by non-governmental organizations to engage with ADB projects or programs in relation to food systems post COVID-19 so what what will be the mechanisms for such engagement Dr Zhang thank you Yodi ADB operations in particular on agricultural and rural development haven't benefited from the contributions of non-governmental organizations and we will continue to partner with the NGOs for example NGOs can help with farmers mobilization awareness raising community development gender mainstreaming technology dissemination and live food enhancement so in terms of how the NGOs can be engaged in ADB operations here please just allow me to cite one specification in ADB's procurement regulations it mentions that where in the interest of project sustainability or to achieve certain specific social objectives of the project it is desirable on the selected project components to call for the participation of local communities or non-governmental organizations in the delivery of services the procurement procedure specifications and contract packages should be suitably adapted to reflect these considerations provided that these are efficient and the result in value for money so i would just suggest that any organizations which are interested in ADB projects please check ADB website the ADB business center which provides guidance for individuals companies and organizations seeking consulting project procurement and other business opportunities with ADB thank you thank you Dr Zhang we are very happy for the openness of ADB and thank you for your suggestion on how you know non-governmental organizations out there can find information about their potential engagement with you with that you know we have completed our first part of the Q&A we will start taking some questions from the audience in this case i would like to request my colleagues Marco to read the first two questions Marco okay Yurdi the first question i'm going to read has been asked by multiple people in slightly different ways but the generic term is for example the one like this in India there's a huge surge in the reverse migration to the rural areas do you think this is an opportunity to accelerate the production with their capacity skill building on mechanization so that was the first question and the second question is to Dr Ballier and the question is what are the thrusts of your reform policies that will address social equity which is a part of eerie priorities that you mentioned and the question is from Ping Peria in the Philippines thank you Marco the first questions about the returnees labors i think this is relevant for all the speakers but probably i would like to request Dr Dao from FAO to to answer this David okay thank you thank you Yurdi well i mean it what happens really depends on a number of factors i mean 20 years ago when we had the the Asian financial crisis lots of people went back to the countryside in Indonesia and and farm operations became much more labor intensive so there wasn't really a push to mechanization from that i mean that you know on the face of it all the labor migrating back should delay mechanization but what you know whether it does delay mechanization or not though maybe it will postpone it it really could happen it depends if those people are willing to work you know after years of getting you know working in the urban sector and at desk jobs maybe some of these people don't want to get down there and harvest rice or transplant rice anymore so if they don't want to do it or or often you know if they can't do it because maybe maybe they're used to working in nearby barangays and nearby villages and neighboring provinces and if they can't get there because of you know checkpoints and things like that then then the then the farmers won't get the benefit of their labor and and they will have no choice but to resort to mechanization but if if labor is moving around at least a little bit and the people want to work in in the in harvesting the crop and things like that then then this covid will delay the onset of mechanization so it really could go either way and it may go different ways in different locations and thank you david uh before i move on to Jean i would like to invite uh maybe Graham or Dr. Jean for do you want to respond to the first question yeah i mean i i can say this that that you know david's right i mean what happens with an FAO's work has shown this that mechanization doesn't replace labor it it it comes in when there's a shortage of labor and generally when these kind of events have happened people will revert back a few may change but i think the biggest story is that if you map out what happens with countries and the proportion of people that are in primary agriculture it continues to drop and i don't see that there will be a massive change in that thank you Graham let me check with Dr. Jean would you like to say something about the first question yes thank you yordi and also here we also keep in mind and there's also very good opportunities in the rural areas for these people coming back for example to come start up with some small business on agriculture some micro or small business and this can also help to generate for example employment not only from the person himself or herself we also have spillover activities and as i mentioned earlier for example from adb side we would like to help to promote the value chain development basically to help to link up with the farmers including the small hold the farmers within the market and part of the services we can provide is also to chance for some specific technical knowledges to these people thank you thank you dr. jones now i would like to invite my colleague john to address the research question question number two john your yes i'm mute so thank you so yes i understand the the question relates to social equity and and what could be done from a policy level maybe first start by by acknowledging the importance of this problem i mean in the right sector just to take one example the the the work done by women in this field is essential in particular for very