 Good morning, good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the fourth session of the informant consultation, where we're going to be looking at the regional priority two, value chains, value chain selections. Value chains have enormous potential for transforming food systems. And this is why we decided to dedicate one of these sessions to value chains. But it's priority two, and priority two is about food systems transformation and support in exploring new markets through the alignment of trade, food safety, and sanitary and fight sanitary policies to meet WTO commitments and promote value chain development. So priority two is more than value chains. But we will use it as a point of entry. But how do we select the value chains? What criteria should we use when we select the value chains? To answer these questions, we have to, again, go back to the vision that we have of the food system. In Ukraine, for example, and this is the case study that is presented for this session, we have a group of consultants and we looked at the berry supply chain. And within, we tried to find out what value chains were at play. What is the value chain? Because we talk about the supply chain, but what is the value chain? Well, the value chain we understand is that the activities or actions between the different parties, sometimes even protocols, coordinated mechanisms that seek to add value. So it begs the question, what is this value of the value chain? So I would like to, if Roland is around, to share with us one of the PowerPoint presentations that we have for this session, where we would go to the third slide, please. OK, thank you. Thank you, Roland. So you see, we have the value chains that are coordinated mechanisms. We understand the context. We have a vision for the future when we go through these value chains. And that vision, then, when we start to talk about value, value, what is this value? And parties work together, for example, to increase income or to stabilize income or to save on labor that can be allocated to other alternative income generating activities. In fact, those values are the ones that actually guide the selection of the value chain, which will eventually transform the food system. But these are these value economic, are they social, are environmental? For example, we have value chains like organic certification, geographical indications, slow food, even rural tourism, cooperatives. Cooperatives could well be considered a value chain. So Roland, could we please go to the next session? Thank you. So these are the guiding questions for our panels. We start with a broad vision of the food system. And we will try to narrow it down. We narrow it down to the selection of the value chains and then to the kind of information that we would need to address, to support, to develop, to create those value chains. So this is the subject, basically. So I would like to propose to you that we analyze this with three colleagues, three experts that are among us. We very much like to have the views of the audience as well. Please consider this as a conversation rather than a series of presentations. So feel free to ask each other questions and establish a dialogue if you wish to do so. So the panelists are company us. Let me say hello first to Brian Baldwin. Brian is a geographer and agricultural economist with a lifetime dedicated to agricultural rural development programs. Good morning, Brian. Good morning. Glad to be with you. Thank you for coming. Thank you for joining us. Brian's work for DFID, USA, UNIDO, FAO, EFAT. We work together sometime, Brian, on the drafting, the negotiation of the CFS responsible investment in agricultural food systems at the time we were in EFAT. It's great to have you here. Thank you. Then we have Judith Hitchman, another colleague of vast experience. Judith, good morning. Good morning, everybody. Delighted to be here. And thank you very much for the opportunity to join this panel. Thank you, Judith. Judith has 45 years of work in international communication training and participatory management, specializing in managing cultural differences within international networks of sustainable local development. Your curriculum, Judith, we know for a long time you're a friend of her house. Thank you for being with us. Thank you so much. And then we have Natalia. I hope that she managed to join us. She's had some difficulties joining us from the colleagues are trying to help her and we will connect her as soon as we can. But currently, she is not getting an apology. OK. Natalia Kirienka is Doctor in Economics, Associate Professor, the head of the Department of Innovative Development of an Agro Industrial Complex of the Institute of Advanced Studies and Retaining of Agricultural Industrial Complexes of the Belarusian State Agrarian Technical University. I hope that she will join us. So, Ryan, would you like to be the first one to have a go at this? Yes, with pleasure. Thank you again. Good morning, all. And many thanks for this opportunity to have a dialogue, Pedro, as you said, rather than... I'm not going to have a PowerPoint. I'd be delighted to know. I wanted to appreciate the focus of this discussion, transformation of food systems. As you know, in the Committee for World Food Security, which I've been involved in, there's been a lot of focus on that recently. But also, it's in the forthcoming Food Systems Summit, which has really focused on this issue of food systems summit, moving away from a particular, pure, say, production focus, but looking at the connected system. I want to talk a little bit, perhaps... And I appreciate, you know, we're going to... Well, we'll try and keep the time on this. Talking