 Thank you, thank you very much Fabio and welcome, welcome everyone to this webinar on agricultural risk management. This webinar is actually the result of a great effort of a number of partners. So I'd like to mention them. So we are organizing this webinar together with the Agrinium together with Future Food Institute, with the UN S-CUP, with EFAD of course, and as they are hosting the platform for agricultural risk management, also with Future Food Institute and also with FARM, which is the Forum on Agricultural Risk Management. Before we start, I wanted to explain a little bit what we are trying to achieve with this webinar. So the first thing I have to mention is that the webinar has the objective also to raise awareness on a series of e-learning courses on agricultural risk management. These courses are available through the FAO e-learning academy and have the purpose to really explain what does it mean, what do we mean by agricultural risk management, how do you assess your risks, and also what are the tools you have, what are the policies that you can design to mitigate or to cope with these risks, etc. So the idea is also to try to raise awareness on the existence of these courses. So a little bit about before we go into the very rich program that we have foreseen for you today with very high-level experts, I would like just to describe a little bit the process that has led us to the design and development of these e-learning courses. The first thing I have to say is that the e-learning courses were developed through an extremely successful partnership with a number of partners. So we had the Agence Française, the development that were involved, the Italian Agency for Cooperation and Development, the EU, but also a development bank which is KFW, also the German government, and of course EFAD and PARM. I have to also mention that PARM for those of you who do not know about it, so the platform for agricultural risk management is the G20 initiative. It is a global initiative on agricultural risk management. What I also wanted to mention is that in addition to the partners that were involved in the development of the courses, we have organized a huge collaborative multi-stakeholder learning needs assessment to design jointly the curriculum with over 40 partners worldwide. So we have tried to include universities, universities from the north, from the south, from Kenya, India, Ethiopia, we had Oxford University Greenwich, we had universities from the state, but also governments. So we had many representatives of governments. We had the EU Joint Research Center involved. We had also the World Farmers Organization involved. So we tried to really gather a number of stakeholders from all over the world, and we jointly worked together on the design of a comprehensive curriculum on agricultural risk management. So this webinar is the result of all this effort, and we are extremely pleased to have today with us Professor Kisan Glunja, who has been the main author of these series of courses, who will be giving us more details about the courses. I also wanted to mention that this is one of two of the webinars that we have organized for agricultural risk management. In this present webinar, we will be covering in detail the first two courses, while in the next one in October, we will be focusing on the other two. So without further ado, I would like to give the floor to Professor Kisan Glunja, who will be sharing with us a little bit more on the courses. Thank you. Thank you very much. Kisan, the floor is yours. Okay, good morning everyone. Good afternoon. This is a great pleasure to be participating in this seminar presentation. Mine is mostly a technical presentation about the introduction, introducing these four courses. I used to be a FAO staff and ex-professor from Miguel. These courses were designed for mainly three groups of audiences, basically the policy group, which not just the basic or the primary policy makers, but also academic learners who are interested in agricultural risk management at the more basic level, and the development practitioners. The courses are actually should be used by farmers, but we know there will be very little access to them. But hoping that farm management advisors and other organizations, community people would help. Of course, the course does deal a little bit about the intermediaries of the entire value chain. So service groups, service providers, and providers would also be interested and could get some knowledge from this. The course is based basically on the framework of the risk management strategy cycles, which is a cycle starts with understanding and identifying risks. That is basically the course one. Course two is the risk assessment, and this is where it starts getting a little more technical. And then we have the course. Sorry, Kizan, to interrupt you about you're not sharing the screen. I'm not. No. Just click on the share screen button, the green one on the bottom of your screen. I thought I was. Oh, yes. Okay. Okay. Also, if you can try to talk a little bit closer to the microphone, it would really help. Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay. Okay. And then I start here. Is it? Okay. So basically, can you see this? Yes. Okay. So first two courses are identifying the risk and the assessing risk. And then the crux of the course, the set of these courses is the armed tools. And finally, to putting this together at the macro level of implementation of these and the policies and the monitoring and evaluation. So the first course is about, I'll introduce them very briefly, is about different, mostly the concepts and the definitions and different approaches. What are the types of risks? What are the characteristics of what causes them? Implications. We need to appreciate them. And then holistic approach or different approaches, where we look at the synergies between risk strategies and policies. Finally, this course will indicate how do we benefit from these courses? As you know, the risk is a threat of loss caused by uncertain event. And so based on that, we have different types of events or activities. And their solutions required in terms of the strategies, they can be either production risk, market risk, or finance risk. In the production, you have a lot of weather factors, pest and diseases, environmental risk, and so on. But more importantly, nowadays, this World Bank had what called the enabling environment. And there are a lot of risks can come, especially at the macro level. And for we have to consider in terms of the strategies as the infrastructure institutions, political changes and so on. And these days, you have Ebola and the coronavirus and so on, those are the social and human element risks. Why bother studying these or trying to develop capacity? Well, just look at the example of the current COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in Africa. We're very fortunate that they are, we're working on a project at the regional office in Africa on this particular issue. There has been, this has been considered as the deepest recession since the Second World War for the global economy. And for the African economies, it is really the deepest contraction on record in Sub-Saharan Africa. There have been four and a half million community cases with 122,000 deaths, most recent first of May data, and there are 54 countries that have been affected. And this has a significant significance of that is to 26 to 40 million people will be pushed into extreme poverty. So this is the project that we are actually working on. You can see Mauritius, Cava Verde, Seychelles, many of the small island developing states have been hardest hit because of the tourism based in their economies. And you can see the range going from 2% to 20% of