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Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, good morning, good afternoon to all of you. It's a great pleasure to welcome you to this 12th edition of the Informal Consultation for Europe and Central Asia. My name is Raymond Jiele. I'm the regional program leader for Europe and Central Asia, and I will guide you through this senior official opening session briefly. These informal consultations became already a tradition in the region, and they are an integral part of our work planning, as well as preparation for the European Regional Conference. This senior official meeting will lay the foundation for the further discussion in the coming days for this informal consultation. In order to open this informal consultation, let me pass the floor to Mr. Vladimir Rachmanin, Assistant Director General and FAO Regional Representative for Europe and Central Asia. Vladimir, you have the floor. Thank you very much, Raymond, and good morning, colleagues, good morning to all of you. It is also my pleasure and honor to welcome you all to our informal consultation for Europe and Central Asia. It is my special pleasure to welcome today Dr. Hans Ugevin, Independent Chairperson of FAO Council. Allow me to use this opportunity and to congratulate our good friend Hans with the election to this important and highly responsible position. I wish you every success for the best interest of FAO and its members. I would also like to welcome Iwona Kryzazhevska, Deputy Permanent Representative of the Republic of Poland and the new Chair of the Europe Regional Group. As you may be aware, Poland will be hosting the next FAO Regional Conference for Europe in May 10, 2013, 2022. We are grateful to the Polish government for taking this responsibility and looking forward to our cooperation to make next session of our Regional Conference successful and productive. Allow me also to welcome and acknowledge the representative of the Hungarian Ministry of Agriculture who is hosting our Regional Office. Dr. David Bensik, Deputy State Secretary of Ministry of Agriculture, you are more than welcome to our discussions. Thank you all for joining us today. As I said earlier, in the last 10 years, the mechanism of informal consultation proved its effectiveness in brainstorming on our regional priorities for the upcoming period before finalizing them at the Regional Conference. I am very pleased to announce that representatives of 39 countries and from European Union are participating in our discussions in the coming four days. Also, the increasing participation from both civil society organizations and private sector is a sign of a stronger cooperation between FAO and non-state actors, making our coordination more inclusive and thus more productive. We have a very strong context for defining our future priorities today. It is important to keep in mind FAO's new strategic framework until 2031, which was adopted at the FAO conference in the middle of June. This framework is providing the pathway for implementing sustainable development goals by the year 2030. We need also to keep in mind preparations to UN Food Systems Summit in September, since transformation to more efficient, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable agri-food systems is very important for our region and the whole world. Science days last week organized an FAO prior to Food Systems Summit, provided abundance of food for thought to all of us, which may be reflected in our discussions. And of course, we need to keep in mind challenges of pandemic, putting an emphasis on one health, challenges of environmental challenges for our region, aggravated by climate change, imperative of providing better life for agricultural producers, particularly for women and youth. Our consultations are of informal nature. We are not adopting any mandatory decisions or reports. We believe that this format boosts the discussion on strategic issues before the meetings of European Commission on Agriculture and Regional Conference. But in order to capture the results and to use them in our joint work, we shall prepare informal minutes of the secretary and share them with you. Thank you very much. Wishing us all a very productive discussion. Raymond, back to you. Thank you very much, Vladimir, for this. I have now the pleasure to give the floor to Mr. Hans Hogeven. And we are very pleased that Hans has agreed to be part of this opening session, having his certainly interest being the vice chair of the regional conference 2020 before. Hans, the floor is yours. Thank you very much. And thank you very much, Vladimir, for your nice introductory remarks. Thank you, Vladimir, and I hope in my new role to work closely together with you for the benefit for all. And of course, good morning, I would say good afternoon and perhaps for some already good evening. To all of you, it's an honor and pleasure for me in my new role to participate in this informal consultations, and especially to listen, to listen to your priorities, to your consultations. And of course, a special welcome also to his Excellency, Jasmit Kojayev, the chair of the regional conference for Europe, Ms. Iwona Kasevska, and of course, Dr. David Besnik, very much welcome. Our world is changing quickly around us. Innovations spring up like seeds in the spring daily. But this expansion is not without consequences. Despite our progress, more than 700 million people live in Hengar. And this afternoon, we'll have the presentation of the state of food and agriculture and nutrition. And unfortunately, I think the facts and figures are not becoming better, even more words. We also see that we have 2 billion people have not access to safe food, affordable and nutritious food, and we have at least 1.6 billion people suffering from nutrition related diseases. So the dots are not connecting. And we all know that one third of our food produced globally is wasted. And we see that children also in our, in the European region, are still hungry. We know that we can provide more food than ever, but by diversity and amounts of arable land are decreasing. And we have seen that COVID-19 has plunged the world into the biggest crisis of recent history. And notwithstanding all our technologies and innovations, we've seen that a virus can derail our supply chains, can severely risk our food security and leave communities vulnerable. To speak plainly, the shortcomings of our global system have been laid bare. But we have now, of course, we all know the agenda 2030. And within the agenda 2030, we have now a strong strategic framework of the FEO with the four betters, better production, better nutrition, better environment, and better life. And this is the agenda for the next coming word, four years, five years, to make sure that we can deliver on our challenges, that we can deliver on action on the ground. And we know that we have to do it, because we know as nations that we have to unite. It is a struggle, but we have to survive. We have to work together. We have to team up. And we have to show solidarity so that we can meet our challenges. And in this respect, I think when I look to your agenda, I think you have all the ingredients for successful consultation. It's about smallholders and family farmers. How they can access affordable innovations. It's about closing the digital gap. It's about value chains and strengthening of value chains, also looking to the common food system summit. It's about one health approach. And of course, it's about nature-based solutions. But also, let's not forget the youth. I'm always inspired by the youth. We have to leave them a planet and a global community that they deserve. Not one that will agree them with even more challenges. Their first ideas, their determination, their hope, their strengths can help us to overcome our differences. And it's important, I think, meetings like this, that you have regional consultations, that you work together to find regional priorities. But that you also take into account national circumstances and national priorities. And informal consultations means we have to work together as governments, as private sector, as NGOs, and civil society. We have to join forces. We have to team up. And I do hope that these informal consultations will be successful, that it will bring us further to the goals where we have to be, that it will make a pathway for success for action on the ground for those who need the most. Thank you. Thank you very much, Hans, for this encouraging words. Continuing with the opening, unfortunately, I have to tell you that at very short notice, His Excellency Kodayev, the Minister for Agriculture of Uzbekistan, unfortunately, is not available. So let's move on to Ms. Ivona Kresevskaya from the Embassy of Poland and the Chair of the European Regional Group to address the audience. Ms. Kresevskaya, you have the floor. Thank you for giving the floor. Good morning, everyone. Good afternoon. Excellency's distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen. It is my great honor and pleasure as Chairperson of the European Regional Group to welcome you to the informal consultation for Europe and Central Asia 2021. I would like to express my gratitude to the Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia in Budapest and personally to Director Vladimir Rahmanin and his team organizing these regional consultations and for continued cooperation. These consultations provide an excellent opportunity for deeper and further interaction between the countries of the region. They are also an excellent platform for member states to discuss on the priorities and challenges in the region. The region of Europe and Central Asia faces similar challenges to FAO countries around the world with a high level of diversification between countries due to economic or natural conditions and, of course, the health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. We are at a time when external factors have a strong impact on agriculture and food systems as a whole. We are talking about climate change and increasing human population in the environment. At a time when Europe and Central Asia continue to face unequal global access to food and inadequate diet and the difficulties faced by farmers trying to provide livelihoods, we should work together to find solutions for a better life. We should also remember that not only economic, social and environmental issues should be taken into account but also social, cultural dimensions. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the agenda for sustainable development goals was difficult to achieve by 2030. It is clear that a better food policy is needed. It is also urgent to coordinate efforts to support the transformation of our food system, systems to make them resilient. We must act quickly and globally for food systems to be sustainable. We hope that my mobilization of the world community related to the preparatory work streams of the UN Food Systems Center will allow to develop concrete solutions and enable the implementation of our common goals set out in the 2030 agenda. Today, national food strategies can respond to these challenges taking into account solutions resulting from modern communication methods, scientific achievements, new technologies and digitalization. One of the actions that Poland has taken to transform food systems is the development of a food identification system. It provides participants of the food chain with transparent and reliable information how and where food is produced. This is a bottom-up initiative of the food chain participants. The aim of the project is to develop a digital traceability and food authenticity system at key stages of the supply chain. The stakeholders expect a number of benefits from the implementation of such a system. We hope that we provide a wide spectrum of food information as well as integrate the currently operating reference databases. Thus, the Polish Agriculture sector will gain a system providing high quality, reliable and not falsified data on the food product. The product has been integrated with the national preparation for the food systems summit. By studying different national strategies during our informal consultations, we will be able to learn about solutions for the transformation to what's sustainable and resilient food systems, healthy diets, or the importance of implementing the one health approach. Such an exchange of views can play a leading role in the relevant regional web steps. In closing, I would like to take this opportunity to invite you to the next third regional conference which will be held in Poland next year. I wish you all fruitful discussions. Thank you for your attention. Thank you, Ms. Krasewska, giving emphasis to the Food Systems Summit and also the Food Identification System. And we are looking definitely forward to the hosting of the regional conference in Poland. Last but not least, let me welcome Mr. David Bensig, Deputy State Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture of Hungary. And we are pleased to have Mr. Bensig with us, as Vladimir already said, Hungary as a traditional host for this informal consultation. Mr. Bensig, you have the floor. Distinguished regional representative, Excellencies. We cannot hear you. Colleagues. There is a sound issue. Can you hear me? The sound is good. Can you hear me now? No, it's okay. It's okay now. Distinguished regional representative, Excellencies, distinguished colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, it's a great pleasure to welcome you on behalf of the Ministry of Agriculture of Hungary at the ninth FAO informal consultation of the European and Central Asian region. Very sorry that due to the COVID pandemic, the event is had only virtually this year and you cannot enjoy the Hungarian hospitality in Budapest. At the same time, the virtual format makes it possible to organize a fruitful event which is based on stable pillars. The informal consultation has proven to be an excellent tool for preparing regional conferences and sharing ideas, opinions concerning the priorities of the region. I wish that these four-day long virtual discussion will contribute to the preparation of the European Commission's meeting on agriculture which hopefully will be succeeded in person formed in Budapest between the 20th and 21st of October this year. Several important issues are on the agenda this year's informal consultation, fostering digitalization, one health approach in the region, smallholders and family farms, environmental sustainability in agriculture production systems, linkage between school food programs and local food systems. Furthermore, the informal consultation offers opportunity to discuss the linkages of priority areas and initiatives for the region such as the United Nations Decade for Family Farming and the Decade of Action Nutrition that progress made in achieving the relevant sustainable development goals. These topics are closely interlinked with the aims of Food Systems Summit. Hungary actively precipitate in this process. I'm privileged to work closely in the preparation of the UN Food Systems Summit as National Convener of