a little bit about your initial comments on value chains and the focus on value chains. It's... And you're specifically saying it's where you add value as you move through the supply chain itself. I think that's correct. To be honest, it's not so often that you will hear private sector entities describe themselves as a value chain. Or they may say we're part of a marketing chain, we're part of a marketing framework. It's sometimes we get a little bit caught up in that very precise definitions or use of that terminology. Understand it's you are effectively adding value as you move down the chain. Individuals in that chain, be they producers, processors, marketeers, supermarket wholesalers, do not always see themselves as necessarily adding value, being part of a process. So I think that's important to... As we talk about systems, I prefer using that phraseology system. Clearly, there are values in there. The initial value is one that is always economic and financial. But there are always other values involved. And producers, farmers, they themselves are guardians of the soil in many, many cases. So their values will be ones of soil conservation, for example. But I think in this dialogue we're having today, what's coming through a lot from the work that's going on is one of the values that are coming through from the consumer and the customer. And just looking through the Ukrainian paper and bearing in mind a lot of the discussion that's going on in the food system summit and CFS and in the private sector is the importance of the values that the customer and the consumer are having. The customer and the consumer at the moment, one can argue, is often very focused on price of food and convenience of food. And it's great to have Judith with us today because there's a behavioral change coming on because as consumers start to signal that they are prepared to pay a premium price. And you mentioned this earlier, Pedro, for organic certification, that message gets back to producers and through that entire marketing system. So I think one of the first question, what needs to be addressed in supporting food system transformation to accelerate the SDGs? It's understanding the consumer, education, it sounds patronizing, but therefore let's talk about knowledge and information to the consumer that feeds back down that particular supply chain. In terms of the role of the values that are there, what we're seeing that the private sector looking at increasingly in terms of investment, are what are the indicators that they can use? And you're right to focus this discussion as well on the SDGs. And as you know, particularly in FAO and I think others as well, it's tracking the SDGs both at institutional level and at country level is difficult. Finding the data is difficult, analyzing the targets. My words of caution and our advice are try and work around the SDG targets. Don't necessarily think of other targets that can be used because what we're trying to do in achieving the SDG targets is not only achieve them, but give countries the capacity to collect the data and report on the data of the SDG targets. And if the initiatives that we're talking about today can mirror, replicate and strengthen country level capacity to report on SDG indicators, that not only does a service for the SDGs, but gives the basis for the value, the marketing, the supply chains to fit into those same SDG indicators and provide the information. So your question of what data is required to select the value chains, let's go back to that SDG data. Sure, we can pick up data on many, many topics, but if the driving question is food system transformation, achievement of the SDGs, let's work and enhance those existing data. For example, in the private sector, there is something called the HIPSO indicators, which are called the harmonized indicators for private sector operations. Now, these are used a lot by the Multilateral Development Banks, that's the World Bankation Development Bank, African Development Bank. They are looking at indicators for their own operations that includes, for example, greenhouse gas emissions, greenhouse emissions, sequitration, sustainable management of natural resources and land use, picking up on the existing indicators that are there. And again, if you're talking with private sector, rather than say, well, here's a new set of indicators for you to follow. It's no, take what the SDGs are using, take what the HIPSOs are also working on, and there's some great indicators for HIPSO on gender as well, women on boards, women in council groups that that private sector are increasingly looking at. In terms of what are going to be the innovations to support that, we talk now about innovations clearly not just technical, but social and institutional. Clearly digital is of importance. And we've seen during the COVID crisis how digital information did facilitate the international trade, well, at a global level. But I think one of the other key, if you like, social innovations is representation. And I think the innovation that we need, particularly in the context of what FAU is trying to do in the region with SMEs, small and medium enterprises, what's the social innovations and the institutional innovations that gets the representation of SMEs into decision-making processes? How much are SMEs getting involved in local chambers of commerce to get the information? Because it's not only is it digital, but it's actually, the innovation is, it's not, sorry, what value chain innovations are priority. It's not just innovation, but what is assistance is needed. And one of that is knowledge, it's information. Literally I was on a call yesterday talking to SMEs in