the GDP growth that is going to be affected. So it's a huge amount, $368 million worth of losses could be had because of this. I wanted to show the Ebola as another example, because that was also most recent one, which on 1415 World Bank estimated $2.8 billion of losses. The reason I wanted to show is that we have a data on this. And if you look at every six years, DRC 1995, six years later, there was Uganda 2001. There's another six years later, DRC, another six, seven years later, the biggest one was Africa. And so six years later, 2021, was the corona, of course, not Ebola, but the similar crisis. So watch out for 26, 27. Significant price risk. There is another example. If we look at the benchmark international prices of the major commodities, you could see there is a great variation of price volatility, which also has a major cause of risk in agriculture. You can see here for the red line is the rice prices. Rising to about 232% in within one year, 2008 to 2008. And at the same time as 2012 and 2013, you see a drop in maize prices, for example, by 43%. So the great volatility is a big thing for the risk and market risk. Assessing these, again, the learning objectives here is what are the qualitative and quantitative methods for prioritizing them. What is the process of doing the risk assessments at different levels? Risk mapping is a very good subject. And we will talk, you learn a lot about this in this course. And the risk management profiles in different areas, which tells you for the policy makers, what is the capacity and the key information required for this assessment. You could see these in the end, putting all these risks in a matrix based on the severity of it, as well as the frequency or the probability likelihood. So if you have risks that are very likely as well as they have very high severity, of course these then become as the high risk or priority ones. And the ones with the green here are less important. Agriculture risk management tools. The other two courses we have just a very brief here would show that we selected 12 different types of risk management tools. And the production, you have climate smart agriculture, agriculture diversification, asset and income strategy. The finance related tools are agriculture insurance, weather index, insurance, microfinance, and similarly how market risk, which are warehouse received system, contract farming, commodity futures markets. Contract farming is legitimate and a fairly profitable strategy or a tool that has been successful somehow in India, for example, it's been kind of treated as a more political issue these days. Of course there are some risks that where the government needs to support people such as the food grain reserve, disaster risk programs, assistance programs, as well as the social protection. So that's basically for the three courses then putting them all together in a capstone course, the final one, in terms of the policy. You have to have, it's based on three lessons or four lessons, you have to have a farm level risk tools and consolidating. So that is a strategy at the farm level. Similarly, at the community or local area level, so we have the different topics that are covered in here is the tailoring area specific learning tools and the poor poor advocacy, more or less region specific issues. Similarly, at the national level, you have to look at the environment, enabling environment and creating early warning as well as say information systems. Of course, the basic putting all together, how to make it sustainable is the role of the government, capacity development and mainstreaming. So that is the, so finally, in conclusion, in concluding remarks, I would say, of course, agriculture is a risky business and that's a bad news. And just look at the COVID 19 pandemic to see the damages it can cause. However, the good news is that there are ways to manage ways at least to mitigate them. And the bad news is that developing countries have lack of capacity, but the good news is that there is human capacity that can be developed and there are resources available. There are other concluding conclusions about these courses such as there are a lot of limitations we have to keep in mind. Basically, these are really not hands on technical training courses because there is a lot of lack of data and information and so on. However, they do give you an overview of the risk issues and the ability to participate. So the final point is basically the content of these different courses also have content documents. So the keen learners can actually learn a lot more and go deeper, especially in an academic and a guided learning settings. And I think this is where we need to see how this can be part of the comprehensive curriculum on risk management. And the good news is that you can also get a certification badge when you complete the test at the end of the courses. So thank you very much. And these courses please encourage everyone to take these. These are free, no cost at all. And this is the source. So thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Fabio, maybe if you can turn on my camera please. So thank you, Kisan, for underlying how important it is also to, first of all, to understand, to assess, but also to understand that you need to adopt different strategies and different tools based on the dimension you are in. Of course, at farm level, you have different needs and different challenges at national, at local level, others. And of course, at national level, you have others. So thank you very much. This was very, very clear through your presentation. I wanted to mention two important things. So the first one is that our main partner throughout the process of design development, peer review, promotion of these courses has been NEPAD, the new partnership for Africa Development. So that is something that really needs to be mentioned because throughout the process, the support of NEPAD has been crucial and extremely valuable. The second, I want to go back to what, in the conclusion of Kisan, Kisan was mentioning certification. And this is an important point for you to know, which is these courses allow you to earn a certification. And this certification is not just a certification of completion. It is a certification that allows to certify that you have acquired specific competences related to agricultural risk management. And this is done through a certification system, through the digital badge certification system. And it allows you then to carry these badges in your e-portfolio, in your CV, in your LinkedIn. It allows to define your professional profile. So have a look and visit the FAE Learning Academy. And now, without any further ado, I would like to give the floor to Mr. Gideon Onuma, who is from the, who works in the Natural Resources Institute and who will be moderating the rest of the session. Thank you very much. Gideon, the floor is yours. Thank you very much, Christina. And good day and welcome to all participants. I can see from the list that we have about 150 participants. And also from the polls, it's clear that we have a very varied range of participants. More than 34 percent from Africa and Asia, we have 24 percent, 26 percent from Europe. So it's quite diverse. And we have a range from academia, almost 30 percent government and international organizations and quite interestingly, also from private sector and from other NGOs. So we have a diverse group. And the theme for this discussion, this part of the webinar, is to look at the issue of why we have to develop capacity in agricultural risk management. And I think his presentation gave us a very good introduction, a very good background, talking about risk, which are events that can occur and when they occur, it leads to loss, can be loss of income, sometimes