Hungary and in this role I have the chance to gain valuable experiences about the complexity of food systems. The Minister of Agriculture of Hungary organized the national dialogue on achieving sustainability in food production and food consumption. Our aim with the dialogue was to have an overview of the current status of our food systems from the perspective of the healthy and sustainable consumption and dispute the areas where the next steps on short and long term are needed. With the dialogue we also tried to promote food production and consumption policies and practices that strive to protect and improve the health and well-being of individuals. Finally I would like to ensure that Hungary remains committed to continue active and extensive cooperation with FAO. Besides traditionally hosting FAO REU events ensuring offices for FAO regional office and shared services center premises implementing the scholarship program financing FAO projects my country is also devoted to assist FAO in achieving its goals. Distinguished delegates I wish you a fruitful discussion and thank you for your kind attention. Thank you Mr. Benzik for your kind words and we're looking forward of course in the future having also physical presence informal consultations. This closes our opening and welcome session. Let me thank again to Vladimir Hans Hogeven Mr. Kraszewski and Mr. Benzik. Before handing over to Nabil Ganji my deputy regional representative colleague who is facilitating also the next session I would like to outline the key issues of this informal consultation and we are looking very much forward to your active inputs and contribution to the session in the coming days. We have four sessions related to the regional priorities in the region starting with respective case studies and short panel discussions and then there is very much space for your views and comments and we are very much looking forward to them. In the same way we are organizing also three specific technical sessions focusing on digitalization one health and nature based solutions and already the opening statements of our esteemed keynote opening speakers have made it very clear that digitalization one health as well as nature based solutions are key issues. So let me hand over to this next session now to Nabil. Nabil you have the floor. Thank you. Thank you very much Raymond. Distinguished guests a better morning. Good morning. There was a better production better nutrition better livelihoods all for a better life. Simple words that bring in the strategic objectives of FAO which was endorsed by the regional by the conference actually by the general conference recently. I would like to thank all the previous presenters the His Excellency and the Vendor Chair of the Council who remind us of how vulnerable our food systems are and how important basically the upcoming food system summit is to address issues with regards to the vulnerability of our current food systems. Thank you also for underlying how the importance of youth is towards a better life for all our planet. And thank you for Excellency Ambassador Kruseka for the underlying the social social cultural dimensions that need to be considered in any proposed solutions for our new food systems. Your Excellency thank you very much again for the Hungarian generous tradition of hosting our independent our informal consultations and our events in the regional office for the Europe and Central Asia. Regional office has taken also leadership in bettering the representation of all stakeholders in the FAO dimension the FAO governance through this inclusion of the of the CSOs and the private sector for a better chartering of the FAO's road further to support the countries in the region. I've thrown from there I would like to sort of take you to the second session and I would like to invite Ray Moghiele our regional program leader to take the presentation. Private, it's back to you. Thank you Nabil. Good morning, good afternoon everybody again. I would like to use the opportunity as in the second session to introduce you to the framework and I hope you're able to see the presentation. Sorry for this small problem. I hope you're now going to be able to see it. Okay. I would like to present in this short overview the FAO strategic framework and particularly the linkage to the regional priority areas. The presentation is linked also to the documents IC slash 21 1A and the document IC slash 21 1B which outlines the priorities proposal for the region for the future as well as also giving you a snapshot on the activities and the results achieved in 2020 2020 21. Let me move the second slide. The new FAO strategic framework as it has been already mentioned by Vladimir but also has been approved at the 42nd FAO conference. It gives a very strong focus to achieve the sustainable development goals guided by the organizational principles of better production, better nutrition, better environment and better lives. We will use these principles in the region to implement the regional priorities and promote also accelerators such as digitalization parties which is provided through the 20 program priority areas to facilitate the support to the country programs. The regional priorities small holders, food systems transformation, climate change and food security and nutrition give emphasis to the principles of leaving no one behind and the FAO hand-in-hand initiative. They are implemented through three regional initiatives which I'm showing also in the next slide. The emphasis for the priority one so policies of small holders and regional initiative will support increase to access of markets value chains and finance and of course also supporting sustainable plant and livestock production. The food systems transformation region priority two and the region initiative are drawing on lessons from the COVID crisis. We will further develop the one health approach developing the tripartite agreement with WHO, OIE and FAO at the country level. We will certainly also focus on trade facilitation but also food safety and plant health. The third regional priority climate change and natural resource management requires increased attention addressing all dimensions of sustainability. Regional priority three and the region initiative will further emphasize the restoration and the maintenance of biodiversity and it will be critical in order to facilitate the achievement of the sustainable development goals. Nature based solutions and global agriculture heritage are other areas which require attention and green production with specific attention to the sustainable forest management as well as reducing land degradation. Although the region has reduced over time food insecurity malnutrition obesity and limited access to healthy diets are still key challenges for the region. It requires a holistic approach drawing on the expertise in the program priority areas of better nutrition. The next slide and finally documents the emphasis of the three regional initiatives. We have formulated for each of these three regional initiatives the outcomes which are giving the emphasis and which are outlining our focus of work in the next biennium. The purple color for each of them reflects that also the issue of food security and nutrition is overarching and embedded. The smallholder on regional initiative one is going to of course support a multiple number of achieving also SDG targets but very specific emphasis is going to be given as you can see to the targets under SDG one under SDG two and under SDG five. Similar it is also for the regional initiative two on food systems transformation which gives emphasis with trade policies one health and value chains to the targets under SDG three nine 10 12 and 17 and of course the regional initiative three on climate change with emphasis on biodiversity nature positive reduction reduced environmental impact is going to support and facilitate the achievement of the targets under SDG one two 12 13 14 and 15. So we are looking forward to get further views from you as members and also from the non-state actors to the future focus of the work in the region and in this case I'm looking forward to inputs during this session but of course then also in the sessions related to the regional priorities as well as also the technical focuses today and the coming days on Tuesday and Wednesday. Thank you very much for your attention and I'll be back to you. Thank you very much Raymond and thank you for showing us the interlinkages between our new simply articulated strategic objectives and framework to the SDGs and how this would translate into regional initiatives underlining our work and activities in Europe and Central Asia. Distinguished colleagues, Excellencies I am now taking any comments or questions from the floor so if if anyone basically would like to make any comment or ask any questions please the floor is open for you. If you could please raise your hand. I have no hands or comments so far. Nabil Russian Federation I'm sorry, thank you very much. Okay, Excellency from the Russian Federation you have the floor. The program of responsible measures and recovery due to the epidemic is also important to provide a link between these initiatives and the implementation in the region of global programs such as the 10th anniversary of the family and farm owners the organization of the United Nations and the 10th anniversary of the actions on food problems We support the importance of consideration of the questions of innovation and technology Russia agrees that innovation in agriculture is one of the main driving forces of the world free from hunger and not full-fledged food We are expanding the use of new technologies including digitization in rural agriculture It is obvious that digitization is capable of increasing the effectiveness of the existing production and the right point for this is the presence of reliable industrial data In this context we support the work of FAU for the implementation of new tools Geoprocessing platform of large data laboratories initiative hand-in-hand which allows together with the already existing tools of the organization to expand the collection and representation of 100 data for the adoption of basic solutions for agricultural production of the sector We also believe that the introduction of some innovations and new technologies should be carried out with regard to the national and regional context and accompanied by a complex analysis of risks considering the difference in the level of technical development We are convinced that the results of unofficial consultations will be the basis for correcting regional priorities in 2022-2025 at the Regional Conference in 2022 Thank you for your attention Thank you to the Russian Federation Any further comments from the floor before I give it back to the presenter Okay, I see no further hands Sweden You have the floor Thank you Chair and thank you also FAO Regional Office too for this opportunity for a regional consultation for the work in the region I have actually only a very small practical question We've said a lot here about the food system summits and of course we are now thinking of how we can adapt and see how our program will link into the new strategic framework which is of course very important but the food system summit is yet to be held in two meetings So what I'm asking is how can we make sure that whatever outcome we have in the food system summit because there will be a follow-up monitoring and how can we link that into the regional work so that we make sure that whatever result we have that we also take that into account in our regional work so that we for us it's important that we really strengthen the consistency in the policies so that when we're working towards the SDGs we are really doing this with a consistent state of mind So that was more my how can we make sure that when we continue to work we also take into account the food system summit and its outcome although it will be of course the same SDGs but so that we leave room to that in our work Thank you very much and over Thank you Sweden Any further comments? Hands? Whether from state actors or non-state actors please you are welcome this is an informal consultation I see no further hands I'd like to sum up basically the comments and basically for passing it over to Raimund Thank you for the Russian Federation for reminding us of how important data is and systems that analyze data and offer us to charter the way forward for a better solutions for the problems that we basically are facing tomorrow Sweden with regards to the food system summit and how we can integrate the outcomes of that I understand that towards the food system summit that the national consultations through the individuals that have been basically the focal points identified in every country are undertaking now internal national consultations among all stakeholders in this regard and as the secretary of the regional conference I have I understand that also the outcome of the food system summit will be included in the as a note to the regional conference and all the regional conferences documents and also will be the subject of the general conference basically discussions so in that regard I'll pass it on back to Raymond for any further comments thank you thank you very much Nabil and thank you very much for the comments and inputs also from the Russian Federation and and from Sweden while while talking I hope I can encourage also further participants to raise their hand and also to take the floor because we still have certainly some time in this session related to the inputs from the Russian Federation as I mentioned already also in the presentation we very much connected and we very much take into consideration the principle of leaving no one behind so the program priority areas the regional initiatives and the regional priorities are taking these principles on board and we will also further take them into consideration in the formulation of our programs and also our project important here is also to mention that we as an organization and particularly in the region but also with the country programming frameworks with the UN cooperation frameworks we're moving more and more from a project to a program approach and this programmatic approach take these issues into consideration and in the same way with using digitalization as an accelerator the attention to a big data will be definitely quite important the geospatial let's say tools which FAO has already developed within the hand in hand are playing here an important role at the same time we are certainly would like to take more on board as you also mentioned the innovations of at the national level and we are currently also launching a regional technical platform on on green agriculture which indeed should facilitate the exchange of information and surfacing also innovations at the at the at the national level and at the same time as you mentioned it also the analysis of the local situation will be very important in order to learn to understand and to facilitate also the exchange the covid crisis has shown in the in the last 15 months that learning from each other is a key