 Ie, ydych chi'n gwybod, ydych chi'n gwybod, ydych chi'n gwybod, ydych chi'n gwybod, ydych chi'n gwybod, ydych chi'n gwybod. Roeddwn i'n gweithio i chi i gyd yn y dyfodol, er mwyn i'r gwasanaeth y dyfodol. I'm Nafis Mir. I'm the regional representative for South Asia, and I'm going to be the moderator for this session. We've got about 90 minutes for this, and hopefully we'll have a very fruitful discussion. Well, I don't need to tell people that we're at a particularly important time, important juncture, due to COVID-19, which has brought us a position where we're having to reassess the strategy for food and nutrition security, as well as sustainability of our agri food systems. So this year's dialogue is theme, breaking new ground, building resilience today for improved global food systems tomorrow. And this will attempt to provide regional perspectives and scenarios about the implications of COVID-19 on the resilience of agri food system. We'll also be highlighting the importance of accelerated development of investments and partnerships and research in agriculture to future proof the food system from the crisis like the model we're facing today. We've got a really good panel and a steam panel, and they'll be sharing their respective viewpoints on this issue, followed by a moderated discussion and a Q&A session. So throughout the programme, you're invited and encouraged to send in questions, and we'll be considering those through the Q&A Zoom chat box. So, before I go any further, I'd like to play a short video detailing the COVID-19 impact on the rice sector and how rice-based economies have responded to this challenge. Thank you. There are very few places in the world that the COVID-19 pandemic has not yet reached. In developing countries, COVID-19 has further exposed the vulnerabilities of poor communities. Disruptions in the food value chain, on top of livelihoods lost, pose huge risks to food security and the sustainability of agri food systems. The rice sector is not spared. Smallholder rice farmers around the world now experience limited resources and even more limited access to farm inputs. Rice exporting countries are also cutting down on exports to prevent supply shocks and to ensure that they have enough for their populations. Rice-based economies in Asia and Africa are not only reeling from the effects of COVID-19, but are also dealing with existing and new challenges that have yet to be addressed. To this end, the International Rice Research Institute interviewed its stakeholders across the regions to get a big picture of their situation with hopes of sharing their voices beyond boundaries. Many initiatives are already being implemented by agriculture actors to allay the compounding impacts of COVID-19 and other challenges. In Africa, Kenya is experiencing its worst locust outbreak in 70 years. This, coupled with the pandemic, will definitely put a strain on the economy. Neighboring countries like Tanzania, Burundi and Mozambique are threatened by a food crisis should further trade blockages occur and agricultural production contract. Governments in the region are fast implementing interventions to mitigate the risks of COVID-19 and provide food for even the most vulnerable. In Burundi, the government has updated its rice strategy to include new developments in the rice sector. Development partners have also been quick to respond to the situation and have provided support to farmers at the preventive level. They have helped introduce crops or varieties of shorter cycles, increase areas covered by their interventions and increase the volume of input allocations. South Asia faces many similar challenges, but favorable weather conditions in India have led to record rice production at harvest during the pandemic. Neighboring Bangladesh has also reported sufficient food supply contingent on timely planting and harvest. Issues in logistics, however, have had a negative impact on domestic and international rice trade. Labour shortages are also pushing governments in the region to ramp up initiatives on mechanization. In light of the pandemic, Nepal has proposed a five-point policy for agriculture development, farmer subsidies, accessible and affordable credit, technology service for farmers, crop and livestock insurance and guaranteed profits. Development partners have allocated budgetary support for COVID response in the region. This has helped minimize the impact on vulnerable populations, particularly crop and livestock farmers. Multiple stakeholders are also providing enhanced support for Southeast Asia, which has seen increasing COVID numbers in recent months. In Myanmar, the Myanmar Rice Federation, Myanmar Government and other stakeholders have done an effective job to stabilize the rice market and balance supply and demand. Indonesia and the Philippines, two of the worst hit in the region, faced several major challenges in the rice sector. At the beginning of the pandemic, the Indonesian government attempted to stabilize prices, build a buffer of major food stocks, establish social safety nets and facilitate farmer financing among others. Indonesia is now implementing its strategy in the medium term, followed by initiatives for the long term. There are also several organizations and universities in the Southeast Asian region that have devoted their time to studying COVID-19's impact on the rice sector and the policy recommendations needed to address the situation. While comparably more resilient, East Asia saw a decrease in agricultural budget for China, while South Korea's overproduction problem remains a key challenge. The Chinese and Korean governments, however, have been active in ensuring food security and working with development and bilateral partners on several projects to achieve this. China and South Korea, together with aid agencies, have also been quick to assist countries in the global south. Collaboration and partnerships among governments, the private sector, universities and research institutes and other stakeholders including women and the youth are key to safeguarding our food systems. Multisectoral partnerships will indeed be crucial in informing policy decisions in future directions as we work together to build back better for food systems resilience and transformation. Well, thank you very much for that colleagues. So this video highlights some of the results that we got from some interviews, key stakeholder interviews that we carried out over the last few months. And hopefully it's given you some idea of the measures being taken by governments in addressing the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and how those shocks have impacted the populations. Now we want to use this event, this side event, to explore some of these issues and get the perspective from our panellists on these. Now, at this point, I'd like to invite our panellists to introduce themselves, their work and how the pandemic has affected their work. So may I start with the World Farming Organisation, followed by my colleague from Erie, followed by the representative from the Indian Agriculture Ministry, the representative from the CGI system, and finally, last but not least, Agra. Please. Thank you. Hello to everybody. Good morning or good evening, who knows based on where you are. My name is Ariana Giuliodori and I am the Secretary General of the World Farmers Organisation, an organisation that was born because of the will of the farmers of the world to have their voice represented. In global processes, the organisation is based in Rome, next to the UN Food and Agriculture Hall, and is participating in all the international processes from SDGs, definition and implementation to climate change negotiations. And for sure, this COVID-19 pandemic had a huge impact both on the way we work, forcing all of us to move to the remote working options and digital options, but also what we're doing, trying to support our members, providing them with practical information, timely information and support in their daily activities. Thank you. Thank you for that. Can I move on to my colleague from Erie? Good morning, everyone, or good afternoon, wherever you are. My name is Jean Valier. I am research director at the International Rice Research Institute, and