to human fatalities. It can also be negative impact on livelihoods, particularly at the level of smallholder farmers. So there is a need to empower people to deal with this as they occur. The only thing is that for a risk, the occurrence is uncertain and the severity of impact is also uncertain. Now, Kisan talked about COVID, cited COVID as an example. And I think for me, it illustrates very much the whole issue of risk and risk management. Pandemics have happened before in the history of the world. And we have epidemics like Ebola in some parts of the world before, but everybody just assumed it would not happen during our time. And even when it started, people thought, no, this will only affect particular geographic locations and not the rest of the world. And some countries may have been armed, others were just waiting. Now, what one of the things that we have learned is that if you don't do anything about it, you don't prepare yourself, the impact can be quite severe. And the extent to which you deploy effective tools to mitigate these risks will tell how much you can actually reduce the impact or even recover very quickly from it. And for us for this afternoon, we have a distinguished panel of three who will be leading us in the discussions on why we have to develop capacity in agricultural risk management. And the three come from very different places. We have Massimo Giovannola, who is the lead technical specialist for PAM at IFAD. He's been on this program since 2014. He moved over from FAO after seven years at FAO. He moved over to IFAD to be part of this activity. And he has a lot of experience from working in various African countries in the West, in the South, in Southern Africa, and also in Central Africa. And we also have an academic from the University of Marquerera University in Uganda, who is a senior lecturer in the Department of Extension and Innovations. And here we'll be talking to us about the experience of Marquerera in leading in training to build capacity in agricultural risk management. And then we have somebody from the police side, Mariam Sao, who until a few months ago was one of the senior personnel at AUDA NEPAD in South Africa. And NEPAD has been working with African governments promoting policy reforms that will transform the agricultural sector in Africa. So we are going to be hearing from these. And rather than go through formal presentations, we want to make this as conversational as possible. So we actually learn from the experiences of the panelists. And to start us off, we will have a first round of three questions to each of the panelists. And we'll start with Massimo. And the question to him is, what is PAM? We've heard of PAM mentioned by Christina and also by Kisan. But we want to know about PAM, a very brief introduction, and also tell us concretely what PAM has been doing to raise awareness of agricultural risk management and to promote adoption of the practices that will enable smallholders and other actors to manage or mitigate the risk that they are vulnerable to in the agricultural sector. So over to you, Massimo. And after that, we'll have a question for Rachel. Thank you very much, Gideon. And thank you also for your Academy to invite PAM and myself during this very interesting panel and discussions. A very quick introduction about PAM, because Christina already mentioned about the region, the genesis of our platform. We were established the platform in 2013 by the G20. It's a multinodernal platform founded by the EU, the Genes Fragrant Development, Italian Corporation Agents, EFAD, and is from a strategic angle also from NAPAD, from the African Union. So the reason why PAM was created, established now, eight years ago, is because at that time, G20 realized there were sort of big gaps at the global level on assessing and prioritizing agricultural risk. At that time, there was many partners, organizations, international and national, focused more on specific sector by sector, sub-sector, their analysis. What was missing was this overview of all risk, the main risk that could affect the agricultural sector at a different level. And that's why PAM was created. That's why PAM, during its first phase, starting 2014 and closing in 2019, developed a new methodology called holistic approach capable to assess and prioritize a wide variety of risk, financial risk, market risk, climate risk, political, infrastructure risk, put all these risks, those risks together, at the end, based on the frequency survey that was mentioned before by Professor Kizan, developing a mechanism capable to, let's say, summarize the ranking, these risks, based also on the economic losses. And this was exactly the main goal of PAM. It is still the main goal of PAM to raise awareness at the global level, that's how we are linked to the Agenda 2030, in mainstreaming the new concept, because the holistic approach is a really innovative concept, which requires also, and you would say, a way of thinking, a behavioral change at a different level, from decision makers to governments, to private sectors, to farmers. And in the meantime, PAM also, to be very concrete, not only developed this new methodology, but also developed a new process to support governments that have the aim to integrate risk management in their policies investment plan, through organization of KM events, trainings, undertaking risk analysis. Now, we also developed a new, we integrate our risk assessment methodology, also focusing the value chain. We incorporate the gender dimension into our analysis. And so, at the end of our process, we're also able to propose some solutions for investment, but always following our holistic approach, because for PAM is key, this work from the beginning to the end of the process. So PAM, we never propose in one solution, the magic solution. We usually propose a package instruments. Since the topic today is on capacities best practices, one of the pillars for agricultural risk management is clearly strengthening the capacities at a different level on how to assess, prioritize, and manage agricultural risk. And our target, of course, are governments that represent our main client, but as well as, of course, farmers, private sector and different levels of stakeholders. I stop here because I also, not far from my training. Over to you, Gideon. Thank you very much. You will stop just in time, and thanks for keeping to time. Now, to Richard, Masimo talked about the scorecard from green to bright red, which was people about various risks. Now, from your involvement as a university, why do you think it's important that Macquarie and other academic institutions get involved in capacity development in risk management? Thank you so much. I really appreciate it, Dr. Onuma. Really, I come from Macquarie University, and this, to us, is very, very important, because as the university, one of our strategic objectives is outreach and knowledge development. And so, when the Minister of Agriculture approached us together with the support of PAM to participate in disseminating this important program, to us, it was really an answer to a very important contribution that we're supposed to make. So it's very important, therefore, that as the university, we can contribute to solving a very, very important challenge that our smallholder farmers do face, as well as be able to contribute through science, through training, through research, to seeing how these solutions can viably be taken up by our clients. So that's how important it is to the university. And also, it's very important because of the capacity requirements that we can contribute in scaling up the number of capable experts in this area through training, university-based training, but also field-based training. So again, being able to, one of