issue in fighting against the crisis and fighting against the the impact in terms of how to integrate food system summit outcome as Nabil was already referring to the regional conference and to the regional conference note in addition we have at the moment already the national dialogues which are happening in the different countries of the region which are of course including included in our country programming frameworks which are linked also to the UN sustainable development cooperation framework because the national pathways are supposed to be developed in the coming months and at the same time of course the work planning is also allowing us with the revision towards the end of the year but also with the revision in the midterm 2022 that we are sure that the recommendations from the food system summit are taken fully on board and are fully integrated maybe a side note which I would like to mention here also is we as FAO are co-chairing also the issues-based coalition the UN issues-based coalition on sustainable food systems in the region together with WFP, WHO UNECE UNICEF UNDP and this is of course also an important tool that we are not just integrating food systems issues in the FAO work program but that we are taking also a multi-agency and a multi-stakeholder approach both at the country as well as also at the regional level thank you now be back to you in the hope there are further hands raised thank you thank you very much Sharmond for the explanations again the floor is open again for any further comments or questions okay I see I recognize Finland please Finland you have the floor thank you very much and good morning and good day to everybody and thank you very much for organizing this informal consultation again I think this is really a excellent opportunity to hear views on regional level and also meet and hear people which we don't normally meet and opinions and views of everybody I would just like to continue what or what RAS or both RAS and Sweden have taken up I think these are all very important issues and this context of food system summit is absolutely very important as the follow-up of this summit is really a key because it's not no idea to have a summit without a proper follow-up and of course in food system summit it's really important issues it are these solutions we have tried to identify different important solutions how to transform food systems and also in another issue is this COVID context and I think that in the European Regional Group we have had very excellent background because we have had recently both animal health and plant health have been have been a special focus in our discussions and I see that this is an excellent basis for the future work of course with climate change that we really have to face the risks of food production and also especially find solutions and innovation on the European region so that I would just like to highlight this is and and that this is something which which really needs to be stressed in our work and and but what is important to find practical solutions and find ways how to implement and continue the transformation which we discuss in the food system something that's just a comment from my part thank you very much thank you Finland for the comment any further comments questions still have a few minutes for this session okay in in absence of any further comments or statements I'd like to thank you all for the inputs provided and all of which will be taken into consideration in relation to our discussions on the FAO strategic framework on the regional priority areas as well as on your comments regarding the food systems summit now I have the pleasure to let you go for a short 20 minutes break until 1015 we resume our session at 1015 Budapest time with session number two which underlines a country case study in connection with the regional priority number one small hoarders and family farms until then thank you very much and we'll see you in 20 minutes it's my pleasure to welcome all of you to the second session of the informal consultation my name is Morten Hartwiesen I'm the delivery manager of the FAO region initiative on empowering small holders and family farms and youth and also land tenure officer in the regional office I'm the moderator of the second session the session is in two languages English and Russian please select the preferred interpretation by pushing the globe and zoom at the bottom of the screen the session is about the emphasis that we FAO should give in the next years to the different elements of region priority one support to small holders family farms and youth provided through the program of the region initiative one we are looking very much forward to receiving your guidance on the emphasis to be made in the next biennium and beyond the session has three main elements first we will set the scene for the discussion with a brief case study presentation challenges and solutions for small holders and family farms in Armenia it will be presented by Victoria Avashian the colleague in the FAO regional office and world development specialist and the case study is also available as a background document ic slash 21 slash 2 and then second to trigger the discussion we will have a short panel between members and finally I will open the floor for the comments and statements of the member countries and representatives of civil society and the private sector let me already now tell you that if you have any questions to the presentation of Victoria or to the panel members then you're very welcome to ask the questions in the chat function and Zoom and they will be responded to during the session Victoria please present the case study from Armenia thank you Morten okay so good morning and good afternoon dear participants I'm very pleased to be here and on the example of the Armenian case show you the outcomes of the regional technical cooperation project implemented under the regional initiative one so yeah it works so Armenia has a farm structure dominated by a large number of small family farms with no legal for legal definition the average farm size is 1.5 hectares located on highly fragmented farm parcels around 90% of all farms are cultivating less than three hectares of land and at the same time the family farms contribute to more than 90% of gross agriculture output almost one-third of all employed population are involved in the sector so the policies in general reflect the problems of the sector however because of local capacities and lack of financial allocations to the sector the policies are not implemented effectively the study has revealed that the needs challenges and constraints of the Armenian farmers and smallholders are largely interweaved as in the case of other countries the main needs of the sector are more of more profitability of farming availability of non-agriculture jobs in rural areas as well as access to social services and infrastructures these deficiencies have led to many challenges such as reduced involvement in farming, land abandonment poverty, migration especially among rural youth as well as limited investment in agriculture and rural development and livelihood gaps between the urban and rural populations the challenges are further perpetuated by the climate change and inability of smallholders and family farms to invest in climate resilience practices because of high capital costs already mentioned small farm sizes and land fragmentation or inability to access irrigation water or farm machinery further reduce the profitability of farming so we have again the same problem of low profitability the other deficiencies are weak or non-functioning farmers organizations or low absorption of innovation and digital solutions which again impact the profitability and livelihoods of farmers the challenges so this connectivity the connection between the challenges needs and the constraints of farms leads the smallholders and family farms especially those headed by women or other vulnerable groups incapable of independently changing their farming practices so there is a without adequate and holistic policy support measures will lead to further perpetuation of poverty and migration again having the mostly impacting the rural youth so the key recommendations of the country study were grouped around the following 10 groups however i'm not going to read them all because you will find them and far more information in the background document of this session however what would be important to mention is how the study report facilitated policy change and further improved the targeting of programming in the country so one of the recommendations was the regulatory framework formation and in 2019 a new agriculture strategy was developed and ethiosisted the government of remaining this activity another recommendation of the study was to involve increase of farm employment and also providing investment support schemes to the rural population and starting from 2020 with the support of the EU in two regions of armenia FAO together with UNDP are piloting the EU leader approach FAO is also supporting land reform agenda in armenia addressing the problems of land abandonment and efficient farm structures the most recent initiative that is supported by FAO is the development of new agricultural strategy on the establishment of the cooperatives thank you for your attention thanks a lot Victoria for presenting briefly the Armenia case related to small hovers and family farms there are many topics that we can pick up for the further discussion now as already mentioned we have now a short panel discussion about the technical areas of the work program related to region priority one this includes support to small holders family farms empowerment of rural women and youth and rural migration rural development both at policy and community level digitization land market development improving rural livelihoods and many other technical areas of work supporting the small farms and leaving no one behind we now have the panel discussion as I mentioned and I will briefly introduce the three panel members the first member is Valentin Roska Valentin is head of department in the ministry of agriculture regional development and environment in the Republic of Moldova we have Deanna Lenzi Deanna is the president of SEA the European Young Farmers Organization representing youth and the private sector we have Ramona Dimonitio Ramona is a person from Romania representing civil society organizations say Koduralis and the European coordination via Campesina and since the time is very short please keep the answers to maximum three minutes each let me now first turn to the Republic of Moldova and the first question is to Valentin what are the most important areas of emphasis related to the support to small older family farms and youth in the Republic of Moldova over to you Valentin I want to tell you that the support from the state that exists comes from the legal principles of subsidizing the development of agriculture and agriculture that is, to help the agriculture manufacturer get the help from the state on the development of their business it must have legal form of activity the main direction of support is the stimulation of investment in the equipment and technology of the development of the animal farm farm direction stimulation of the purchase of direct animals and the preservation of their genetic fund and the process of the realization of the agricultural production I want to note that the help of the state in this direction is significant that is, the state covers 50 percent from investment in the farm if the farmer is a female farmer or a young manufacturer that is up to 40 years this support will increase by another 15 percent that is, 60 percent from the state 35 percent from the agricultural production in addition to the main direction the state support also stimulates the credit of agricultural producers stimulates the safety mechanism of agricultural farmers stimulates the creation of a functioning group of agricultural producers and also stimulates the activity of the product promotion in addition to the stimulation that is carried out to the state for legal forms of activity in the republic of Moldova there is activity and the republican center for the development of the agricultural production of animals that is, through this the state helps the small and agricultural producers and the family farm helps to carry out their activities through that is, the state covers the costs for artificial seeds in particular, the large-scale agricultural production in the same way, they help the agricultural producers to carry out their activities and minimize their costs for the support of the agricultural production it was in France thank you for your attention thank you very much valentine I understand that we have a problem with the connection of Diana Elensi the president of the european young farmers organization so we will hope that she will be connected very soon but in the meantime I will turn towards Ramona Ramona is presenting the civil society organizations as I mentioned Ramona, when you look around in the region what would you say are the key areas of emphasis that we should give to supporting small-holders family farms rural women and youth thank you so much and I'd like to thank everyone in this panel for the contribution so far the first point we would like to make a small-holders small-scale family farms peasants farm peasants in the region is the human rights we believe that the human rights approach need to be mainstreamed across public policies on food security and nutrition human rights need to be elevated in all the aspects of food production and in the access to the market as well as in the process of consumption we need to include social conditionality in food and agricultural policies that give access to subsidies and support measures so that we stop financing with public funding a model of agriculture that profits from exploitation of seasonal agricultural workers particularly migrant workers whose rights have been degraded very fast under the conditions of the crisis of the past year and a half the COVID crisis made more visible and aggravated historic problems for us that we small-holders family farms peasants particularly rural women and youth are facing and I'll just mention three of them first of all I mentioned before problem of the migrant workers so there's the degradation of the rights and the work conditions of migrant seasonal agricultural workers exposed in the first line of the pandemic then there were the restrictions of access to markets that were leading to local market shutdowns while supermarkets and industrial food chains benefited from unconditional support from governments and therefore they benefited from double standards all around the region and in general there's the deepening of the poverty and social inequalities due to job losses due to market restrictions and marginalization of rural areas in this response in this effort to respond to the COVID crisis in the process of distribution of public funds as a response to the COVID crisis so we feel that rural areas and particularly the food and agriculture workers