well, as many of you may know, Erie is the premier organisation on rice-based system research. And we very much focus on transforming rice-based systems for better livelihoods and to address the multiple challenges of rice-based food systems spanning from climate change to equity issues and increasing prosperity. So for us, the pandemic means that we have additional work to address the multiple facets of this crisis and to provide support to the broad rice-based sector. It also means operating in a more challenging environment for us in research because we have less opportunities to interact with colleagues and partners, which makes all these possible solutions more difficult to achieve. Thank you, Jean. And if I may move on to our colleague from the Indonesian Ministry of Agriculture, Dr Hussein. I'm afraid that Dr Hussein is in the attendee link. So Dr Hussein, if you could check your email and log into the panelist link because we will not be able to hear you with the link you're currently using. So Nafis, maybe somebody else can introduce him or herself. So if I could introduce briefly Dr Hussein, she's from the Indonesian Agriculture Ministry. If I can move, I'll invite her once she's connected back on to say something about herself. But if I can move on to the representative from the CGII system. Hello, everyone. My name is Ekaterina Krivanos. I'm a deputy director for programs at the CGII system organization. I'm based in Rome. And I will speak later on about the CGII COVID-19 hub because of course, as the pandemic unfolded, we saw the need for a coordinated and integrated approach as one CGI to respond to this crisis. So we'll speak a little bit about how we are managing to coordinate and really draw from the full system capacities to address the country needs. Thank you. Thank you. And finally to the representative from Agra. Good morning, everyone. I'm calling from Agra. My name is Foster Boateng. I'm the regional head for Agra in West Africa. I think Agra is an African institution and our role here is work with governments with CGIIs that work with research, farmers and the private sector to be able to improve Africans agriculture. Our aim is to look at inclusive agricultural transformation. We pick the technologies you develop for last mile delivery and also work with government to improve on policy. COVID-19 has really affected our work because we do last mile delivery. So we work closely with farmers and with restrictions and with protocols. Now face-to-face interaction with farmers become a challenge and you need to resort to digital technology and not all places that farmers have access to some of these technologies. Thank you. Thank you, Foster. Have we got Dr Hussein yet on the panel? I'm afraid she hasn't been able to log in to the session here yet, but she's also no longer logged in as an attendee. So we have hope. Good, good. Well, in which case I'll just briefly say that she's the director of the Indonesian Centre for Agriculture, Agricultural Land Resources, Research and Development. When she comes to speak, I'll ask her to say a little bit more about her background and what she does. Well, first of all, we have an excellent line up of speakers. We're going to, I think, be excited to hear more from the panel about what they have to say about the broad scenarios, about the actual experience on the ground. And to start the discussion, I'd like to invite Ariana from the World Farmers Organization to give her presentation. The presentations will be about 10 minutes. We'll be an opportunity to ask questions once the presentations have been finished. Ariana, over to you. Thank you. I will share my screen, hoping that this works properly. So let me know if you... Yes, the screen's there. Is it okay? Yes, it looks good. Wonderful. So if we can quickly go to the following slide so I see someone is controlling the presentation. Thank you very much. So I have already told you how much COVID has impacted the way we work, but I'd love to expand a little bit on this. Actually COVID-19 has represented a real shock for the old food systems as we know. In terms of farmers, we were not so much affected by social distancing. I mean, as our members always say, farmers tend to implement social distancing by nature on the farm very often. But the economic lockdowns, the travel bans, the boundaries that were all locked, everything created dramatic effects on the value chain and food systems. And we are, as you all know, assistant to millions and millions of additional people thrown into the ghost of hunger. But at this terrible time, farmers have never given up. And this is the first point that I would like to highlight in my contributions. They were recognized more almost everywhere as essential workers, but first and foremost, without any official recognition, as farmers cannot stop, nature doesn't stop and neither do the farmers. So the first thing that WFO implemented as soon as we were thrown into this pandemic vicious circle was to give voice to these farmers that were keep on producing and keep on feeding our communities worldwide with a campaign on social media highlighting their role. So, exactly like we are honoring nurses and doctors, we're also thanking farmers for continually feeding us in cities and communities. And if we can move on to the next one, I would like to discuss with you and share with you some more about the impact of COVID. And what WFO has been doing and is still doing, unfortunately, we're not out of the woods yet. In order to serve our members, as I was saying in my introduction, we created what we call a COVID-19 agri information hub where we are gathering unfiltered farmers driven farmers, farmers information. So our members are sharing with us their stories, their experiences, their challenges, and we gather them in this global hub based on the main chapters, the main challenges that we have identified. Started with health issues for sure, for both the farmers and their workers, logistic challenges, disruptions in the market, financing insurance challenges and access to input. So these are the main, I would say, categories of challenges that farmers are facing. But I think that it's also very important not to forget that in many countries, in most of the developing countries, by the way, farmers belong, that's the paradox I would say, belong to those who are hungry. So farmers, those who are feeding the world are also those who are suffering hunger and COVID has put additional pressure on their shoulders and they are really operating under extreme conditions. If I ask, sorry, please, if we can move on and to the following slide, I try to be as short as possible to give space to all of us to share stories because I'm really keen to know more from the other excellent speakers in the panel, but I'm happy then to take questions if there are any. So here I would like to share with you a few stories, stories from our members. So experiences that as you can see will be from different regions of the world, different countries, different continents, but they have something in common. So the first thing that I would like to share with you is that COVID has also forced the farmers to think out of the box. And if the markets were not so accessible anymore, farmers have to find a way to bring their produce to the consumers. So COVID has been an incredible lever to accelerate this gap bridging between farmers and consumers with organizations that have improved in direct selling tools, online selling tools, and home delivery. Here you can see some examples from Italy, for instance, but many, many farmers organizations in several countries, both in the developed and developing world have been operating in this way. So next slide will tell you some more about another challenge that farmers are facing everywhere. The first I would say challenge, the challenge of protecting themselves, so the health challenge I would say, and protecting the people that work with them on the farm. Here you have two examples, one from France and one from Rwanda, where farmers of organizations have used their power to access tools that are fundamental for each farmer. Each one of us, like for instance face masks or soap, in order to make them accessible to