the reasons is to provide the capacity needed in terms of numbers of people who are able to do this. Thank you so much. You are muted, Gideon. You are muted. Now to Mariam. Thank you, Richard. Mariam, you have worked with an organization that worked with governments and encouraged policymakers to adopt policies that would enhance transformation in the agricultural sectors in Africa. From your experience, why do you think, and also your engagement with the PAM process, why do you think it's necessary for policymakers to get involved in promoting capacity development in agriculture risk management? And even as a starting point, to become aware of the risks and the tools that can be deployed by various actors to manage risk in agriculture. Good afternoon, everyone. And thank you, Gideon, for this very interesting question. Let me start first by making a disclaimer. I used to work for the African Union Development Agency, NEPAD, but I'm not there anymore. So I will definitely talk from the experience that I gained while being there, but I'm not talking on behalf of ADA NEPAD. I think that has to be also very clear. So during these number of years where we have been working with supporting governments and trying to advocate and raise awareness of governments on the African continent, and we did it a lot in collaboration with FAO and also with PAM, I think that one of the main reasons is that usually African governments are used to manage crisis. So managing crisis is an exposed intervention. It is not an ex-ante one. Managing crisis has been done for a number of years, decades even. But I think that the problem with that option is that you always have to start again on the development interventions. So a crisis can wipe out gains obtained from a number of years of efforts and resources dedicated to development. So this is the first entry point when you start to raise awareness with governments, just explaining to them that it is better to manage the risk rather than managing crisis. Because then you are preventing, you are building your capacity to better manage, and also you plan better. So you plan better and you can save your resources. So this was the very first entry point that we have been using to advocate with governments. And I think that they start now to better understand, especially in this area, in this era where we have a climate change which is making disasters even more frequent and more severe, as we saw previously, I think in one of Kisan a slide presentation. So this is also another entry point is that you can better manage your resources and save resources by investing into risk management interventions instead of investing into crisis management interventions. So these are the two big, you know, argument that we have been using to really convince governments. And I think that we did quite a tremendous job on that. And of course now with this pandemic, with this COVID pandemic, I think that most governments are very much aware of it. I will stop there for now. Thank you. Thank you very, very much, Maria. I think even at this day, I will applaud the panellists for keeping the time. So very quickly to Massimo, you've been, Pam has been doing this for about seven years. What has been some of the major challenges and how have you managed them? And did COVID in any way impact on your activities and the delivery in particular of capacity development activities? Yeah. As I said before, Maria, the first question, Pam developed a new methodology, holistic approach. When you propose something innovative, so innovative, of course, you can expect some time in order to explain the potential and people to understand the potential of a new methodology, this innovation. And this is exactly what happened, because for instance, you know, before the creation of PARM, there was still an attitude to develop strategies or plans based more on the perception than the evidence of risk. That's why PARM developed this methodology, the holistic approach, based on the quantification, concrete figures associated to each risk before prioritizing a rate in them. And this, of course, required time for partners, clients in order to understand this new approach. And in the meantime, also, Pam tries, still trying, of course, to develop, to clarify how to identify the responsible who is accountable, depending on the risk, because you mentioned before Gideon, the Ebola, the financial shocks in the 28, or for instance, the SARS, other macro level risk. COVID is an example now. And we know this type of risk can only be managed by small farmers. This requires different level of the stakeholders involved in engaging the decision makers, actually, while on the other side, we, there are small, different type of risk that can be managed by directly by farmers, some harder by the market. So again, this way of identifying the responsibility roles in the country sector also requires sometimes. And the code, of course, highlights some limits, because of the travel restrictions. Clearly, in some cases, limited our capacity to liaise with our counterparts, our partners, especially at control level, but also represent an opportunity, in spite of the dramatic dramatic period, because we don't should forget that COVID is still human, the human losses around the COVID. But in the meantime, we also realise that it could represent the opportunity, the COVID, because we start organising a lot of trainings, meetings online. We have been able to involve and engage with partners all around the world, thanks to the online platform. For instance, Parms in 2020 launched the platform for agricultural risk management in development, the FarmD, which is a big community practice where now we are able to connect and expand our network all around the world. I guess the acronym and the link would be shared during the meeting. So again, online trainings, virtual meetings, expanding our network, highlighting the importance of an approach, a realistic approach in which you can represent the main challenges. In addition to, of course, what is quite common is the dissemination of a new concept and scaling up. But again, we like to say in prime that we want to move from the concept of risk to opportunity. So in some cases, it's not that we would say see that the risk of those are present in opportunity, not just a problem. And over to you, William. Thank you very much. And now to Richard. Can you just tell us how you managed to integrate information, knowledge on what agricultural risk management into your regular curriculum and from your experience, any major lessons that have been made that others should learn from? Thank you so much, Gideon. And thanks again to my colleagues. Well, at Macquarie University, we were approached by the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries with the support of PAM to initiate, first of all, short courses targeted to agricultural officers who work in the country across the country. And so that gave us a fast heads up in terms of co-development of training materials across the whole cycle as shared by our professor at the beginning. And so I'm glad to report that in our department, we are going to run a graduate course, a graduate course on agricultural risk management, but which will really focus on making farmers resilient when these courses, I mean, these events occur. And so I think the thing that has fascinated that is, first of all, the awareness and the opportunity that PAM gave to us through the Ministry to participate in training their local agricultural extension officers. And so we have materials to refer to. The other thing that has enabled us to integrate as the many materials that PAM has developed that are available on their website, including books and documents that have been sharing with us