specific tasks so it's very important to recognize that transplanting and weaving for example is is primarily done where mechanization is not is not very very high done by women so they are also traditionally women are traditionally responsible of course for the care of children but also of the elderly people and the prepared food and so all that needs to be understood as a as a system so there there is a need to actually have policies that look at all these dimensions of the role of women and and and social equity also look at youths and who have different problems so i think that in in the post-covid world what we would like to do as iri is draw the attention on these on these on these issues on the importance of the role of women and youth but the key here is to position these two categories of of agents as entrepreneurs and make sure that they are they are understood as change agents in the in the system to modernize the sector or actually to make sure that they benefit from the sector they participated in so tapping the potential of new technologies for example that could be a policy option making sure that we turn the the the agriculture sector and rise in particular as a more attractive sector so we have started dialogue on policies like that with a number of governments and the key is to make rice for example rice sector rice production a business of choice not a default position and we need policies that are more affirmative with specific targets and support for women and youth it has to be moving away from business as usual and some some affirmative action is needed i think thank you thank you johns very interesting about the involvement of youth and you know and women in agriculture and i think perhaps you can give just one example john the kind of technologies that iris has been using you know that would require you know the involvement of potentially youth you know youth has not been so interested in agriculture by default as you said if we make this as an entrepreneur uh might be youth you know would be interested to re-engage in agriculture sector yes and you mentioned that before i think gram mentioned that as well you know there are mobile technology mobile driven technologies but there is also all this digital space where where where we can see youth you know thriving and trying to to find that agriculture is not about the past it is it is looking into the future and they can adjust and they can adapt a number of technologies to make it a very modern way of working provided provided the policies are in place to make sure that that is supported and that means the right investments to make sure that they have access to internet that all these infrastructure are in place they don't want to be they don't want to live in the remote areas where they don't have connections for example that is that is a sine qua non condition just to site one great that is a really good example john thank you very much and now i'm sure marco as i understand from you we have so many questions can we go to the next two questions marco of course already yes we have enough questions to fill a couple of a couple of hours more the next question is directly aimed at the representative from the asian development bank and the question poser states it as follows what you said sounds like business as usual but what will be the key differences of adb's investment portfolio before and after cobit 19 and then there's a question that is for fao adb and asian and for grow asia how are these organizations working to develop a regional response to cobit 19 the question asker says surely this is something countries cannot and shouldn't deal with alone thank you marco the first question is for dr john so please dr john thank you this is a very challenging question um what is the significant difference we need to look into i will see three points the first key point is in terms of for example uh the marketing uh connection of the walks we are supporting for example adb has been supporting this irrigation infrastructure for a long time in different countries and in the past what we usually do is basically just look into the irrigation infrastructure rehabilitation operations and maintenance however what we have not done much in the past is specifically to help to look into how we can orient the production towards the demand of the market so this is the major difference adb is doing and will do look into the market demand and then provide the needed support to the farmers including a technical support skills enhancements as well as needed infrastructure support the second thing i will mention is in terms of looking into the food safety and the nutrition part this is something also uh we will need to strengthen more especially within the COVID-19 as we have seen right now and from nutrition and the safety side maybe let me just cite one example adb is looking into right now isn't that the adb is working on one project in the convodian Myanmar and the law pdr look into the cross border livestock health and the value chain development as we know very well basically human health is linked with the animal health and linked with the environment health these three parts are closely linked with each other animal health human health and the environment health and from this specific gms livestock value chain and the cross border animal disease control which we will do we will specifically look into how to address this kind of linkages and we will specifically look into how to help for example the gms countries in improving the quality standards and also look into the standardizing uh the some trade quality requirements across the countries and that the important aspects is also how to bring in for example technologies from international livestock institute and other organizations the third major part of the difference i will see is that in terms of technologies we would like to look into more this kind of adoption as well as dissemination of technologies by the farmers and from the farmers and look into more integrated solutions that's why in my presentation