a lot more of small farmers and members in the organization. Maybe it's worth mentioning and recalling that at the beginning of the pandemic, the access into masks and protection was very difficult. So using the strength of a farmer organization allowed to overcome the difficulty to have access to this problem. Same happened in France, Rwanda, and elsewhere in the world. Next one, please. The following slide is about something that I am particularly proud of. And it proves that it's not only about resilience and food security, it's also about feeling part of a community and being in solidarity with your fellow citizens. And everywhere in the world, when produce was left on the farm because of issues related to logistics and disruptions in the valley chain. Well everywhere, here you can see Japan, South Africa or Italy. Well everywhere in the world we saw farmers joining hands and taking those projects from their own farm and taking these projects to the most vulnerable communities and people in the suburbs of big cities or in remote rural areas. So this means that this was only avoiding excessive food losses at the farm gate because I can tell you that one of the issues that farmers have seen was that it was really impossible to take their product that was ready to sell to the final consumer. So these experiences that I shared with you so far, if we can move on to next slide, prove how committed the farmers community is worldwide. We've learned a lot for this pandemic so far. But first of all, all of a sudden, food has never been so high in the public opinion attention, all of a sudden everybody in global north or global south was paying attention at food and where it comes from. And we saw images that we thought impossible in some countries of the world where shelves were empty, even in the US or in Europe. We saw food as a top priority. Second element that I want to highlight, we realized that food comes from the farmers first and foremost, and that's not so obvious, and farmers are aware more than ever of the role they play in the food systems. I also would like to say that farmers have learned a huge lesson about how important it is to embrace risk, for sure, with precautions, but to make a bold step towards the other in the communities, the other in the value chain in order to ensure that we can deliver on our mission. And finally, the pandemic is teaching us all actually, not only the farmers, how interconnected we all are. And the theme of food systems that today, World Food Day is, I mean, in the media everywhere with the big summit that is waiting for us in one year from now. So food systems have been tragically highlighted by this pandemic as fragile, interconnected and in desperate need for innovation in order to be more sustainable. And if we go to the next one, that is also my last slide, I would like to launch a message and a call for action to the farmers first as economic actors that are involved in this challenge, but also to all other actors, both in the research world, in the value chain and civil society, government. We must leverage this momentum. Covid must be seen not only as a huge threat and a tragedy for so many of us across the globe, but also as an opportunity to improve. So the idea of building back better must be at the very heart of everything that we are putting in place now, these weeks last during the recent past months and what lies ahead still. So business as usual is not something that we must aim at at all. And therefore, we need innovation. We need innovation as a driver for sustainability. We need new forms of innovations, not only technology, I mean, yeah, sure, technology is one big chapter in innovation, but we need to innovate business models, we must innovate relationships in the value chain. There is a lot. And that's why it's so important and I'm so honored and happy that you invited the farmers to be with you today. That's why it's so important to highlight the role of research in strong connection with the economic actors, particularly the farmers. Because, and that's my final take from Covid and looking ahead to food systems, we cannot have a healthy planet with healthy people if we do not have also a lively agricultural sector. Thank you very much. Over to you, Nafis. Thank you very much for the excellent presentation. I think you've highlighted, you've set the scene extremely well highlighted a number of issues and one of the things that you mentioned, which I think resonates very strongly is the bottom up innovation that already happened with a lot of farming communities. Throughout the world, different countries in the global north, in the global south, where farmers with the disruptions had to connect to their markets and did so in very innovative ways. So thank you very much for that. I'm sure it will generate a lot of questions and just remind people if you do have any questions, put them in the chat and then we'll come to them in the Q&A session. Thank you. If I can move on to our next speaker, our next speaker is Jean Ballier, director of research at Erie, and he will be sharing with us some of his team's work, looking at full site related research and how this can play a role in policy reforms, both in the short term and the long term. Jean. Thank you, Nafis. Thank you everyone. Yes, this will be an attempt to provide just an overview of what could be done using some research products to inform decisions to build back better food systems. So I would try to present a number of work streams that we have been working on and that could inform the discussion. Next slide please. So to start with, I think it's good to recall that before the pandemic, food systems were already challenged and in many cases considered broken because they were not delivering on their promises and multiple level health and nutrition and sustainable impact on the environment and so on. The pandemic has only exacerbated these challenges and the COVID-19 has and continues to have tremendous effects on the ability of food systems to operate effectively. What is more is the pandemic threatens to reverse years of progress and poverty, as you can see, but also hunger, education and so on. So I think it's worth taking a few seconds to repeat the numbers because they are really in parallel, I would say. The world is facing the worst economic recession since the Great Depression. The COVID-19 has caused nearly four million job losses globally. The real GDP on average is protected to decline by 4.2%. World trade, and it was mentioned already, is expected to plunge by 13% to 20% or more. And countries that rely on remittances, for example, like the Philippines, are going to see these remittances shrink by at least 20%. So that is massive, is unprecedented. So while it was said, the impact has impacted everyone, it has affected the world poorest and the most and the most vulnerable people the most. So I think that all this is actually just a call to actually try to find innovative solutions and how we can use a number of the research packages tools including foresight and modelling to build back better our food systems and make them more resilient to future shocks as they will inevitably occur. Next slide, please. So here basically is a menu about what could initially could be done to better to actually build more resilient food system in the future. First, there is a need for a global assessment. I think we have the numbers, but they are still very preliminary. We need to have a more detailed analysis of the exact impact. The absence of a global assessment limits severely the ability of decision makers to act into a putting place recovery policies. So there is an urgent need to conduct a holistic and systematic review of the impact of COVID at multiple levels. So for food systems, there is a need to identify the key fragility points, logistics, supply of inputs, labour, but also nutrition and incomes. And also to document the nature and the scope of the disruption that the pandemic has actually imposed on the different actors of the food systems. Then there is a need to identify the real impact pathways of COVID. We are still unclear about how these effects have propagated, what were the entry points and how they have been multiplied. So