over the years. So we have plenty of reference material. And of course, because this is going to be a graduate course to begin with, for masters, we have to pitch it a little bit higher to enable the students to be able to analyze issues, including what could actually enhance or prohibit the smooth application of PAM among different categories of farmers. And so there is both learning of the process, but also what could actually affect the actual implementation of this. So the lesson learned here, if you notice, this came, you know, curriculum reviews at universities also are a cultural thing. You know what I mean? That it should happen in the right time. So the good thing that happened with us, we were entering into a curriculum review process, and that's what enabled us to introduce a course at master's level. For we haven't yet started for undergraduates, we still have to wait for an opportune time, but we have a chance to slowly integrate some of the aspects of these courses into either practical training. But the other thing that we are well able to continue doing is to run the short courses, demanded short courses, either by the public sector or by the private sector. And I think that's where I could share a little bit of challenges later on when you let me. Thank you, Richard. Very quickly to Mario. You've already given us a means to enter into the corridors of policymakers and how to approach them. But when we have approached them, how, what are they actually supposed to do to facilitate the delivery of capacity development in agricultural risk management? Do you have any insights on that? Yes. Thank you, Gideon. I think that there are several avenues, you know, that we have been investigating and we have actually, we had started working on and still working on actually. The first one is that, you know, risk management is multidimensional. It is multidimensional and multi-sectoral. So it involves a large range of stakeholders. And one of the first tasks that governments have started to do is to build more coordination and synergies between the different technical ministries and departments. Because if you don't, if the agriculture people don't talk to the trade, people don't talk to those who are in charge of building infrastructure in rural areas, then, you know, it is difficult to manage really this risk. So improving this multi-sectoral coordination and building these synergies in one very first entry point. So this is what I will call a little bit a horizontal kind of, you know, mainstreaming. The second one is, you know, the risks they are happening at the community level. Community level and usually government is up at the national level. So we definitely need also to have this coordination from the community level to the sub-national, to the regional, up to the national. So we need also to have this kind of vertical integration, you know, that governments should be able really to stimulate in terms of communication, in terms of interventions, and making sure that whatever happens at the bottom, at the community level, is coming up, you know, up to the national. So this kind of vertical and horizontal integration is something very important that governments are trying really to focus on. This is a little bit, you know, at the same time, there's also all these extension services that needs to be to see their capacity built. So I will start, I will stop there for now and then maybe we can continue on the discussion later. Right. So thank you, Mariam. I'll jump back to Massimo with the last set of questions for the panelists. Since Mariam ended on the note of extension agents, what has been your key lesson from engaging with governments to build farmers' capacity risk management through the extension agents, for instance, in a place like Ethiopia? Yeah, the case of Ethiopia, I guess, can represent a good case study for PAM because can summarize how a process, because for PAM, agricultural management is not just actions, few actions, isolated actions, trainings, it's just a process. And how, thanks to the involvement of different stakeholders from the government, but also we shouldn't forget that the work done by PAM, from the methodology to implementation, the trainings, and so on, was possible thanks to the partnership, the technical collaboration with, for instance, the research universities, not only Ethiopia, but all countries in the region as well, which is key for PAM because you're proposing a new methodology, which is based on technical analysis and evaluation. And in Ethiopia, the process took some time as all countries because the final goal was to move the interest, just the interest of the government to its engagement. And it was possible thanks to the involvement of different partners, starting from the ministry of agriculture, the extension service. And today, the research, donors, and so on. And today, where the stage where, thanks to the process, we are starting the design of a big program in agricultural management, which aims to, which objectives is to integrate ARM, agricultural management, into the extension services, national policy investment plan. And this will, of course, involve different stakeholders, different partners. Again, the final goal is to help farmers to be more resilient with a deal of different type of risk. And in Ethiopia, we'll test how efficient is our methodology that I repeat again, also includes some specific analysis, the value chain, this is getting data on gender, between, and so on. So again, Ethiopia, as I mean, if probably other countries will follow, represent a summary of a good results achieved by PARM in a given country. Thanks to the partnership with the government, my client, our donors in technical organization, FAO, is one of them, NEPA, and of course, research in farm organization. Over to you, William. Thank you very much, Massimo. And the final question will be very much the same to both Richard and Mariam and for Richard. It's how useful you would find what has already found the information and resources available on the e-learning platform in delivering your courses. And for Mariam, what do you think needs to be done to encourage people at the policy level to take advantage of this resource and other learning resources that PARM has already made available? First, Richard. What was my question? Was it sir about that? It's the, I mean, how relevant or useful the e-learning resources and other learning resources that PARM has already developed? How would they help you in delivering your programs in capacity development? Thank you so much. As our colleagues have mentioned that you see the holistic approach is certainly a model of its own, okay? And there are so many models out there trying to engage farmers and trying to involve multiple stakeholders. And so our plan is that in the coming projects, for example, we have coming projects on conservation agriculture, which may need, before you implement such a solution or a tool, you have done a little bit of quite substantial risk assessments. So again, these tools, which were designed to work with local farmers, are going to be very useful as a reference points. But again, we'll have to adapt them to the different contexts. And so that process again will involve engaging local practitioners, local actors in how to really translate this. But other is we are going to find them very useful in terms of the order where you start, where you end, and also allow us to adapt each step one piece at a time. Thank you. Thank you. And Maria, how do you get policy because to actually take advantage of these resources? Yes, I think this is a very interesting question because at AUDA in the past, the way we are, you know, encouraging and making sure that governments really take up risk management. We