earlier i have also mentioned about in the works that we are doing with the different organizations and in terms of the technologies it will also be different what we did in the past we would also like to look into more innovative way of scaling up the dissemination of technologies thank you and thank you very much Dr. Jung this livestock health example is really really nice in in in the Mekong region thank you so much for that um certainly the second question would actually require the other three presenters to to say something about it but i will start maybe with David and then Grimes and then John so David over to you thank you Yurtie um i think i think FAO is supporting a regional approach in at least a couple of ways um probably the most important is by sharing knowledge and experiences across countries um how the how the details of of things work i mean for example in expanding social protection programs um how does what does experience tell us past experience maybe from disasters and things like that about um expanding social protection horizontally um by bringing in more beneficiaries expanding vertically by increasing the benefits um to existing beneficiaries and how how to simplify how much how we can simplify administrative processes um and maybe relax some of the requirements of programs um in certain crisis situations so i think you know and then of course within agriculture um and other and and throughout the agriculture sector so sharing knowledge across countries i think is is a really important part of FAO's regional approach and then i think the other part of the regional approach is by is just making sure that countries understand the advantages of keeping trade open and making sure that that trade is facilitated across countries um you know in all times but especially in times of crisis uh thank you very much David uh Graham thanks very much um Roland von Manuel who was Obama's chief of staff um was quoted at saying never let a crisis go to waste and what he means by that is not cynicism it is that at these moments people are much more likely to make a change an example being my my my son-in-law is a doctor his hospital has been arguing for electronic records of patients for five years when the covid happened within two weeks they got them so how can we use the opportunity particularly to think about the long-term problems in the food supply system and so what we will be doing and probably on May the 15th is bringing together the asian the secretary general of the asian a group of private sector companies plus members of the development sector and producer organizations and for a conversation for a round table discussion which will a very brief summary of what are the situations that i've outlined then there will be some statements by some of the major agri businesses of their support for working in a public private sector partnership to solve the problems coming out of covid examples there would be buyer cp cinemas and so on and then it would uh there will be an explanation about how working groups work and if you can get multi stakeholder partnerships to work you can come up with better solutions there will then be about 50 60 different companies online a broad spectrum of companies including hopefully things like face book the mufg bank and so on and some of the other things that are working in the digital space to have a discussion and they will bring forward what are the problems that they have actually been facing what are the solutions what will come out of that is this four working groups and they will probably around digital solutions around marketing solutions around logistics around cash and around information and the price and these will have a moderator they will each meet with once a week for four weeks for about an hour to discuss and bring together the public sector the private sector and the producers to discuss and to iron out between them what are the real issues what and to come up with a common vision of what they think would be the solutions and then after four weeks so this would be around about late june those four groups will present to the asian secretary and the grouping of public private sector partnerships what they came out of that so you there have three four or five action plans of what needs to be done and who needs to do what and these would be the trigger for our action plans to solve some of the longer-term problems of covid over thanks gramps nice to hear how you know you work you channel this through the asian body which is very important regional body here um john do you want to say uh to respond to this question too uh are you are you asking john uh john balier or um dr by by the uh so yes well i just would like to add a couple of points because i think the the response by all the speaker was already quite quite useful and and and complete so i think as as as david said there are many ways to strengthen regional cooperation and and and for example i can just provide a couple of examples of what iri has been promoting one is sharing knowledge about this essential you know sharing knowledge on what works what works less well good practices and things like that so another way of cooperating is actually to make sure that we invest in the next generation for example regionally receive students train students and make sure that we invest in these training capacities to actually prepare for the future in a regional on a regional basis and we have a couple of good examples like for example uh our initiative with a number of uh southeast asian countries but overall south asian countries are seed without borders promoting for example uh these easy trade of exchange of seeds from different countries avoiding long certification you know processes and and and that is that is something that we have been pursuing and we would like to expand that to other regions and make sure that countries collaborate more on on these fundamental issues of accessing seeds and and i think one more one more thing for southeast asia in particular we have there have been many talks