there seems to be a need to recognise that impacts have varied and they have been more acute in some areas for some people than others, health workers or the logistics paying the high price. So there is also a need to analyse the policy and institutional governance responses to COVID to learn what has worked and what has not, so that we can identify policy options on this building back better. So foresighting can help on that. Altogether, we could include simulations of the different economic recovery scenarios, but can help situate the access within the broader economy because we know that this COVID-19 is having impacts throughout the economy. So we cannot take agriculture in isolation. We can also provide foresighting evidence-based recommendations to inform policymaking and try to better adapt and respond to this short-term impact as well as reconstruct a system for the long-term and make it more resilient. Next slide please. So here is just a slide to show some of our work on the pathways of COVID on the rice systems. So we have not covered the whole food systems, but this is rice. It is basically a simplified analytic framework to look at the way rice value chains have been impacted. Of course, food systems are much more complex than that and with many more entry points, backward and forward linkages. Therefore, more vulnerability points that are not always immediately discernible needs to be identified. Here we show how we need to go from the risk and vulnerability assessments at the bottom to actually understanding the key drivers that include, for example, markets, transport inputs. All those are parameters or variables that can be used in our foresighting and in our modelling to actually anticipate a number of impacts. Then we look at the channels through which these are communicated to the rest of the system. That, for example, looks at the role of the processing segment as opposed to the production segment on the implied supply segment. Try to look at relative importance of these and their impact on a number of outcome variables such as production consumptions. So we know that consumption has been impacted both in terms of quantity, but also in terms of quality and the number of cases, and we will come back to that. So just this as a framework, next please. So here is just another way of presenting the same thing, trying to recall that consumption has been impacted through panic buying and stockpiling. We have seen a number of price effects, but we need to model as well. Try to look at the patterns and the behaviours of actors like consumers, but also producers, you know, but have had difficulties accessing inputs. We also have seen a number of ripple effects from the weather shocks in some locations, so how to actually integrate these biophysical models with economic models. And we also have looked something that was not necessarily well covered before in some of the research is the critical role of the middle level that is somewhat sometimes defined as the hidden middle. And we have, I think, realised the importance of all this segment of the value chain, the role that traders, logisticians, transporters play in actually making the value chain operate effectively. And that is something that we have had to actually recalibrate on our model and make sure that we realise the critical importance of this segment, and also about the policies that are in place to actually protect or support these roles. Next slide please. Talking about policies, basically also to say that we have an array of policy decisions that were made, basically with a main pattern that was to try to come back to more food sovereignty. That is not without problems and it's not without tensions because we have seen that export bans can have created a number of problems for other countries, so we do have a problem of ripple effects and also collective action problems. But we have also seen a number of governments investing in better controlling the future through more investment in technologies, digital agriculture, modernisation for mechanisation, making food systems more resilient. Next please. So he's just a sign, an example of the findings that we had, I think it was already mentioned, but through our collection of information, we clearly found that for Asia, the main problem was nutrition, an impact of COVID on nutrition. So less quality food being consumed while in Africa we have seen a quantitative effect actually, more food security issue with less quantity of food available and a higher price. Next please. Here is what we call about, we mean with the scenario building. So we have worked around these kind of three broad scenarios, trying to look at trends and the main variables that are actually impacting the functioning of the food systems. So we look at the inevitable trends, including the lockdown that are again occurring, temporary or permanent collapse of health service. The speed at which the economic downturn is happening or the recovery is happening in some cases, and you have a number of additional considerations for health uncertainties or economic uncertainty. So these are the variables that we try to capture, to try to inform a number of scenarios that on a context by context basis can help us anticipate possible futures, and can also help decide what could be the best possible responses to build back better. In this time, you know all these various variables, but this is just a hint about what what is being done. Next please. So, I already mentioned that I will be quick issues already considered concerns that the trade and labour mobility, we know that labour restrictions have been impacting a lot production. We have models that in the models we have scenarios looking at that, the death of economic downturns and economic recovery, what happens if the economy shrinks all together, all sectors are being impacted, what would happen to the right sector in particular. The role of the middle segment as I said, and it's important for the resilience of the whole system, the role of trade, also again in accessing a number of critical inputs and critical pieces for mechanisation, for example. Also, we have seen that when we talk about resilience, it is also about the resilience system with respect to nutrition. So what can be done to make food systems more resilient when we know that the future shock is likely to again repeat the same pattern of pushing consumers to consume lower quality food and at the expense of other products that are relatively more expensive. Next please. So opportunities, and I will finish with that, is basically we see COVID as an opportunity to actually look at a number of over dimensions. So rebuild food systems may mean, you know, how to digitalise them a bit more when possible. How to actually look at ways to produce not only a repeat the old paradigm of abandoned cheap food, but more nutritious food. Also look at the inclusivity issues and look at, you know, the role that women play in rebuilding systems because we know that they have been heavily impacted and they have better high price, but they have probably a specific role to play. Also, I think I am already short of time, but I think we need to look at all these dire diversifications as we build back better looking at the resilience to climate change because we can very much see this crisis as a repetition for what could be the next climate crisis. Is there anything that we can learn from this crisis that would make us better prepared to actually deal with the climate crisis that is gloomy, and also to learn how to deal with these kind of solidarity cooperation networks in the south. Next one. And I think this is my conclusion. But alone we can achieve very little. So the point is we need collective efforts. And this panel represent the value stakeholders that could actually work together in, and I am proposing three, three main areas. First, reduce the risk of occurrence and the direct impact impacts of future shocks. So, we know that we can already identify a number of future shocks and we know that there are ways to mitigate these risks. Let's do it. Reduce adoption of detrimental responses. For example, we know that unilateral trade restriction decision to close borders are just