definitely think, and I was saying previously that risk management is multi-sectoral, multi-dimensional. And I think that Massimo has also focused on that, you know, with the holistic approach. We call it more an integrated approach, which is that these risk management tools or instruments that you can identify after any kind of assessment have to be combined with other kind of interventions. And this is how government becomes very, you know, interested in picking up these tools. Because these tools, if you want them to be effective, you need to also build infrastructure because you cannot just, you know, address the risks in, especially on the African continent, you also have to address the constraints. And the constraints, they are here in terms of infrastructure, development. They are also there in terms of capacity, which is what PAM is doing. And they are also there in terms of building more strong, stronger institutions and policies as well. So this is a kind of package that AUDA and APAD is presenting to countries. And today we have two pilot countries, Niger and Uganda, where this package is as a whole is offered to the governments. You know, you need to address the tools, of course. And if you want to build the tools and want them to be effective and efficient, they need to be combined with infrastructure. If you take the case of post harvest losses, for example, post harvest losses, if you use warehouse receipt systems to mitigate or to address post harvest losses, you need to build storage capacities. You need to put the warehouse receipt system in place. And then you need definitely to build the capacity to bring finance and all these other components that will make it really effective and attractive at the same time for government. I will stop there. Thank you. Over to you. All right. So thank you all very much. I've attended quite a number of these webinars. And sometimes you hear very exciting presentations. And at the end of it, you have questions that are interesting and important, but there isn't enough time to address them. Fortunately, in this case, because our panelists basically stuck with time, we have at least 15 minutes to respond to questions and answers. And I have two here, which I will read out. And any of the panelists can respond to them as we wait for others. What type of human resource development or capacity development is needed in reducing or addressing the challenge of losses in a community value change? That's question number one. And what views do you have on the need for climate and disaster risk insurance? And the end of the panelist as well as Kisan can take up any of these two questions? Maybe let me offer myself for the first question. In terms of capacity, I think when it comes to very specific post-harvest losses across the value chain, then of course, we will need a post-harvest technologist. But I think what PAM and HAM in particular encourage is a multi-stakeholder approach where you look at the entire value chain or enterprise and anticipate the potential risks that are bound to happen. So again, we need people whose capacities are able also to look at the whole picture of risks and challenges, but also who are exposed and connected to the whole set of tools. And as Maria mentioned, the infrastructure that provides the solutions to those tools. So you don't only need to be an expert in post-harvest handling, but also you need to have connections and the ability to attract partnership support from the service provision from the entities that may not be aware about the challenge that is being faced in the value chain. So really a multi-tasker, personal multi-skills here besides the technical skills. Very much. And a quick attempt at the second. I can maybe add something about, because you mentioned about climate insurance agriculture is managing. Okay, this is, as you can imagine, is a topic may take not hours, days, or discussion about the insurance in agriculture is managing especially climate. First of all, let me clarify from a risk-managing point of view, climate is more a trend than a specific risk, but can have an impact of different type of risk, because you know this trend is clearly affecting the farmer's decision-makers, private sector, and also can, let's say, worsen some specific risk. Insurance in any case, from a risk-managing point to a different point of view, and for information partners to incorporate in-house, in-file, some expertise on insurance is one possible potential instruments can contribute to transfer some type of risk, but not the only one. We always say that the starting point should be the risk assessment, because before deciding what tools you want to propose, insurance is one of them, of course. You should be aware about the risk and the size of the dimension of this risk, who is particularly affected, and who are connected different stakeholders. For instance, Richard mentioned about the value chain. Okay, so often the risk analysis are specifically focused on value chain, because if there were farmers, private sector, invest more, particularly what Richard said. If you want to introduce, for instance, risk transfer insurance, it's an option, but let's see, because as I like to say, insurance only is not a solution. Okay, should be packaged, should be integrated with other instruments, should be supported by some market analysis, because we should not forget that insurance goes to represent an additional risk, because at the end, the premium, if you think about insurance in a sustainable manner, should also have also the cost. They should be charged somehow at the end of the final production and the final income of our farmers. But again, it depends also on the type of farmers, could be commercial-oriented farmers, could be a farm organization, could be small holders. Again, I don't think we have one answer, but it should be contextualized. And again, the integrated approach, just the holistic approach, as we say with Marian and Pam, is probably the right approach in order to identify when and how proposed, for instance, insurance in the concept climate change. Over to you. Yeah, thank you very, very much, Massimo. There is an interesting question that has come up here. If we say that agriculture is a risky business, will it not deter farmers from staying in agriculture? In which case, if they leave, we are all going to be hungry. So, good risk is as much about opportunity as the risk, as threats. Is it not? This is the question that has been posed. Any tickets? Yeah, let me answer it briefly. I guess all businesses have inherent risks. And so agriculture is one of them, except that agriculture depends mostly on weather-related factors on which the producers themselves have very little control. And therefore, it becomes a risky business in that sense. But fortunately, there are many solutions available and strategies available. Massimo mentioned about the insurance, which is a possibility for a highly commercial kind of agriculture. But there have been solutions found innovative solutions such as the weather index insurance, which can be applied more on larger areas with less costs for the insurance companies because the losses are determined on the basis of the index of rainfall, for example, and so on. And it's been tried in Ethiopia, Malawi, and so on with the limited success or so on. But this requires strategy, involvement of donors as well as, say, politicians and policymakers. Okay. There is also another interesting question here. And I suspect that this person is coming from either a research institution or an academic institution. And his question is, is there a role for us in agricultural research institutions in capacity development, or is this only geared towards trainers and extension services