were left behind so far and then the second point we want to make is the agroecology agroecology needs to be mainstreamed across public policies on food security and nutrition as well as through governmental programs and support measures especially for the young generation of farmers agroecology needs to be included in the FAO strategic framework as well it's been many years since we're talking about the 10 elements of agroecology adopted by FAO which not only promotes a model of production that is healthy and responds to the climate crisis but it also includes social cultural and political elements that are essential parts of the sustainable food production and since the COVID crisis we have been struggling with the inability of governments to make the link between the health crisis and the malnutrition especially the obesity which have been mainly generated by industrial food systems unhealthy industrial food systems and also the inability of our governments to acknowledge that agroecology and small-scale family farmers are a solution of this crisis and beyond agroecology has the capacity to provide fresh, nutritious, diverse and culturally appropriate food and we urge all member states to support it starting with its inclusion in the FAO strategic framework and also in national programs thank you thank you very much Ramona I understand that we do still not have Diana connected so I will turn now back to Valentin and the issue the situation in Moldova Valentin we are looking very much forward no sorry Moldova has with support of FAO just started to prepare a national action plan for family farming in the Republic of Moldova and this is linked with the implementation of the UN decade of family farming 2019-2028 Valentin what is in particular the background for the need as you have seen in Moldova to develop such a national action plan for family farming over to you problem to develop further therefore as we see this situation in order to help small family farming producers solving the most important problem is, of course, the supply of food bases for animals as well as the supply of equipment for so that they can produce high-quality raw materials for processing therefore we see that the plan that needs to be developed it must definitely cover this segment and some kind of help for small family farming producers to buy and equip their equipment for example for mobile devices because from this the supply of food is provided by the production on the other hand the plan can cover the segment that the veterinary office because the most serious problem in rural places is veterinary service if there were family farms there would be access to this service this would solve many of their problems in particular they need to give them the opportunity to develop and equip their farms to produce good food this is the most serious problem that is in small rural places thank you very much Valentin we are looking very much forward to support the development of the national action plan for family farming in Moldova where it will also be important to include the policy for family farming the future of family farming and further develop family farming in the Republic of Moldova we still not have Diana connected so I will continue with the second question to you Ramona Ramona could you please let us know how you think we can all together support the collective actions between small farms and businesses in rural areas over to you thank you so much particularly Eastern Europe and former Soviet countries have a very dramatic experience with forced collectivization focusing on programs that build collective farms and collective initiatives to access the market is not an easy task however we have seen that so far the governments are trying to push for projects that force small scale or medium size farmers to develop so that they access international market we need more appropriate policies that support actually and put a focus on the local economy we believe that the local economy is the strongest pillar of development especially in the time of crisis how vulnerable the international market is and how expensive it is to maintain it and to have access to it we believe that we need to come back and really look at how important and the benefits that we all have from building stronger local economies and we have especially in Eastern Europe and in Central Asia we still have the infrastructure of local markets and we have very good practices that need to be build on with we see it as a great future and for that we are ready to participate in discussions our experience in developing public policies in the region is still we would say in the beginning phase we need to develop it together with governments and also other parties who are interested but yeah basically we believe that the solution is to build on our experience of local markets and local local economy and of course according to that we need that food safety standards to be adapted because at the moment we are really struggling with respecting inappropriate food standards that are applied for small holders and we believe that in this process we need to encourage and support the diversity of food producers that exist in our region peasants fisher folks, pastoralists indigenous people and so on thank you thanks a lot and I'm very pleased that we have now Diana connected so we can also hear the voice of the young generation Diana what are the key issues to address to make both rural areas and farming more attractive to the young generation and how do you see the digital technologies and innovation could play a bigger role here over to you good morning everybody I'm very sorry you can't see my face but I'm connected through my phone it's strange that the new generation is the one who has most technical problems so let's say that that is most definitely probably the key issue if we want to fight the abandonment of rural areas and if we also want to address the great problem of generational renewal I think that both issues needs to be tackled together we need to make agriculture in a way more attractive by using new technologies by using digital devices by making sure that this new technology can help us make agriculture more efficient and through being more efficient it can also be more rewarding economically for the farmer who gets involved but also for the civil society and by making agriculture a way and a means to create dignified livelihoods I think that we can really attract youth into agriculture but if the rural areas stay in a way absolutely disconnected from the rest of the territory from the connective tissue that makes a nation complete and not thinking that there is a division between the services offered around a city or a metropolis and instead the rural areas where we are missing and lacking basic structures such as schools and hospitals and viable roads and then especially if we invest in creating a technology that can make agriculture attractive that can make it remunerative but then it doesn't work because we don't tackle the huge digital divide problem that we have in rural areas it's very hard to see a solution that takes everything into consideration that is why I think that really we have to look at rural areas as a huge patrimony that we have as a part of our nations of our territory of our history and help people move back into the rural areas because there they can find the conditions of life that gives them possibilities that people have in the cities and at the same time by doing this they can most definitely also gain advantage from the style of life that agriculture involves especially if we think of an agriculture that thanks to the technology to innovative systems is maybe not as demanding physically as it used to be and it can be instead a very smart agriculture where we can really use the huge advancement there has been in terms of research of science, of innovation, of technology at service by creating a more sustainable agriculture because by being more efficient we know that we can use less inputs and that we can also regulate our time in a more efficient way and this can definitely also help rebalance the value chain and create a more rewarding type of work economically for the farmer so I think it's most definitely a question that needs to be looked at not only in one direction we don't solve the problem of rural areas or of the generational renewal by not confronting the two together. Thank you very much, so Diana we have one more quick question for you and then we will open the floor to all the participants. Diana how do you see that the voice of the young generation can be better heard in the formulation of policy in general but also in relation to the decision-making processes that are in the rural areas where the young people live? Well I think that and the Stasia what I represent and what I have the honour of representing is truly a great example of how youth really works and strives to be heard sometimes I don't think people listen to us but we most definitely try to be heard because we try to advocate for what we believe is a better future for European farming and it's a kind of a great gym because I see so many young people from so many different countries in Europe 30 different associations really involved and wanting to participate in the decision process that then brings the policy we want to in a very solid way create our positions and make sure that then they become available for the policy makers hoping that they will be also be taken into account I think it is a moment where youth that in all shapes and forms that is organized is finding a way to impact the decision making process and because it is our future everything that comes with the green transition with the new regulation in Europe will impact our way of working and so we will be the ones who will definitely be bringing on this transition and it will be on our shoulders and it is why we want to be involved in a very direct way. Covid has taught us that maybe one of the few good things that it has taught us is that we don't actually have to be physically present to be able to construct to build a voice to build a position and to be heard we can use technology when it works in our favor to actually come close even when we are far away which is why I believe that really even in rural areas we can help people feel closer also thanks to technology but as I said we need to make sure that that technology works we can't imagine an investment in a technology that works on satellite processors if then all of a sudden we have no connectivity we can't ask people to come together at meetings if then all of a sudden there's no way of actually hearing what our fellow farmer is saying and getting a sense of his true thoughts and desires so it is something that I think policymakers have understood that the great potential that there is in the digital tools all over and how they've saved us from a sense of abandonment in this past year and I think that down is the time to move forward and make sure that the digital infrastructure really creates a smart environment where we can help smart farmers grow Thank you very much Diana we have now come to the end of the panel discussion and I would like to thank the three panel members for this interesting discussion and before we now open the floor for the comments and statements from all the participants I would like to mention again that if you have any specific questions to the presentation of the Armenia case or to the members of the panel then please write them now in chat function and they will be responded during the final part of this session I'm now opening for comments and statements from the participants from the member countries from civil society and from the private sector related to the discussion that we are having in this session on the FAO support to small holders family farms and youth and all of the areas of work that are related to this and as I mentioned in the introduction the key objective is to receive your guidance on what emphasis we should give to this support and to these groups please raise your virtual hand if you would like to have the floor and comments in the chat of course also welcome we are ready now for the first comment or statement I do not see comments but I would I think small holders and family farms were mentioned already several times in the first session I see now we have one comment from Judith Hitchman Judith over to you Thank you very much I'd just like to add a couple of points to what's already been said I was very happy to see the mention of women and also cooperatives in the presentation made what I would like to emphasize is the real importance of women's environment and the fact that I didn't see any mention of developing small scale processing cooperatives or processing units because this is something that can add a lot of additional employment to reduce food loss and waste and preserve local produce for winter seasons this winter produces that has been preserved can also be used for school meals which is another way of connecting the small scale food producers to a very important part of our region the health of our school children but that is really a bridge to tomorrow's session where I'll be speaking but I do totally agree with Ramona that everything must be human rights based both for food producers for consumers and this covers all human rights thank you very much Thanks a lot Judith I hope that we will have more comments or statements from the participants I don't see any as of now if there are no more comments then while you think about having more comments related to the FAO support to small holders family farms and youth I would suggest that we ask them one or two more questions to our panel and continue the session in this way and then hopefully we will have some more comments later so I hope the panel is back and ready to participate let's begin with a question I think I will ask the same question both to Valentin first to Valentin and then to Ramona and this is about the role of institutions and governance in creating an environment so what are the roles of institutions and governance in creating an enabling environment for the development it could be the development of small family farms as we have discussed but in principle for the agricultural development in general with the focus on the needs of the small farms Valentin over to you in principle we believe that the role of the state in establishing the entire agriculture but also in small agricultural producers in particular is very important in principle the policy of the state in the republic of Moldova is that to transfer the entire agricultural sector from private property farms farms taking them out from the population and therefore we believe that the agricultural producers need to help so that they can create their own activity outside the population which equipment equipped accordingly for the proper activity in agriculture about the fact that we need to help to to carry out this activity as I have already noted in my speech earlier the state provides the opportunity through the mechanism of subsidizing credit thus helping the