making the problem more difficult to address. So we have a collective action problem here that we need to address collectively and through cooperation networks rather than in isolation. Last and not least, increase the capacity of different actors to anticipate and respond to shocks in ways that could lead to, you know, more positive outcomes. So what I mean by that is we need to actually already understand that we cannot have a kind of linear approach and look at way to build back systems in a uni dimensional way. We need to be conscious that we need to address multiple challenges at the same time, ranging from sustainability to inclusivity to prosperity, and that makes our work much more difficult but also the need to work together much more obvious. Thank you. Thank you, Sean. Thank you for sharing that, the work that you've been doing and your team has been doing nearly. I think it's quite interesting that notwithstanding COVID-19 in large parts of South Asia, for example, have suffered some of the worst floods in a very, very long time. The Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hassana, recently said that 75% of the country was under water from much of August. Similarly in Assam as well, large parts of it was under water, but nonetheless, there was an FAO who just produced some figures to show that the predictions are there's going to be a record crop of serials. So notwithstanding all the challenges, not only from COVID-19, but also from climate change, farmers have pulled out all the stops, so they have responded and that's something that we should be very grateful for. Thank you for that. I'm sure there'll be lots of questions on that. I'm conscious of time. Let me move on to the next speaker. It's a great pleasure to invite Dr Hussein, who's the director of the Indonesian Centre for Agriculture and Land Resources Research and Development to give her presentation. Thank you, Dr Hussein. Thank you, Nafis. I hope my voice is clear for you. Okay. Good afternoon, everyone. Indonesia is now 6.7, almost 7 p.m. I'm going to present the mapping, the future of agriculture, the value of foresighting in building resilient agriculture programs. Next, please. The coverage of the presentation is including opportunity or challenge. How do we address the sources challenge and how serious is the pandemic affecting Indonesian agriculture and foresighting research directive. And the challenge and opportunities include increasing demand of food, energy and fiber products, market demands for high quality and green products and the climate change. Next, please. This is the roadmap of the Indonesian strategic food self-sufficiency for the several commodities. This is a priority commodities in Indonesia. In this presentation, I will bring you a more specific to Indonesian condition. The two earlier presentation is a more global, right? So look and see here. We are performing better, performing well for the maize and rice, but we still need to work very hard for the soybean and sugar. So this is a condition for the targeting of our food self-sufficiency. And next, please. Next slide, please. So during this pandemic in Indonesia, the only growing sector is agriculture. It reached plus, 19, 16.24%. We never imagined this, but it's proof that agriculture is proven, can survive, can survive in the critical condition like now during the pandemic of 19. And how do we address this challenge and opportunities? There are several programs we applied. We start from actually, since five years ago, more intense. We can see here. We start from the improvement of the irrigation network, mechanisation to address labour shortage and aging farm labour, from subsidies to a full fertilizer and seed. Also, we provide loans and insurance for farmers, intensification to close yield gap, extensification to low carbon stock lens, implementation of climate smart agriculture, nutrient balance, cropping calendar and technical guidance also for farmers' skills. Next, please. Next slide, please. So how to deal with the climate change? We need to combine the adaptation action and also mitigation. We cannot only think about the mitigation. So in combining or synergising the program action of the adaptation and mitigation, we can improve the resilience to the agricultural productivity and also we can reduce the agricultural greenhouse gas emission. Next slide, please. This slide shows how we can the intervention for both the adaptation and mitigation aspect. We can see some example here. Intermittent irrigation for rice field. When the excess water, we can allocate it to the other area so we can have the more planting area in other places. And also at the same time, we can reduce methane emission. Another example is by maintaining the balance and efficient fertilisation, we can increase the plant yield and also we can reduce emission from the fertilisers. And another example, the improving the quality of animal feed. With the increasing the population and the building weight of the livestock, we can reduce the methane emission from the enteric fermentation. And also another one, maintaining the organic measure in the soil, we can improve the soil properties, soil condition and the plant growth production. Then we can enhance the carbon stock in the soil. This is what we call the synergising, the adaptation and mitigation aspect. Next slide, please. Next slide, please. Related to the task of the ICART, Indonesian Centre for Land Resource Research and Development, we are providing a soil database, soil map, soil suitability map in the national and the farm scale. So this is one example of the farm scale of the land suitability map for horticulture, like potato and shallot and also garlic. I'm sorry, this map is Indonesian, so I just make a picture and copy for you. Next slide, please. Next slide, please. We provide the fertilizer recommendation, for example, like here in this map. With the different nutrient status in the soil, we provide the different fertilizer recommendation also. So we are going to the more site-specific fertilizer recommendation. This is one example of the farm scale, the more detailed scale of the soil map. Next, please. Organic matter is still become our main issue in the old soil, in the tropical soil like Indonesia and maybe also many other tropical countries. The maintaining organic matter in the soil is the key for the main thing, the soil fertility. So in our case, more than more than 80% of our rice field are content less than 2% of organic matter. So it's really challenging that how we can improve the organic matter content and maintain it in soil. In fact, that we are still providing the subsidy for this organic fertilizer until now. Next slide, please. The practical way of achieving nutrient balance in the field is by using soil test kits. Back to the previous slide, please. This is a soil test kit we developed since maybe 15 years ago. We are using this simple kit to help the farmers. We are providing this soil test kit for farmers in the group for the extension services and also for local government to make them easy to get a recommendation for its type of soil, its condition of soil. So we are already using this soil test kit and it's related to the NPK and URIA subsidies by farmers. So this is a very important tool that we are using here in Indonesia. By understanding by the pandemic situation, we have to go digital, we have to go the more precision agriculture. So we have developed the soil sensor kit. This is a soil sensor that we are now ready to use at the final stage of the validation. So we use this soil test kit to detect the soil just by scanning the soil. We can get information of the NPK, pH and some micronutrients and we put some software in the tab in the connecting tab that includes the recommendation for several commodities. For example, you can choose a potty, maize or other plantation crops. The fertilizer recommendation is to become more easy and become more efficient and cost less. Next slide please. So an integrated cropping calendar is also another important delivery. Can I interrupt if I may interrupt? If you could draw to a close that would be great. We got conscious of the time. Okay, yes, I will make it fast. This cropping calendar