practitioners? Can I jump in if you want? I guess that, no, no, let's first reach out. Sorry, Rachel, first you. Clearly, clearly. And then if you want to be complete. Yeah, I think there is a role. There is a role for agricultural researchers. But to me, it depends on who initiates this entire program. There has to be someone who volunteers to show the farmers in that value chain the need to do a holistic risk assessment. And that individual then can bring on board the other important actors, including researchers, where we can experiment maybe on different options that maybe are related with certain, for example, production related risks. Over to you, Massimo. So there will be room depending on the model, I mean, the implement or facilitate bringing in the appropriate actors like the researcher. Thank you, Rachel. Okay, you are much more accountable than me on research, of course. But I would like just to share our experience with PARM because, as I said before, research academia has been a key partners of PARM in developing the methodology and implementing as well, because we work a lot with universities in our countries also to implement our trainings, coaching sessions, because, of course, the final goal of PARM is, as you can imagine, is to strengthen the local expertise in order to provide more sustainable solution in recalculation management. And that's why, for instance, we are developing a new, let's say, way to integrate agriculture that's managing to the curriculum, the university level in some countries. So research institutes, university academia is not just partners, are more than partners, a key partners in agricultural management. Over. Thank you. So one specific to Mariam, we know that sometimes in investing in particular, addressing particular constraints that farmers face, you actually generate some risks. For instance, we have government and donors promoting the adoption of improved seeds or improved breeds for livestock producers. And then you end up with a huge marketing challenge. From some of these lessons or these cases, do you think that it's important that it's not just policy people and also farmers and traders in agriculture, but also development partners, staff, people working in development agencies, that they should also get themselves as well informed about risks and risk management options as far as they apply in agriculture? And if so, how can this be achieved? I'm not sure I have understood properly the question. I think is it a problem of a number of partners or stakeholders that should be involved in this kind of innovation or new way of managing risk that you're talking about? Yeah, the precise thing is that you have, for instance, in the course of this conversation, the focus has been on how academia can, for instance, reach actors like farmers with risk management information. And we've also talked about taking up similar information at the policy level. The question then is, is it also not crucial for people working in development organizations to become an important target in building capacity on risk and risk management? Because some of the interventions they find or support actually tend to create new risks, which, if not dealt with, can discourage people from sustaining the uptake of any innovation that they'll be promoting. So that's what I'm asking about. Okay, yes, but I fully agree with that, that everybody needs to be involved in the risk management capacity building interventions. Development partners, actually usually development partners are the one who are funding this capacity development. Because they are the first one who are called, in case of especially where it is a catastrophic event, usually development partners are the one who are coming to support government and all the people who are affected in a country to manage the crisis. So usually they are the first one to really fund risk management. And we can see it in the case of a palm with the G20. It was after the 2008 crisis that the G20 decided to fund this intervention in terms of building capacity in the area of risk management. So I think that they are one of the primary stakeholders who should have their capacity definitely built as well as all the others. Actually, I think that everyone should have the capacity really built, especially because managing risk is something quite new, especially on the African continent. I think that the other continents were used to manage risk long ago, especially in agriculture, but on the African continent, we're not really used to it. This is something dating back a decade no more than that ago. Over to you. Thank you. Thank you very much. We are close to ending this session and there is going to be a poll, a set of questions asking for your views on how this webinar has gone, and we will encourage you to respond to that. But there is a comment here that which has come from Sampson Eshetu, and he basically said that agriculture is risky, and that it's not only farmers and part-store analysts who require their capacity to be strengthened, but also service providers, value chain actors, policymakers, and this has been brought out clearly in terms of the presentations by the panelists, and he's virtually concurring to that. I would just say that from now, let's get on to the polls, but it's been a very interesting session so far, and after the polls, we will see whether all participants agree or not. So far, we have managed to maintain the bulk of you on the webinar. Just only a few have left, and I believe that that will be for reasons of attending to other things, but let's get on to the poll and hear your views. But if anybody has any other questions, I think the arrangement is that there will be subsequent efforts to respond to any questions that come beyond this time. So don't hesitate to share any questions in the chat. Fabio, are the polls up? Gideon, the poll isn't going. The poll is for another five minutes, so if anybody has any, any member of the panel has any last minute? Yes, if you don't mind. I just wanted to say that PAM has done a very great job in initiating and developing these materials. I think what governments are yet to do is to channel the planning process, because the planning is both at the implementation level, but also to build the planning capacity amongst smallholder farmers. We haven't gotten there very well, and we haven't gotten the resources and the proper arrangements, because these implementers on the local ground tend to have a lot of work going on. So when you introduce a new approach, we need time, we need resources to integrate it. That's my observation, but it's a very good model and approach that we must pursue. I can add something to that. Gideon, do I have 30 seconds? I would just like to say that in terms of capacity development between universities and extension services, I think that there is one missing middle, very important and critical that we need to develop, which is also transferring this capacity, this knowledge to agriculture, technical and vocational education training. You know, the ATVET institutions have to be informed because we will definitely have this critical mass of extension service agents that can really go around and cover most farmers in terms of just supporting them in terms of how to better manage risk. Thank you. Over to you. Gideon, do we have? I think Massimo can respond directly to that, so I leave him to do so. And then your own last comment. My last comment just aims to highlight another, let's say, key partners on agriculture management, which is represented by the private sector, because we already know how private sector could play a key role in agriculture in general, but in particular, the cultural risk management. And that's why it's also important to understand