agricultural producers to buy new equipment and in principle to carry out their activity only due to the fact that they were engaged in the banks in principle we agree that without the help of the state agricultural producers it is very difficult for them to carry out their activity at the moment I would like to note that we are working on the development of agriculture in the 20s and 30s and we will keep our line so that the agricultural producers have the support of the state for their future activities Thank you Thank you very much Valentin and Ramona how do you see the role of governments for example in supporting the development of the small farms and what are the key points you would mention here Well our organization La Via Campesina which is an international confederation of peasants from all around the world reuniting more than 200 million families of small scale farmers and peasants participated in the creation of the global action plan and has been part of the process of governance in the past two years and starting from this year we are also going to take a more active role in the process we have as a key objective the promotion and mainstreaming for the purpose of implementation in national policies of the United Nations declaration for the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas this is an international negotiated document that was approved by the UN General Assembly in 2018 and it was negotiated for around 17 years in the UN Human Rights Council it's a document that provides guidance for shaping and promoting human rights and elevating human rights in all the aspects of food and agriculture production and marketing and consumption we believe that there are very important rights that have been recognized and defined by this declaration that are particularly urgent to be implemented now especially in the light of the crisis as I was saying before we see how the world has become poorer and how the small holders are left behind in this process of the crisis where we seem to notice an accelerated agenda of the industry for promoting the international trade and also for digitalization an antisocial process of digitalization and the technologization of the food production we believe that the public agriculture need to become more humane and the entire process of food production need to be more humane because the way it's the direction it's going it's really antisocial and it's really made for the profit of very few we need that the governments in our area to acknowledge this there are many national platforms and initiatives on the family farming decade that have been created in the past two years and we're going to continue to support the creation of more national platforms through this national platforms we want to foster dialogue with our governments and to foster ideas that can be implemented in the framework of this decade to be implemented in national policies but human rights are our first priority and our main priority there are there is a lot of work in that sense we believe that the rights of the workers need to be elevated we believe that we need to have our rights to natural resources for as means of production recognized by our governments such as the right to seeds the right to land land policies and need to be given priority need to give priorities to local communities and to young agroecological farmers we need also access to water and everything that we need to have natural resources for as means of production we are working together with FAO in attempting to give further guidance to the governments in the region on how to discuss potential implementation of the UN declaration for the rights of peasants in national legislation and we're looking forward for this and we're hoping that we are willing to make this step and to repair the damages that have been done in the past years but particularly that have been done in this crisis Thanks a lot Ramona and I see now we have a hand raised from our colleague Eran Reisman Eran is the livestock officer in the regional office. Eran over to you Thank you Morten and thank you all for very interesting discussion I refer to Valentino words comments about the small dairy hoarders I'm a veterinarian but also a dairy specialist and we're trying to work a lot with small orders on improving dairy production and it's very well known that once you try to introduce milking machines even mobile making machines to small farmers actually milk quality problem starts infection of the mammary gland mastitis start and in this regard farmers really need very very close support so my question is to Valentino how do you see FAO supporting how close would you like with the government would like to see FAO to the field supporting small holders basically hand in hand to improve milk quality in this process of introduction of milking machines and processing etc Thank you I think that was a direct question to Valentino maybe Valentino you want to answer right away Yes, of course as I mentioned earlier milk quality depends directly from the quality of animal content and content and if there was such a possibility to equip private household precisely feed it would increase a lot of quality of cheese which they supply at the factory for milk processing as for how close we want exactly I was talking about some program for for supply this equipment in household other if there are other opportunities for introduction of these plans for discussion of these plans Thanks a lot Valentino for this quick reply to Aaron I do still not see any requests for to have the floor from the member countries so let's continue I will with the panel I will turn to Diana Diana you are a wine grower from Tuscany in Italy but as a wine grower how do you think a family farmer needs what do you think that a family farmer needs in order to become and remain competitive in the market and to ensure the livelihood of the family in the longer run what do you see are the key points especially from the perspective of the young farmers also from the perspective of a young mother of twins and my farm is a family farm it was passed down from my father to me in 2008 and I kind of uprooted my life to run it because I believe it's our family legacy it's our land it's where we have our roots and ever since my kids were born I know basically I don't even consider it mine anymore I consider it theirs and I think it's basically my sole purpose in life to make sure that I hand it down to them as economically stable as possible and as agronomically sustainable as possible so I think and again I'm a wine grower from Tuscany so from a very elected land where the type of wine that I do, Chianti Classico is one of the most ancient denominations and it has a great added value very lucky and very blessed by this but at the same time I know how competitive the market is and how constantly trying to improve one's way of working may it be socially through giving better contracts to my workers may it be from when I jumped from conventional to organic farming in 2012 and how that has impacted our costs I know that costs tend to always raise but the market tends to always be a little bit more saturated so it is kind of the one million dollar question I believe that having a good a good financial background trying to create that type of knowledge in young farmers and young intrapreneurs in agriculture that can really find a way to make mathematical sense a type of business where often we don't play with everybody's deck of cards we have a risk which is linked to mother nature and her kind of mood that makes our way of calculating in the long run our expenses and our revenue a little bit more complicated than for other types of businesses it still is I would never move into let's say a textile factory but I would most definitely stay in my field of work because it is incredibly rewarding in so many other ways but giving young farmers or youth that complete package of knowledge and skills that they need to understand their farm their land and make it as I keep using the word efficient but in efficiency there is truly the key to it all it's using the right amount of resources for the maximum of the profit but efficiency doesn't work if it is in a in a big scale you can't just be efficient economically you have to be efficient agronomically because keeping our land healthy keeping our soil healthy keeping our plants healthy and our animals healthy is the only way that this sustainability can actually work to poor and in the long run but financial tools skills and knowledge added to implementing through the advancement of technologies new ways to work and to process I think is the way to the in the end manage to understand once costs and approach the market and approach the world of consumers and approach the world of buyers with a more with a stronger background because often prices in agriculture aren't fixed by the market but I believe that instead if we allowed the market to be a bit more the in lead here it we could have a greater value for farmers and farmers could really find the reward that I think civil society is willing to give them if they manage to understand the big picture of how important farming is for everyone thanks a lot Diana and now if when we are talking about the the opportunities and also the needs and constraints of the young farmers some of them are leaving rural areas and this is exactly what we are trying to support that they have opportunities so that they can stay and build a future in the rural areas but there's also the issue of migration and I see Ramona you have raised the hand and I will give you the floor but I would also like to ask you to in addition to what you wanted to comment probably to Diana maybe to tell us also what are the challenges and opportunities related to the integration of returning migrants into the rural economy and how do you think FAO could support that over to you Ramona thank you so much I just wanted to compliment this discussion that refers to what is efficient model of farming and what is a profitable and sustainable economically on a long-term model of farming because it is this is a discussion that has been concerning us for a long time and especially in dialogue with governments we particularly want to encourage our governments to support models of farming that are efficient and we believe that small-scale agroecological farming to be the best example, the best model because it has because of the distribution of wealth that it is much broader for example my family farm we are an average size farm in Romania approximately 2 hectares this is the average farm here we count around 4.7 million farms similarly to my families and we employ every year around 10 seasonal workers from our community an industrial farm for as a parallel example an industrial farm who accesses the international market of around 20,000 hectares employs annually around 40 people so in terms of when we talk about efficiency we need to talk also about the distribution of wealth and also we need to talk about the real costs because the industrial farming has many many costs that are covered from public funding and that have been externalized for already since many decades while small-scale agroecological farming has not benefited from public support and we believe that the focus of our government should also go in the direction of the small-scale agroecological farming because the large-scale industrial farming has already benefited a lot from this support and it's time now to also make space for the smaller scale and we have been witnessing this externalization of costs particularly social costs and also environmental social costs in the sense that the main public funding in geographical Europe go towards the industrial farming that works on migrant labour that exploits migrant labour that doesn't pay all the costs for example doesn't pay for social and health costs for social services and for health services for the workers and these are very important aspects to take into consideration when we discuss about what is efficient and what is important and I think that people in rural areas the young people in rural areas are willing to come back we are seeing actually quite a phenomenon of wave of people interested to come back that have been coming back in the past year and a half from the cities back to the countryside interested in food production, interested in living in the rural areas and they need to be they need an honest evaluation from our government what kind of model of agriculture they support because if the governments continue to support industrial food production that only benefits very few of course this is going to discourage the young people so we want more social and we want a more honest discussion thank you a more social orientation of the public policies and to say thank you thank you very much Ramona also for this we are coming towards the end of the second session on FAO support to small holders family farming and youth I do not see more hands raised so I will close the session now today we have heard about the many needs and constraints of the small family farms in Armenia and also about some of the solutions thanks a lot to the participants of the panel for sharing your insight and for this interesting discussion we appreciate very much the comments that we have received during this final open session and based on the comments we feel that we are ready to move in the right direction with the support that FAO is providing to small holders family farming and the empowerment of women and youth however we have also received good ideas for where to give further emphasis in the next years beginning from the next biennium 2022-23 where we are beginning the work planning during the summer now so thank you very much for your participation in this second session and please stay connected until session three thanks a lot thank you Morten I just would like to thank you for the discussion for the next session thank you for this interesting discussion closing the digital gap in Europe and Central Asia also connected to regional priority is the next session starting in 15 minutes I encourage you to participate because the session will really allow for a deeper dive into digitalization please consult also maybe the background to get also further your inputs thank you and we're going to have a break for 15 minutes and we are starting at 11.30 good morning good afternoon there ladies and gentlemen welcome to our session my name is Valentin Naj I'm the junior technical officer on digitalization in agriculture at the FAO's regional office for Europe and Central Asia our session will follow the same sessions we'll have a short presentation then for now discussion then we will open the floor for or participants hopefully you will see my screen now as I mentioned our session is on the closing the digital gap in Europe and Central Asia can you please put it on presentation Morten oh sorry yes thank you very much we'll try it right away please let me know if it works now this is fine thank you very much Valentin thank you thank you Safi so the rural digital divide exists due to a series of issues