is the basic information of the programme for planting dead. This programme also contains other information of the growth stage and is very essential for the fertilizer recommendation. So this is the information system we developed to help the farmer and also decision maker and also extension surface. I think we go to the next slide please. This is one example. I will show you how we decide the infrastructure and also input for the agriculture. We can choose the area, the province and even the regency and sub-district. Then we can get the result that when they can start to plant and how much the area they can cover. So the centre part of the map so rice is at measuring stage industry. Next slide please. So this is my last slide. This is how we monitor the huge area of the Indonesian agriculture land by monitoring the rice growth stage production and also a fertilizer recommendation. Because we are still providing subsidy to all the Indonesian agricultural area and also different commodities. So from this system information we can see that we provide the national level, province, district and also sub-district of how large the harvest area and how much rice production and how much fertilizer required and also when you can start your plant. Because with the Indonesian area we have the three parts of the climate in the west is more high rainfall and in the eastern is very dry. So this is the program that we have developed and I think this is more successful in terms of how do we deal with the pandemic condition. Because we cannot go directly to the field easily and the farmer also cannot access the information easily. So this is one way we provide to the farmer. Okay, I think the time is. Thank you very much for that. And thank you for sharing with us the important very interesting word that you're doing. Our next speaker is from the CJIR. And without further ado, can I invite Catarina Crivatnovos to give her presentation on what the CJIR system organisation is doing in the COVID-19 hub. Catarina, please. Thank you very much. Can you hear me okay? Yes, I can. All right. So, as I mentioned earlier, I represent the system organisation of CJIR. And for those of you on the call who might not be very familiar with CJIR although I think probably most of you are. I just wanted to mention that the CJIR is world largest global agricultural innovation network. And we bring evidence to policy makers, innovation to partners and new tools to harness economic, environmental and nutritional power of agriculture. So having this unrival mix of knowledge skills and research facilities is really placing as well to respond to emerging development issues, including shocks such as COVID-19. I will not go into the many impacts and consequences of COVID-19 because my colleagues on this panel have already done so. We are all very well aware of the negative consequences the world is facing. And I will just really speak very briefly about what we're doing at the level of CJIR to provide a more coordinated and integrated response to these challenges. So when the crisis unfolded, of course, CJIR centres reacted very quickly through the existing programs and using the existing capacities to with some agile research response. We have outlined this initial responses within that were taking place within the existing programs and projects in the research response paper that I think my colleague will now put in the chat. You will see a comment from Janet and if you're welcome to check this paper because it really outlines in a lot of detail how in the short, medium and long term CJIR is addressing this crisis, helping countries to cope. And as we move towards one CJIR, so we are in a very intense process of the dynamic reformulation of CJIR's capacities, partnerships, knowledge, assets, global presence, institutional capacities. So this actually provides a very good opportunity for us to acting in a more coordinated way and really provide this one stop shock to funders and partners who wish to engage with us as we provide our research support at the global and country level. Next slide please. So the COVID-19 hub provides a coordinated research response to the global pandemic. It convenes researchers, funders and key stakeholders and focuses on supporting national response and recovery work across CJIR research themes. So what we really targeting is to provide knowledge of drawing from the wider organization from the many strands of work, including, for example, the work that EDE is conducting and my colleagues already outlined, for example, Jean and his intervention. So we really looking to tap into the existing capacities and provide emergency response recovery and resilience to reduce poverty and hands for security, natural resource management and resilience to future shocks. The hub is host, housed in the agriculture and nutrition health research program, and that is led by EFPRI and ILRI and is also in collaboration with London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. The hub is utilizing significant resources that CJIR already has. As I mentioned, we have data tools, evidence, innovative solutions to respond to country demands. And it's also an entry point to our partners and funders and to collaborate with us to provide funding and in a way that gives us an opportunity to act quickly, be transparent, be accountable for the resources that we have specifically for COVID-19 response. Next slide please. In delivering this urgent response, this is really the hub is operational during 2020 and 2021, so we really don't have very much time to deliver this work, but we're focusing on four key areas where we see strong demand and a good match with capabilities of CJIR. One is addressing value chain fractures, the second one is integrating a one health approach to COVID-19 responses, supporting country response as a third area, and the fourth is addressing food systems fragility and building back better. Next slide please. When we look at addressing value chain fractures, what we really would like to achieve is to develop country and value chain and commodity specific case studies and collaborative research to inform policy and investment decisions and design actions to restore food and agriculture value chains. One health approaches are focused on addressing urgent one health issues, specifically de-risking agricultural hotspots, avoiding futures on noses and crossover events. And then another component is developing an integrated impact modeling linking health, epidemiology, economics and agri food system modeling for a more comprehensive and inclusive scenarios and policy recommendations. Next slide please. Next slide please. I would like to move to this. I will in any case continue speaking, so please move to the next slide when you can. As the countries, so all these areas of work, of course both of these areas, they're really linking very strongly to the country COVID-19 responses. We are targeting establishing a responsive network across CJIR partner countries, providing national partners with analysis, evidence-based recommendation and scalable solutions for policies, strategies and investment options for an integrated COVID-19 crisis and recovery response. So this is really drawing from the multiple areas of work but focusing on country needs. In the fourth area, this is really a long term view to unfragility on resilience and we're integrating foresight modeling results and other types of analysis to come up to assess value chain fractures and prioritizing solutions to improve resilience and building back better the special emphasis on vulnerable groups and country priorities. So this working areas has a working group attached to it that is from representing all the centers of CJIR. So for example, Jean Valier is an working group for resilience and we really value Iris contribution to that working group. Next slide please. Specifically for the country level response, what we're doing is we're engaging actively with governments and other national partners to respond to country demands. We have set up two pilot country teams, one in Bangladesh and one in Ethiopia, and they are tasked with carrying out a country engagement process for developing a 2021 research action plan