about the need to revisit the regional integration of of trade in rice but very little progress and we have evidence that the whole region would benefit from you know uh easier trade in rice you know surplus area deficit areas and there are there are just fears that that needs to be you know uh overcome to make sure that it happens and that soon we will have a space an open space for open trade in southeast asia thank you very much john um marco i think we have uh the next five minutes to answer two more questions so i would like to request you to read two more questions please i shall do so uh we have a question from sofia cavalleri from the stockholm environment institute and she asks how can peri urban interfaces be replanned to ensure sustainable and resilient food systems and then we also have another question specifically for our research colleagues i imagine the question is in which priority areas can technology adoption support small holder farmers income during covid-19 thank you marco i think this uh the first question perhaps i would like to suggest that we go to david uh dao david um thank you yurtie yeah i think this is um i think this is creating these uh food system or peri urban food systems will be something that's um you know has has been important before covid-19 will continue to be be so afterwards um i think that what i think the main thing will be to just find ways to um create better integration between a whole continuum of rural peri urban and urban food systems um through better infrastructure and connections um we can hope to do increase food production in peri urban areas but we also need to take account of um the higher value of land in those areas we need to take account of sometimes reduced availability of good quality water um and and things like that so in some ways it poses a little bit more of a challenge because agriculture is a fundamentally um land intensive process um but i think i think the main thing is you know i in you know most of the population anyway in lots of asia is very it's very densely populated and there's huge peri urban areas and to some extent we're kind of um already in those in a situation like that um so yeah i think this will be important going forward i think the important thing is to integrate different um different different uh all along the whole continuum thank you david this reminds me on the discussion on the rural urban linkages as well that is very important for for these regions as well on the research questions maybe uh john do you want to tackle that yes i can try so that's a very broad question so it's i cannot pretend i can exhaust it and it's uh because technology adeptions in support of of incomes that can happen in many ways so i would just perhaps indicate four examples i mean one obvious way is to use information and make sure that farmers access technologies to avoid crop failures for example you know information on whether uh risk whether hazards and make sure that they can anticipate that and and and response so that is one way that is through technologies like remote sensing drones and and satellites and things like that provided they are they are trained of course there are many barriers to adoption of such technologies and we need to we need to be fully conscious of that other ways is to facilitate information through technologies for market access so for example help farmers identify those markets where prices are good and also where demand is growing so these new products that consumers are looking for that's another way uh uh uh technology can can help so uh we we also uh can see at the production stage technology helping farmers for example in the rice sector in managing irrigation for example making sure that they use irrigation efficiently more efficiently efficiently by relying on very specific technologies that would just indicate the right quantity of water that can be applied and and so on so these are just a few examples that would directly result in increased incomes because it would protect the production level and make sure that it would the product would be invested in the best possible conditions great examples thank you very much John um well Marco told me in fact we have more questions but you know we we are already almost one and a half hours so due to the time constraints we do apologize that we cannot address all of them however we will try to forward these questions to the speakers and they might provide their answers later and Erie would probably try to put some of those answers through social media now we have come to the next part of our seminars I would like to invite Mr Jong Jin Kim officer in charge and the beauty regional representative FAO regional office for Asia and the Pacific to deliver his thought and analysis on possible way forward so Mr Kim the floor is yours thank you Erie thank you to all the distinguished speakers for sharing perspectives on future of the food system which I found very informative and thought provoking I want to thank the excellent audience for the active participation in the discussion as well I would like to say a few words to point the general way for as we all know food is essential for human life unfortunately food system which produce process store deliver food to all of us is stressed for many different reasons from different factors climate changes increasingly impact on and increase the frequency of natural disaster natural resources degradation degradation of soil water air makes it more difficult to produce food needed to feed the still growing population now on top of these stresses we are facing one more which is COVID-19 we have to address all of these stresses particularly because the impact will be harsh for small-scale farmers fishers and livestock raisers who are among the most vulnerable in the society we have not been making good progress towards achieving the SDG2 which is eliminating hunger over the past few years and the COVID-19 would make it even more challenging while many interventions are needed by all stakeholders orders in a wide range of areas