related to access, affordability appropriateness, adaptation and ability to use digital technologies we at the regional office of FAO have identified challenges related to different factors first the connectivity challenges we have realized the debt rural areas have unstable irregular and poor quality of internet connections in most of the countries next next factor would be the human challenges we have seen the dropping number of agriculture workers and shortage of farm labor we already know that the young generation tend to live in rural areas we also know that the seasonal migration makes it more difficult for farmers to harvest this was indeed highlighting due to covid as well women, elder and poor have less or limited access to technologies and innovations and also there is a lack of digital skills challenges especially for smallholder farmers are that the technologies often aren't adequate for smallholder farmers due to their farm size and the diversity of their farms the low use of digital technologies in agriculture and rural areas can be explained by the low or lack of return of an investment for smallholders smallholders are usually excluded from the policy initiatives on rural services and also low to no capacities to use and manage data and information to reach their farm's maximal capacity these common barriers can be overcome by paying particular attention to connectivity content related to the context meaning localized content and the use of local language capacity digital skills and individual institutional capacity development must be ensured and the confidence in the use of the technologies as well as the trust in the digital system must be highlighted removal of these critical their talents is needed to leverage the potential of the ICT usage to achieve the SDGs simple, effective and affordable technologies should be privileged last year together with the international communication union we co-published the status of digital agriculture in 18 countries in our region the publication reviewed how the digital agriculture is embedded in our member countries initiatives following the review FAO and ITU launched the call for best practices coming from Europe and Central Asia to collect the best practices and technologies that can benefit farmers with a special attention on small holders to avoid the exclusion of small holders from policy initiatives and rural services they should be included in the national digital strategic frameworks at the level of farmers, service providers and regulators we are still comforted with low capacities to generate use and manage data and information the issue of a farm data ownership and policy is a limiting factor this is why the response should be inclusive taking into account the youth and the gender issues and in line with components of digital agriculture strategic framework digitalization and innovation are fully embedded in the new FAO strategic framework we have the four B's the better production, better nutrition better environment and better life digital agriculture is in the better production however this is important to know the digital agriculture might be found in all the betters FAO has also identified the accelerators as innovation technology, data and compliments innovation, technology and data can be digital however not necessarily innovation in general and in particular is a central driving force for achieving work free from hunger and malnutrition innovations including social, policy, institutional financial and technological combinations are science and evidence based important drivers affecting food and agriculture production innovations however must not be digital in all the way thank you very much for your attention and please feel free to reach us at our digital agriculture at FAO or email address and we will make sure to get back to you without further ado I wish to give the floor to Sophie for the panel discussion thank you Valentin and now it's my pleasure as a digital agriculture team leader in the office of Europe and Central Asia to invite the panel members we have three panelists today the first panelist is Mr. Lacha is the head of the international relations and European integration department in the ministry of environmental protection and agriculture of Georgia with us we will also have Mathia Roul who is the CEO and the founder of Agrivi in Croatia and we will also have Andrea Ferante who is the coordinator of the Scola Campesina in Italy so these are our three panelists today and we will ask we will have a few guiding questions with them that we have put now on the screen which are what are the challenges and the opportunities the digital innovation and the mechanism to share so we will start the panel discussion I just remind our panelists that the time is very limited so that we could engage a little bit later with the participants or could also ask you questions so now I would like maybe to address the first question to Mr. Amnori and to actually understand a little bit what are the challenges and the opportunities that exist in Georgia for small orders digital transformation so Mr. Good morning can you hear me for some reason I lost your voice Sophie but I guess I understood the questions it's on the presentation so if I may I will just let me know if you can if you can hear me Yes we can hear you very well Thank you very much and thanks for inviting me and touching upon such an interesting topic as a digitalization of agriculture as it was emphasized in the previous presentation so there are many opportunities and many challenges also related to the digitalization and of course Georgia as part of the international society faces the same challenges and also recognizes the same opportunities as in other developing countries as well as in developed countries so first of all it should be noted that the portability and mobility of digital technologies are transforming agriculture and food production specifically in the agriculture and food sector the spread of mobile technologies remote services are already improving small holders access to the information inputs and markets increase in production and productivity streamlining supply chains and reducing operational costs however the digitalization of agriculture and food the value chain has certain challenges to overcome one of the challenges is whatever was already mentioned is the presentation is that network coverage in rural areas remains limited in Georgia as well as globally mobile server subscriptions have been growing over recent years apart from that access to the computers has also been increasing nevertheless many people still remain offline and are lacking access to the internet so all these challenges are well recognized by the government of Georgia and respective steps are envisaged by the policy developments and the different state support programs that will be described during the next question from my side so this is briefly as you see we are also facing the same challenges as all over the world and we all recognize all these opportunities and possibilities that are related with digitalization of agricultural sector thank you very much thank you very much and sorry for the little issues I've had with connectivity so I will ask the same question now to Mattia Joule and see from each side with the private sector what are the challenges and the opportunities thank you for the question and good afternoon everybody so what is very important that I would like to highlight from our side from the private sector side in terms of challenges and opportunities for small holders is recent research results that shows that farmers highlight two main barriers for adoption of digital technologies from their side first one is cost of technology and as we all know that farmers experience very low profit margins in the entire village chain and they don't have so big capacity to invest in technologies or they are not often bankable so this is one reason so cost of technology the other reason that they highlight is lack of support and education about digital technologies so understanding how to utilize them return on investment when they do it and opportunities to solve this challenge rise in willingness and motivation of the valley chain to bring technologies to farms as a part of collaboration with them this applies to all sides of the valley chain food companies that contract growers as a part of their supply chain and bring technologies to them input manufacturers that provide economic advice governments that provide extension services so all the stakeholders that work with farms to provide them so short example is a company that produces sweet corn in a can and they lose millions a year in the food waste due to high pesticides residues in corn so if they identify it they need to throw the entire harvest from a field there so today they bring our digital platform to growers to secure traceability that is bundled with their agronomy services so we have digital technology and extension services bundled and when the time of harvest comes they get a dashboard on green field it is safe to harvest on red field it will be safe to harvest in three days and this approach reduces food waste reduces financial loss to food company reduces financial loss to small holder farms and this is a creating a win-win situation for small holders and the valley chain so this is the opportunity that we see from the collaboration side thank you very much and now I would like to give the floor to the representatives of the civil society Andrea Ferante with the same question what are the challenges and the opportunities that you see for small holders with the digital transformation of agriculture Andrea thank you Sophie, thank you for the invitation in the European Central Asia we are working a lot on this topic because we need to first of all have a better understanding digitalization is a tool not the name itself so first of all we need to address what we want has more holders to achieve and this means that we need to design something that is good for us and not adapt ourselves to something that is good for somebody else and this is one of the main issues that we are confronting ourselves because still now honestly digitalization has been driven for a different model of agriculture for a different model of food system so in that sense we absolutely need to think to a marginal woman that is the case of the backbone of the food system in our region and how this woman want to have his central role in the food system keeping his knowledge at the center keeping his knowledge at the center it means keeping the control on the knowledge, keeping the control on the data, keeping the control on the food system and on that we will see how digital can support us or not having in mind that digitalization is not the solution of everything keeping in mind that digitalization has an incredible also environmental impact keeping in mind that in this moment as it was well said the public network it's very weak and this means that we don't have the control of the system so this is extremely important that we put together all these things and have a very different approach from what we are having now because honestly that I have a platform link to Google and fry off our Facebook access to market and then Amazon to deliver my product is not the solution for us. Thank you. Thank you very much for the voice of the small older and civil society. So now I would like to go back to actually Georgia because I know that they are a digital innovation that you are proud of and that you would like to share with us because this is one of the solution. So Mr. Lasha and Auri could you please tell us what you have done in Georgia. Thank you very much for giving the floor again so you rightly mentioned Georgia tries to catch up with the developed countries in terms of developing digitalization but it should be also noted that this task and this objective falls let's say under the competencies of the different institutions so in general I should say that Georgia recognizes the importance of digitalization in various sectors according to the government of Georgia has initiated the state program for broadband infrastructure development in Georgia. The program objective is to increase access to affordable high speed internet throughout the whole Georgia. As a result the population will have opportunity to access such programs and services like e-health e-education, e-governance, e-commerce e-agriculture, etc. So all these modern services will be available in the settlements where such services didn't exist before. Along with developing the digitalization in general in Georgia particular steps are being taken by the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Agriculture of Georgia to promote this direction in the field of agriculture. One of the successful cases is introduction of the renewed extension for farmers. The main direction of the updated extensions are access to digital technologies, access to education, modern equipment and development oriented working environment. In order to ensure implementation of the extension strategy Ministry with the support of donors develops the web page which ensures operational response to farmer problems, record keeping, planning of farming trainings, operational statistical data accounting sending of various new messages the platform gives us the possibility to providing information on projects, programs the YSMS and email provide news to farmers remotely uploading information about the farming and etc. In addition to that Ministry develops the e-library where the farmers may find information regarding the demonstration, plots, national network event calendar successful projects and new subscription and so on. We are working very closely with the donors to further develop the sector and to create the mobile application which will be more efficient and comfortable for the rural population. Apart from the mentioned applications and platforms we are also developing animal registration and identification systems which are also being conducted electronically and so on. We are putting our efforts to broaden this sector and bring as much digitalization as possible but another issue is the rising awareness of the farmers and the rural population and this is also being addressed by the Ministry via different informational campaigns meeting with the audience and stakeholders and explaining what are the opportunities high how can they best use these opportunities and how to deal with the existing electronic platforms. So this is very briefly what I can say about the successful cases of Georgia digitalizing agriculture. Thank you very much. Thank you very much Mr. and then I would like to come back to Machia Jules with Agrivi and I guess that Agrivi is providing services so I'm sure you can tell us a bit more about what are these services, this innovation and how this could be useful to small owners. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for the question. So when we speak about digital agriculture and agriculture technologies, it is very broad. So today what happened is that you have a lot of different systems and if you are a farmer and personally I'm also a farmer, I grow blueberries. So when I take a look from my farmer shoes I need to log in sometimes to 10 different systems a day to access my data then I need to basically combine the data to make the decision and if you are speaking about farms not just small holders, all farms farms are not data analysts so what they need is one central platform that is capable of getting all the data from different systems onto one place and to follow the process to follow the process that actually happens and this is what we are delivering to the market basically the central platform management system that allows all the insights from remote testing, from sensors, so all that on one central place agronomic advisory being done there analytics, communication with farms so all that is done through the single platform by connecting different dots. So it is very important that data ownership is being handled very well here and data access actually is the critical part because ownership is sometimes hard to define but access to the data and control who sees what, who gets access to what it is completely as well in the hands of farms so that is important to highlight and what is important to highlight with digital innovations we bring we hear it as well from the previous speaker it is not about the tool so when we see that somebody buys a tool and things that digital agricultural platform is a magic vent that will create ROI by itself improve something usually we don't see the adoption we see the adoption when digital agricultural platform becomes a part of the process process of collaboration on farms among farms between different stakeholders so when it supports supports something that happens in real life and this is where it makes sense this is where we see the adoption and we are as a company pursuing to support valley chain and farmers that are looking to improve their collaboration thank you very much Andrea Ferrande you are working in Scola Campesina and I'm sure you also have developed things really which fit the needs so what could be an example of a digital solution that you could share with us as we said digitalization is a tool for what we want and the social innovation that we need today in the farms in the food system is how to organize the farmer how we can get organized how strength the farmers organization then when you have a farmer organization you can apply digitalization for the organization purpose because digitalization will never work for a smallholder it's not something that can be helpful it can be helpful if we are organized and this means that if we are organized we can have because we are enjoying our rights as smallholder access to land, access to water and all that this is the food system where we can use our access to market and there we can use our digital platform to organize a much better access to the local market and we have several examples of those platforms that are all managed by the organizations this is something that is essential for us we need to keep in mind that we need to use this tool for our aim we need to boost we have this year more hungry people in the world but it's not a matter of production it's a matter that they are more poor we are not giving added value to those farmers so all these tools to have better access to market is to have better value for ourselves then we will fight really hunger in the world not with the digitalization imposing something to the smallholder we want to manage our market then I will find how to access the market and I will find the right digital tool that I will design with a software engineer that share my value and then that will be the full objective for myself and we have already millions of different examples on that thank you I have a last question before we close the panel discussion and maybe I will come back to other questions depending on how many people will raise their hand for my last question I would like to know what are, because we are talking about what is happening what are the digital things what you are doing but I would like to know about sharing this knowledge about sharing this experience so if I am turning now to Georgia what are your preferred mechanism to share your experience nationally, at regional level at international level so Mr. Laśałinowi what would be your reply thank you very much of course it is very important to share experience and challenges and the ways how we solve these challenges and I guess today's event is a very good opportunity and platform to address the audience to address the stakeholders and interested parties to share with them whatever is being developed in our countries where we require assistance what were the challenges and mistakes in order to help other partners to avoid them in future and I guess the events and meetings life are an excellent opportunity to use it and to spread information among us apart from that we all understand that the COVID situation doesn't allow us to conduct the bilateral physical meetings but I hope that in near future the entire world will somehow overcome this challenge and we will switch back to the physical meetings again and with regard to the exchanging information internally countrywide it's a very good opportunity to organize let's say round tables and meetings in the regions and municipalities and villages of Georgia where you can face to face explain to the farmers these developments, what are opportunities what are challenges also it should be taken into account that this must be done in a very simple way in order to enable them to understand all these different difficult terms related with the digitalization it must be done in an efficient manner and these physical meetings might play an important role also describing everything and let's say sitting together and working remotely on different topics it might be a very good opportunity thank you very much thank you very much to remind us how important face to face is for networking connection understanding and trust so thank you very much it's good that we have online but face to face is dear Matia Jules what will be the way you like to share your experience in Agrivi or in the private sector first of all I think it's something that is more preferred because we can answer more information than only through the digital event but in times like this we need to use what's best and we need to use as well replicability of digital recordings that can be shared as well that stay after the meeting as a company we are very active actually to share our experiences we are using only channel approach by only channel approach this means that for example we have very active blog till date we have published over 500 blog articles on digital agriculture technologies this is one of the biggest base globally basically social media is very powerful as well we are trying to reach a lot of arms and stakeholders through the social media using all the channels so from Facebook, LinkedIn Twitter and other channels as well industry conferences like this are very important to exchange know-how between the stakeholders of the industry but then again so we do around 50 events like this per year and we are very active with presentation on universities as we believe that we need to support new generation of farms and students of agriculture business as well that will become a part of this industry with experiences to adopt digital agriculture better so we are trying to combine all the channels and approaches thank you and in the case of civil society Andrea Ferrante what would be your preferred mechanism our preferred mechanism is what we are using in an agriculture approach we have the agriculture schools the agriculture schools we need to remind ourselves that we are in the framework of regional initiative one we are talking about some holders we need to create space where some holder can have can share, can trust can have their ownership and they can really put their knowledge at the center this is why we use the model of the agriculture school where there is circularity where there is respect of knowledge farmers as an enormous quantity of knowledge and we need to enter in dialogue with other kind of knowledge as I said we need to invite software engineers that share our value and share our way approach to the food system and then we build together a solution this is because we need to build and we need to have a place where trust is there I'm putting my data there I'm putting all my knowledge there and I want to keep my knowledge under my control the ownership of this knowledge is the most important thing because the value of agriculture and the food system in the future is all about the knowledge it's not the tomato anymore it's the knowledge behind that tomato and I will not give it away to someone else so this is why for us the agriculture school models is the way forward to create those space where I can find and I can find also a good solution in digitalization but that solution that I really can trust and to be honest it's so sad that in the new fossil-digit framework agriculture is a forgotten world and I really would like to appeal to governments to think about it because most holders all over the region are in an agriculture approach more and more, thank you thank you very much so these were the three questions I had for the panel discussion so now we will enter into the question and answer and before I give the floor to the audience I would like to ask the panelists who have the first time their first time together if they have questions for each other because you have been tackling similar things but with different perspective so I would like to say just because I see maybe connectivity between you and this is part of the discussion we have had previously what is it, I would like maybe just to ask another question to Mattia Joule about how much does it cost to actually be part of your platform so we can see what is your answer because it could refer to the importance of being together what Andrea was mentioning before and then if you have question to each other just prepare it so we can start the discussion thank you I can share the experiences as we are a commercial company that works on the market and we see how farmers across the world we have the customer base in over 100 countries and we work with farmers so full sizes with small holders with big farms so different stakeholders what we experience on the market and these are our experiences is that sometimes farms are willing to buy by themselves and willing to invest into technologies today it doesn't often depend on the size it really depends more on the farmer education mindset capabilities at this moment cost of technology is not that high because you have different levels and you can use different levels of technology and usually return of investment into technology like ours is in less than first year so immediately farmers see return if they actually use the technology to support their decision making but what we see more and more is that small holders are willing to make tradeoff and this is something that will be maybe interesting to comment for Mr. Ferante as they are willing to use the tool that is being brought by the valley chain like agronomic advisory the company that sells seeds, chemicals etc they bring the technology to farms as a part of their loyalty packages so it is free for farms farms can use it but they are training of the data so that is the tradeoff we can see as well these from the different examples and we see farms that are willing to do that we see farms that are not willing to do that so I think that there will be a decision on the farmer side whether they want to they are willing to share the data or not willing to share the data however it is important that in all of these scenarios farms have the ownership of their own data so they have the ownership and they can they can decide whether they want to share the data whether they want to simply take their data off so it is under their control thank you. Andrea do you wish to reply to that always an honour and a pleasure yes for sure but this is exactly the question what we want to see for the food system in the future because if I'm the farmer I want to keep the control of the production this means that I need to keep the control on the seed on the technology that I use and how I use the fertilizer or the manure because I'm not using chemical fertilizer if I lose that and I need to buy a package from somebody else I'm not anymore a farmer I lost the quality of farmer I'm a worker not even a wage worker because I'm the owner of the land and so I took all the risk but I have no I'm not even enjoying the very small pleasure to be a wage worker with pension so this is not the way forward for us and this is why we need to sit at this model will kill us and if I have to die sorry doesn't work but I don't say that we cannot to build something different but we need to keep the control of the food production and this is extremely important and now I do the question to somebody to our representative from Georgia this means that we need to change policies all the policies are not really and I know very well that the common agriculture policy is horrible influencing the policies agricultural policies also outside Europe or the European Union but clearly the common agriculture policies is not for small holders everybody knows that we cannot in country like in the Caucasus or in the Balkans continue to support the agriculture policy that in fact is pushing small holders out of their lands in some how so this is extremely important and we need to have policies that are adapt to us and this is extremely important and I know that Georgia will be a champion in that. I think this is a good opportunity to give the floor to Lesha and now Victor reply to this please the floor is ready. Thank you very much for very interesting interventions and it's always interesting to hear the ideas coming from the different angle from the private sector perspective from the civil society and that's what creates the policy and of course the idea of the government is to develop policy in a way to take into consideration concerns and views of the private sector and civil society and that is how we are developing our policies of course you touched upon the common agricultural policy of European Union and let me just say to many of you who are already aware that Georgia is let's say very grateful and actively uses the approaches and the support coming from the European Union and the main consideration is given to the experience existing in the new member countries and we have this European neighborhood program for agriculture and rural development, the aim of which is a developing agriculture and rural sectors but one important issue is that we always are let's say in a negotiation before starting the program we are negotiating with European Union and also engaging our private sector and population in this process in order to adapt this policies to the realities in Georgia. Of course we have an obligation to approximate our sanitary and phytosanitary legislation to the