specifically for COVID-19 response. Additional countries will be added in the future. These country teams draw on the existing work in the countries but also CJIR wider competencies and tools as I mentioned earlier. Next slide please. So just to give you a very quick picture of what the process looks like. In fact, this country engagement for COVID-19 response is really a testing ground for us as CJIR as we move to this integrated approaches as one CJIR and we're strengthening our country engagement. So what we're doing in the COVID-19 hub is also kind of a model for how we will be working in the future through three distinct phases of country engagement. Creating an enabling environment, developing the strategy and programs through alignment and co-design with national partners and then implementing the program and monitoring its effects. So each of these stages has specific collaborative activities attached to it to make it really engaging to make it truly a co-design. And this is how we see it is going in the future also for our future portfolio of research as CJIR. Next slide please. So what could it look like in practice? For example, I mentioned country team in Bangladesh. So here we already know that the first step is really having a good diagnostic outlining demand supply and feasibility of country 90 of COVID-19 research that CJIR can provide with research gaps clearly identified. And then synthesis of existing CJIR research will really inform that. And then we move to dialogue for co-design to create an action plan for research activities next year and really drawing with objectives, key deliverables and drawing from our competencies, especially on social protection, economic modeling, one health, gender and several others. Next slide please. This country engagement process does not come out of nowhere. Of course it's building an existing networks, dynamic research collaboration with partners and coordination mechanisms that are already in place. So for example, in Ethiopia, we are really relying on the work of Hillary and other colleagues who are joined together in a single campus under a hosting agreement with the Ethiopian government. There is a critical mass of researchers and labs and tools that are already providing long-term support to Ethiopia's agriculture and food systems transformation. So this provides us with a solid foundation for providing urgent support during shocks such as COVID. For example, initial assessments are already taking place and food security and nutrition, perishable food supply and daily value chains and conducting phone service and household resilience in Ethiopia's productive safety net program. Bangladesh, which is what you see here, again this is already the country team consists of Cymud, Iri, Ifri and World Fish. These are the centers that are working on the ground but drawing from the wider expertise of the colleagues across the globe. They're working together now to go on through these steps that I outlined in the previous slide. So there are a number of things are already taking place. For example, these four centers have already been working very closely with FAO and EFAT to prepare rapid assessments on food and nutrition security in the context of COVID-19. In fact, just yesterday, the new publication was launched, which outlines the impacts it offers lessons on the pandemic recommendations and presents forward-looking ideas about rebuilding food systems. So our country engagement will really build on that evidence and on these good collaborations, linkages, buying from partners, understanding of what really the challenge is at the country level. So these are just a couple of examples. This work is new. We have started the hub in July and we are moving very strongly with these country teams and the four working groups. The COVID hub will also provide lessons learned for strategic partnerships and as inputs to the new research portfolio that CGR is currently developing. We are drafting a new 2030 research strategy and of course the issues of resilience, of risk management, of vulnerabilities, of being ready to face rapid changes, shocks and tipping points. This will be very much present in that research strategy. So this really provides us with the valuable lessons and enables us to work more efficiently on the ground. Thank you. Thank you very much for that. Very, very interesting and it's amazing how you've done it so quickly given that you started in July. So yes, I think that's commendable that we've been able as a once CGR to get this off the ground. Good. Now, very conscious of time now. Foster, may I invite you to give your presentation? You may have five minutes at the end for a Q&A session. If people have questions, there is a Q&A chat box. So please do put your questions. If we can't answer them today, we will endeavour. I'm sure the panellists will be happy to endeavour to answer them in due course. Thank you very much, Catia, and if we move on to Foster. Thank you. Thank you, Sir Moderator, and I'm sorry I don't have a presentation, but I will speak through it and share some few insights about what Agra is doing in West Africa with regards to resilient food systems. There are two things that COVID has taught us, innovation and initiative. These are two things that COVID has taught us. And the interesting thing in West Africa is that, and I'm sure it also goes through for some African countries, a COVID pandemic stroke at a time when our continent or a sub-bridge was grappling with other challenges including nutrition, youth unemployment, climate change and conflicts. We also realise that somehow the COVID has not been quite devastating as it is in we unspated and is happening in Europe and other places, but in terms of health-wise. But in agriculture and food, I think we are hard hit. For us, we think that this is evident that Africa may have some resilience in terms of dealing with the COVID when it comes to health. The reason why we were not hard hit by the pandemic. But then it will also require some research into this phenomenon for hard evidence to guide future policy making decisions and also coping strategies for resilient food systems in Africa. Now we also think that we need to invest in research for resilient food systems on two counts. One, we realise that there is inadequate evidence-based policy actions that constitutes another source of fragility in the food systems in Africa. Particularly in geographies with weak and early warning systems. Some geographies have very weak early warning systems. And government don't have data to really anticipate some of this things. We also realise that global food supply chains also quite fragile due to the vulnerability to global food supply. Because most of the small holder farmers in West Africa or in Africa, if you will, are producing below-world average in terms of productivity. They are very low productivity and so it's a big challenge. We've also come to realise that, Agra, for us, there are three key areas that we are looking at in terms of dealing with resilience. And it's absorptive capacity. How do we really strengthen absorptive capacity of countries? And what do I mean by that? Creating a enabling environment and regulatory environment for private sector investment. So public sector investment into infrastructure needs to leverage private sector investment to drive sustainable food system. But before you can do that, it needs to be based on evidence. All policy decisions must be based on evidence. And so, therefore, there's a need to invest in research to generate the analytics and data to inform decision-making. Two, we also feel that we need to also invest in the area of adaptive capacity. How do you really capture, analyse and share best practices on sustainable technologies? I.e. climate, smart, post-haves technologies, mechanisation and also to ensure competitive and efficient production and supply chain for inclusive economic transformation. You need to really share best practices. And as I said, there's a need for innovation and it calls for research. The last one is we're also looking at transformative capacity. How do we invest in that? What do I mean by that? We need to develop and promote cutting-edge technologies, including