that sometimes developing partners, government and private sectors speak a different language. Okay, that's why raising awareness, capacity building involved with different stakeholders is a key approach to be followed in order to at least try to understand how to talk the same language. Because, you know, we remember some meetings in the past where private sectors say, okay, we have this specific goal, we want to get some incomes, how we can coordinate work with you, collaborate with you, and so on. And that's why we decided to partner in collaboration again, the research region, sorry, Marian, before we were our focal point in it, but we realized that working the value chain was a good entry point for agriculture risk management, just not just keeping the analysis the country level, sector level, but also focusing more on the private sector as particular interests in investing. And this is exactly what we want to do in we are doing in part. So again, private sector and research, government, technical partners, developing partners should, let's say, all involved in agriculture risk management. Over to you. Thank you. Thank you. I think we are very close to closing the session. The poll has almost ended. I think if Fabio or Ilaria can just announce the results and then we'll be wrapping up with from the session with the key takeaways that I have noted. The poll are broadcasted so you can see the results. They are broadcasted now. Okay. You can also see results on your monitor. Click on polls, Kideon at the bottom. Yeah. Okay. So I think from what I'm seeing, there's overwhelming interest in learning more about agriculture risk management, including taking advantage of the resources that are available through the e-learning platform. So my key takeaways and there's a long list of key takeaways. It would take us about two hours to go through them. So let's see how quickly I can do that. That managing risk, managing crisis is something that governments have been fairly good at because it's a common challenge that they face, but the entry point to getting them interested in promoting risk management, especially by farmers and other vulnerable actors, is to shift attention from how it's more effective, also cost effective, to actually manage risk through developing the capacity of the appropriate players. That it's not about identifying individual risks and developing tools to manage them, but we have to have a holistic approach to risk management and understand that it's the integration of the tools that actually help to impact substantially on the exposure of various players to their risk and minimize that particular exposure. That, yes, the bad news is that risks are prevalent in agriculture, but it also creates opportunities for those who have the tools to manage these risks. Everybody knows, for instance, that COVID has impacted on almost everybody's life, but through it, we have found ways of now running webshops and webinars involving a more cost effective approach. Instead of flying all over to one location, we just zoom in and the same sort of conversations can take place. That for academia, from my career experience, it's not just about having one program and rolling it out to all categories of students, but that you can start with a particular entry point. They started with short courses. They've moved on to graduate courses and now they are developing undergraduate programs. So the approach that you will adopt at the level of training will depend on your own context and the resources that are available. That agricultural risk management is multidimensional and it's not just about, at the policy level, for instance, we are promoting these tools to manage risks. The risk management has to be integrated into other packages that involve addressing other constraints that can reinforce, increase, or actually affect the incidence and severity of various risks, including investing in appropriate physical infrastructure. Yes, insurance, anytime people talk about risk, their response is, oh, why don't you take up insurance? And it's been made very clear that insurance cannot be a silver bullet on its own, but it has to be part of a package which is integrated. And the components of the elements in that package will depend on the context in which the risk management intervention is being implemented. That there is need to integrate agricultural risk management in planning processes at the farmer level and at other levels. And we need to understand that the private sector has an important role to play in ensuring that risks are properly managed and they can sustain their involvement in various agricultural value chains, including taking the actions and putting in the investments which will reduce losses which occur within various agricultural value chains. These are my takeaways. I hope that you also had your own takeaways that are relevant and important to you. And that from now, we will keep engaging even more and more in doing the things that will ensure that those who operate in agriculture have the capacity to manage the risk and that they are not deterred to the point where they leave the sector. Because when the last farmer leaves, the writing is on the wall, hangar is going to face all of us. So thank you very much for your attention. And now I hand over to Christina for the final session. Thank you very much, Gideon, for these takeaways and thanks to all the speakers. Maybe I'd like to ask Fabio to show the next screen with the different courses. Thank you, Fabio. So as a conclusion, what we wanted to do is just to give you the direct links to these courses that we have been discussing about and that were introduced by Professor Gugial, that you can find free of charge as a global public good together with a number of other courses that could be of interest to you that are related to agricultural risk management. So these are the various courses. And as mentioned by Gideon, by Kisan, they allow to not only understand your but also to assess your risks and also to how to basically mitigate or cope with these risks. So these are the courses. In addition, we also wanted to share with you, so just related to the courses I also wanted to mention as I said before that these are certified courses. So these courses allow you to have a digital badge that certifies the competences that you have acquired. So this could also be of interest to you. And then maybe Fabio, the next slide, we also would like to share a number of additional relevant resources related to agricultural risk management that our colleagues from EFAD and Parm have developed. So these are the resources. And here on the right-hand side, you have the links for these resources. So I would like to also mention that we have mainly focused on the aspects of understanding the risks and the assessment in this webinar. And I wanted to mention that we will be organizing another webinar with the same partners on the other aspects of the tools and the policies and the strategies that could be developed to better face those risks. So I would like to also have the opportunity now as a conclusion to thank everyone. I'd like to start by thanking the speakers. I will not mention them by name, the moderator. I'd like to mention all our partners of this event. So the UN S-CUP, Future Food Institute, Agrinium, but also Parm, EFAD and Parm. And I would like to also thank Fabio Pichinich for the organization of all the webinars, Philippe Prievol from Agrinium and Sara Ferante, who are always behind the scenes and making everything work perfectly. And special thanks to you, the participants. Thank you very much for staying with us. And we really look forward to having you again on our International Technical Webinars. Thank you very much to everyone. Bye-bye.