I would like to emphasize the importance of making our food system more resilient resilience is important because food system is facing ever more shocks and stresses droughts floods typhoons transboundary pests and disease and now virus how we can build resilience I would like to stress the importance of innovation among others the world around us is changing so rapidly to meet the emerging challenges we need to come up with new technologies new processes and new ways of operating business I think digitalization is playing key role in this process developing such innovation is not easy which leads to my second point given the complexity of challenges facing us collaboration is essential as all speakers have mentioned for innovation as well to flourish we all need to work together FAO has a long history of collaborating hand-in-hand with wide range of development partners the UN agencies, international organizations international financial institutions governments research institutes academia civil society as well as private sector we look forward to continuing that collaboration with all of you to develop innovation that will have achieving SDGs particularly leaving no one behind in closing my short remarks I would like to thank Intentionally Research Institute for hosting this webinar and the distinguished speakers and audiences for joining us today thank you very much over to you Yordi thank you very much Mr Kim for your analysis and important suggestion on how we should move forward we do highlight the importance of collaboration working together as all the speakers have already alluded to us to safeguard the food systems we cannot do things by ourselves we have to work together now I would like to invite Dr Matthew Morrell the director general of Erie to give his closing remarks Dr Morrell the floor is yours well thank you Yordi and firstly I'd like to thank you for your excellent moderation of this session but I'd also like of course to extend my thanks again to FAO ADB ASEAN and Grow Asia for making this webinar possible just to reflect briefly David Doar your comments about learning from each other and promoting effective policies are very important we must take this forward Dr Jang Feng Singh it's very welcome to hear about the policy infrastructure and technology investments among other measures that ADB has taken Graham Dixie really appreciated your comments on the importance of public private partnerships this really resonated across practices technologies logistics finances digital solutions we also welcome of course the ASEAN statement on the importance of the agri-food sector and the measures have been taken in the region and thank you Zhong Jing Kim for your comments touching on the struggles we've been making on SDG 2, SDG 2 progress and of course the importance of resilience and collaboration I'd really like to thank the over 600 viewers who've joined the webinar and thank you for some terrific and incisive questions and thank you to our panelists for your answers so thanks again to the export experts from all the organizations who took time from their busy schedules to provide insights on this important matter and I'd really like to encourage that we continue this kind of conversation and I note the seminar that Grow Asia is running in a few weeks to continue this conversation for the benefit of those who depend on rice-based agri-food systems for sustenance and livelihoods please rest assured that IRI is ready to lend its research and expertise in the future development of strategies technologies science measures against crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of its impact on food systems I hope you got a sense of the commitment and excitement from Dr Ballier that IRI sees in progressing research to address the impacts of COVID-19 but also the other grand challenges facing this sector so in closing just to note that the world is of course no stranger to crisis but what seems interesting to me about experiencing this crisis is that it is broad broad and more or less consistent action it can be argued that this is because it's a very democratic crisis that Boris Johnson or Tom Hanks can't be protected then why should I think that I can be in the absence of the measures that have been put in place so my government must act yet we face other crises climate change population growth environmental degradation as a number of prominent examples where the effects are more incremental and where the effects are felt by the most vulnerable and are perhaps not even evident to the political and economic classes who run our societies we struggle to mount responsive responses to those crises that match the coordinated response we've seen to COVID so we must learn from this will the world like after the 2008 food price crisis grow complacent again or will we take this as a wake-up call to address all of the pressing issues of our times understand their synergies and their interactions and the trade-offs and benefits of particular interactions there is a huge opportunity for science and technology an evidence-based policy to be the driver of solutions by thinking at a systems level we must accept this challenge work tirelessly to develop solutions collaborate strongly and be powerful advocates for a safer more sustainable and healthy world thank you very much Dr Morrill for such inspiring closing remarks with that colleagues ladies and gentlemen we have come to the end of our program I hope that the seminar today has enriched our knowledge on the food systems I personally learned a lot I would like to once again thanks all resource persons for their contribution Dr Dao Mr Kim from FAO Dr Zhang from ADB Dr Dixie from Grow Asia Dr Balie and Dr Matthew Morrill from Erie thanks also to ASEAN for sharing its statement of course thanks to the over three six hundred participants out there some maybe evening some morning in your time it has been a great seminar let clap for ourselves and thank you very much I'm Yordi Yasmine the regional representative for Southeast Asia of Erie until then bye for now