making available to small-holder farmers, planting materials that have the right traits and in terms of genetic advantage to be able to deal with both biotic and abiotic stresses that farmers may face. We also need to look at issues to do with digitisation, digital solutions to be able to take interventions to scale. Now that within COVID, you can have face-to-face interactions with farmers. How do you really develop digital solutions in terms of digital extension, digital payment systems, market systems? How do we do that? And it calls for research. And then also the need to really strengthen financial inclusion and capacity of SMEs to impact at scale. It's very critical and all require research. So for me, in conclusion, what I want to say is government alone cannot do it. There's a need for concerted efforts from government, private sector, development partners, non-state actors to be able to drive this agenda to ensure that we have a resilient system. Thank you. That was brief, succinct and very, very informative. Thank you very much for that. Now we have about 10 minutes left for discussion. Now, I was curious about one thing that Foster said, and I would like to get the views from everyone on that, because certainly it's something that when we think about small holder farmers and the purpose of this event is about what are the opportunities for future proof, future proof the system and particularly in respect to small holder farmers. What he mentioned was the global food supply system is fragile. So I want to put it to our panellists. Does that mean a change from global to local rather than the other way round, which seemed to be the trajectory that we were going in? Who would like to kick off on that? I can. Please. So I think Ariana wanted also to step in so maybe I should give her the precedence. No, please, go ahead, go ahead. Can you turn your camera on please? Okay, yeah. Now you see me. No, I just would like to make a couple of points. Certainly this is a very valid question. There are two clear trends, a long term trend that was basically, you know, support for liberalisation through trade and so on and so the reliance on the global well connected integrated system, international system with some sort of interdependence. And that clearly has been, has been challenged in recent years and even before the COVID crisis. COVID crisis has basically exacerbated these new trends, more short term trend to relocalisation, realising that there are some areas of fragility that are linked to these global supply chain value chains with limited control. The extent to which this is always true can be debated because we have shown actually that value chain and even global value chain have been incredibly resilient, incredibly effective at actually continuing to supply the food we need. That does not mean that the consumers have not adopted different ways of looking at the consumption patterns. And in many instances we see, but consumers have realised that they would sometimes express a preference for locally sourced foods, trying to re-establish a link with rural areas, trying to actually identify the consumption patterns with some other objectives such as, you know, reconnecting with this production systems and so on. So I think both are true. I believe that in the northern hemisphere we already see clear signs that local is increasingly beautiful. But that doesn't mean that this is true for all the consumers. Many cannot afford to actually pay the price of local food, which is very often associated with higher quality, probably more expensive processes, not so big economies of scales. And so there are trade-offs. There are trade-offs and we need to have policies to actually articulate this trade-off, make sure that good food, healthy food, does not mean food for the richest. And that we also have a way to supply equally good food to the most vulnerable and those who do not have the purchasing power. Thank you very much for that. Katja, you wanted to come in, did you, on that particular point? I mean I'm curious to know in terms of CGI, if there is a re-evaluation of the role of local food and local food supply chains, what would it mean for innovation and the work that CGI is planning to do? I would say that what we're looking at in the process of developing the new research strategy is that to really achieve impacts across SDGs, it requires working through multiple pathways. So we cannot beforehand say whether we'll focus on local only approaches or that global markets solve everything, which is neither of these are certainly the case. But what we're looking at is context-specific solutions and especially delivery mechanisms that can really truly benefit both producers and consumers and public health and economic development. And that, in different instances, can mean different things. So we equally embrace, let's say, agroecological approaches which have proven to be very valuable, especially recently gaining momentum, but also still very conscious that CGI strength lies in technology development and we are equally relying on modern reading techniques, for example. And that goes, the same goes for local versus global. Certainly we cannot feed the world with local production alone. In fact it makes people much more vulnerable to limit the access to food through various channels, but we do have to strengthen both global markets and local production. Thank you. Thank you for that. Ariana, representing the farmers, what would be your perspective now? If I may, I've got to close in a minute or so. If you could be brief, that would be brilliant. Sure. Thanks, Nafis. I will be very brief, actually, from the farmer's perspective. It's not about local versus global, not at all, because we know that both the local production and having a stronger agricultural sector in each country is vital, as well as having a balanced international trade flow. So both are relevant. From the farmer's perspective, there is one point, there is one note, one nexus that is still to be solved and that's value for the farmers in the long and in the short value chain. So far, the real issue is about not giving farmers the value for what they produce, so that food that in the end is sometimes affordable at very low cost with bad consequences for health and nutrition, that food is not paid at the farm gate, not even covering the production cost. So to your point, is it about longer or short? No, it's about fair value for the farmers. That was a very point, very forcefully and well made. And I think it's right in the sense that we heard earlier on from you that in many places around the world we saw empty shelves in supermarkets. For the first time in many, many years in many countries, that was the first time that was ever seen, which showed you the importance of food, the importance of farmers and the importance of the production and the food system as a whole. So I think with that, hopefully the message of food and nutrition security has got home to a lot wider group of people than others have been for in recent times. Of course, in developing countries, there's always been an issue for many people in the more affluent countries, you went to supermarkets and that was abundance. So that image of empty shelves, hopefully, is an image that will resonate for at least this year and for a few years more. Right, we've come to the end. I'm sure there would have been lots and lots of questions had we had a little bit more time, but alas I think we've expired our slot. So may I close by thanking everyone or the panellists for their contributions, for their insights. This is an issue that is hugely important. We will be pulling together discussion and pulling together a synthesis in the next few days and sharing that with everybody who wishes to see that. So my colleagues from ERIHQ will be putting out a link for that. And of course, as Katie said, there's been this new document that's produced by SEGIR, the second rapid assessment of food and nutrition security. So that's available. She's seen that. So let me say thank you very much. Thank you for all the participants. I hope you found this useful. I hope you found this interesting. I can say for myself I certainly did. Thank you. Bye bye. Bye.