European Union but on the other hand we are also considering existing reality in Georgia and you might be aware that almost half of the population in Georgia lives in rural areas and more than half are engaged in agricultural activity so it is a very vulnerable group for us and very sensitive directions that's why we are taking too much let's say attention to this sector and we are considering existing reality especially supporting small and medium sized business operators and to apply modern European Union standards in a way not to shut down them and to enable them to become competitive and to continue operating in accordance with international standards. It's very difficult to say it but it's more complicated to implement it so it's not an easy task and I hope that in a close cooperation with the civil society with the private sector we will manage it. Thank you again. Thank you very much and now I'm opening the floor to people who would like to raise their hands. I've seen that there is already a question in the chat so I will just now give the floor to the person I think it's who has made the question so please raise your question to the panelists and to the other people. Thank you. Hello, I'm sorry I got a little bit cold. My question is what technologies are effectively used in your countries to fight with drought for example in Kazakhstan this year we have a problem with water, crops, animals are dying so maybe you will advise or maybe you have some experience in using effective digital technologies in those solutions. Thank you. Thank you very much Al-Jaz. So do you have examples that could be interesting to actually reply to drought which is a big issue in Central Asia but not only Matia would you like to I can say what we see with what our customers are using as a company are not directly involved into irrigation per se but we see more and more companies currently implementing irrigation solutions that are optimizing water usage based on actual weather and soil conditions so this is up taking very highly and we see government across countries governmental integrations into subsidizing implementation of irrigation support farms so this is what I can share. Thank you very much. I see that Ellen would like to actually ask a question so the floor is yours Ellen. Thank you Sophie thank you for this opportunity to intervene in this very important event and I'm very happy and pleased to see that we are here discussing the developments in Georgia related to digitalization of agriculture I would support the comment of the colleague from Kazakhstan that when we speak about digitalization the environmental issues, the soil quality etc is very important and maybe because the weather issues and the soil quality issues are so difficult to manage in developing countries digitalization can be very helpful and it would be interesting to see the technological developments in this field the second issue which is also very important is related to the adaptability of the digital platforms to local farming systems as mentioned by Andrea privacy issues are of very high importance because unfortunately especially in the countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia the awareness of the rural population related to the risks about their privacy is very low and it's very difficult, very easy that they are trapped in a system where all the data about them is available so it's very important to speak about this and to take this into consideration and the third issue which I wanted to mention is also related to aging population and how adapted are the very complicated systems to the majority of rural people we work with and on the other hand is a big opportunity and I would support the agroecological approach mentioned by Andrea where farmers own their digital platforms and they can exchange knowledge and information between themselves and they own and they develop it together with of course with the companies and the government but the owners should be the farmers thank you sorry and now I would like to give the floor to Judith who has been raising her hand for some time thank you very much Sophie it's normal to let other people speak I wanted to mention two or three different things here first of all I'm an emergency which is the global community supported agriculture network and we have started a knowledge which is on our website and one of the things that we are finding very effective through our different programs has been farmer to farmer mentoring which is part of agroecology now we've developed a panel of producers who are experts in different aspects like seeds for example and who are available to other producers digitally to coach them and answer their specific questions and this is really a digital agroecological response to some of the things we're talking about so I wanted to mention it as something that can be scaled out quite effectively the other things that I wanted to mention in particular and respond to our friend from Kazakhstan who really moved me by his plea I think that there are two aspects neither of them are particularly digital one is mulching of crops to protect against water evaporation when you do water which can be done with some digital support as was mentioned and the other that has not yet been mentioned is agroforestry now obviously it takes a little time to develop agroforestry and it doesn't answer the immediate urgent need here and now but I did want to express our sympathy and our feelings for our friend in Kazakhstan thank you very much thank you very much also for providing also some solutions I can reply also to Kazakhstan saying that for example in Armenia FAO has been testing a little bit different innovations which are partially digital or not with the evapotranspiration analysis meter you can then know what is the situation you can have sensors that can make you decide when to irrigate and how much you should irrigate and then to have of course a drip irrigation very specific which is then also a solution all this can be combined and being more sophisticated but can be more expensive so the choice is you should combine either a full package or decide to use only what is needed and this is also replying to what the civil society is saying it is about the cost about what is really needed for the farmer so we should always look at the best of the solutions and trying to have this return over investment what is also important in what was said is that it's the importance of getting organized it is true that some digital solutions are too expensive for the small oldest farmers therefore they need to get organized so that they can benefit together to solutions that are available on the market and in the discussion you know it's to also see and this could be also attract attention on this issue who should pay because is it always the user as small farmers but if the small farmer doesn't have the excess because it doesn't make sense because there is the lack of return of investment and if there is a lack of organization then comes the need of the support from the public sector to take this into consideration so it could be incentive it could be subsidies can be support or it could be paying for some of the services I know that other ways is to have companies who need the products from the farmers to pay for these services so these are tradeoff and in the discussion the importance of who owns the data or who has access to the data and who controls the data is something that we really have to take care of in the European Union level Copacogica has made proposals for guidelines and I know that Agui was involved I know that the civil society was also involved so I think that we need to also look further into this and there were a few suggestions that were made and it is what just that Judith mentioned about the farmer to farmer meeting which reminds me about the farmer field school that is something that FAO has been doing for many many years more than 30 years and to adapt them also using some digital tools not for the sake of having the tools to be used but to use the tools in support of these farmer field schools and therefore this knowledge the trust the ownership is then being taken into consideration so also the agro-ecology schools is also what I've heard as a way to create the space to share to have the trust the ownership and the knowledge and so if we listen to the different intervention what the common points between the public sector the private sector and the civil society is that all of you said we are using platforms and all of these platforms are knowledge platforms so I think what is very interesting is really to make this platform available so if you have a platform that you would like to share the links please use the chat and I'm talking about everybody who is present in this informal consultation and this session today please share with us your platforms because we are trying to understand what are the platforms that exist what are the ones that we can promote and therefore it's important that you share this also with us so that we can repacitate all this knowledge FAO will have what is now being called an international platform for digital food and agriculture so this will be also a place where we will be able to share but you have to share with us in order that we can share with others so that is quite important and then I see there is another comment now from Judith urgency would be interested in working on digital training specialists, higher developments thank you that's good because the other points that were mentioned in the presentation from Valentin before it was we still need to raise awareness and we heard this with Agribi we heard this with the public sector and we hear it also with the civil society we still need to raise more awareness about the opportunities the advantages but also what could be the barriers and the challenges that have to be overcome so continuing this information about sharing information raising awareness then we talked about capacity development and this is good that Judith put this in the chat because this is the next things that we are being asked is how can we have people better equipped improving their skills to use these platforms so this is something that I will also ask with Agribi because you have recently been selected to be the finalist of the FAO IT call on the excellence on digital agriculture and by the way on the 23rd of September we will have the award ceremony and Agribi is among the 28 finalists so it will be really interesting for us also to see how with e-learning we can improve the capacity of the different stakeholders and more specifically in this case the small orders and to finalize these this enables me maybe to actually make a transition with an initiative of FAO it's called the digital village initiative because in this digital village initiative it's important to actually reach the rural areas you have seen I've been disconnected today because I'm in the river area at the moment and my mobile phone is actually my life saver so I'm pleased to actually know yes rural area difficult to reach using mobile technology is a good solution and we should really try to make our best to be more inclusive but respecting of course the needs of being inclusive and it's not only about agriculture services it's also about other services and this is why the digital village it's not only about agriculture it's also about e-governance e-else, e-education e-commerce so it should be something which is fully integrated so I think that with this this where my concluding remarks I would like to really thank all the panellists who are representing the different perspective it's really very interesting to have them and I really enjoyed the discussion so thank you very much for your participation thank you for the participants to ask the questions and I will give back then the floor to Raymond Yeller who will guide us to the next session thank you very much bye-bye to all thank you very much Sophie thank you very much to Mattia, Andrea and Lasha for this interesting discussion on this panel on digitalization thank you very much to all of you staying connected with us during the entire day very much appreciated and I hope you enjoyed the discussion and you were also inspired to share further thoughts in the coming days because we're still going to continue the session today I think showed clearly in the first one the connection of FAO between the regional priorities as well as also the new strategic framework and how we are sharpening in this case also to achieve the SDG targets in the region and in the two let's say priority sessions on the small holders there has been again also an emphasis what kind of access requirements are needed for the finance but at the same time I think Daniela Lensi has been showing that you need also the passion you need the passion to be a farmer and we need also to facilitate this Sophie has already clearly and straightforward summarized the discussion under digitalization so I do not want to further summarize on this one I think it has been also mentioned clearly ownership of data keeping the control Andrea has very strongly advocated for this this is certainly an issue but we also need to in principle include the participants in the process without including digitalization in a process with various stakeholders it's not going to be successful let's look into tomorrow the outlook for the next day we are starting at 9 o'clock again sharp in the same modality as we have done it today and we have two sessions tomorrow so it's a bit lighter as of today we're looking into value chains and we have a case study from Ukraine we have an interesting panel in this context with Natalia Kirienko from Belarus Judith will be on the panel Judith Hitchman from Wurgenzi who has already spoken today and we will have also Brian Baldwin from the International Agri-Food Network from Italy and the session will very much look at the untapped potential of Agri-Food Processing and my colleague Pedro Arias will facilitate the second session that would very much like to invite you also for this one tomorrow we'll focus on environmental sustainability in agriculture production so it's really an important area to look into taking also the greening of agriculture into consideration and the session is going to discuss the management of land use and water resources and we will have a very interesting case study from Kazakhstan and we will have representatives with Marat Uzbayev from the Ministry of Agriculture of Kazakhstan and Ms. Kodirova from the Tashkent State Agrarian University so I would like to invite you stay connected to the documents on the case study and we're looking forward to your inputs in the discussion also tomorrow and with this I would close for today I would like to thank everybody the facilitators, the presenters and looking very much forward to see you tomorrow please use the same link as you have been receiving for today and then you should be very well in the virtual environment in the virtual space for tomorrow thank you very much have a good afternoon good evening and welcome for the session tomorrow bye bye