Pakistan. And their point is they said, please give us information on what is the best supply chain model and framework. Basic understanding of how the system works and FAU is well-positioned to provide the additional information into SMEs and link them up to the larger models within the ministries and also reach out to larger companies. You can say, look, we've got several SMEs who need your technical skills. Can you feed them in? So I think that's gonna be an important innovation alongside the importance of finance. Just to close this initial piece a little bit on the, I thought the excellent discussions on the regional initiative too. I think it's from a private sector two or three things really spring out here. You're talking about the strengthening the capacity to understand and apply WTO trade agreements. That is important that there's a knowledge, a government level and an industry level about the WTO agreement and agri-food trade policies. But where FAU can really step in again in the context of food system transformation is the work that FAU and WHO are doing in leading the codeic elementaries. That is a tremendous piece of work where member states get really, really involved. Frankly, I've been in the blue room, sorry, the plenary sessions in FAU when you really see the interest of countries getting involved in the codex work as do the private sector because private sector facilitates trade. And in the recent work that we've been doing with SMEs in the food system summit when they were asked, what is your major, what are your major requirements? They said, yeah, better finance, better policies, the third out of 20 was better access to export markets. And sitting in there is codex for the agri-food sector. And that is a real area that I do believe that in the European and Asian region is a real plus for pushing forward on codex. And that allows you to start to move forward as you've said on the inclusive, efficient agri-food value chains with that as a background. Pedro, I'll stop there and welcome comments and other reflections and continue this dialogue. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, Brian. Well, he gave us a mouthful there, so many. But is it true, right? I mean, food systems are complex and these are complex issues and all these are interrelated and they have non-linear relationships and it can get really complicated. And this is where the difficulty that we have sometimes, trying to understand these entry points in which is why we have this consultation. Can we just cut through all that complexity by asking countries in an informal consultation like this? How do you see the value chain? What are the entry points that you think are the ones we should be looking at? I can see Natalia among us. Hello, Natalia. Good morning. Good morning, colleagues. If you may, can I speak now, yes? Thank you, thank you very much for being with us. It's a real pleasure. I tried to introduce you early on and we had some problems connecting you. As Natalia, Doctor of Economics, as we say, Professor, Head of the Department of Innovative Development of the Agri-Industria Complex of the Institute of Advanced Studies. Natalia, would you like to have a go at these questions? The floor is yours. Thank you. Allow me to express my first words of gratitude to the FAU for providing the opportunity to speak within the panel discussion specifically on the issue of development of the supply chain, which really has a significant impact on the supply safety of the country. It is difficult not to agree that the global epidemiological situation of 2020 has carried out its correctives on the production of the supply chain of the country. The spread of the pandemic caused a decrease in business activity in almost all countries and in all spheres. And if we talk at the same time about the Republic of Belarus, then it was in the 20th year that the high level of stability of the supply chain of our country has been shown. The agro-settling supply chain of Belarus is one of the priority industries of the national economy, which performs economic, social, ecological and cultural functions. And in the last 10 years, we have seen that the individual weight of the agricultural product, the formation of the domestic product, is preserved at a level of 6-7%, 6-7%, and the rural population in total number is more than 22%. Today, in the agricultural land in the Republic of Belarus there are more than 40% of the territory of the country. This is a fairly large area and is equipped with such necessary potential and, accordingly, by following the policy in the area of agricultural agriculture, Belarus has reached a high level of supply safety precisely due to its own production. In 2020, for us, it became a big, even, let's say, an opening, since Belarus has made a big gap to the perfection of the conditions of supply to the population. The country significantly improved its position in the Global Food Security Index and moved from the 36th place to the 23rd place. That is, today it is the 23rd place in the world. According to the index of concrete capacity, it occupies the 46th position, and the basis of the export potential of the country is to ensure agricultural products and food products. By expanding its production and household activity, Belarus is increasingly active in the international distribution system of labor and international trade. If we look at it, the country occupies a small territory and has a small number of people, but in the rating of the manufacturers and exporters, today it is the 4th place in the export of flour and the 4th place in dairy products. In addition, the country occupies 20 countries of leaders in the export of sugar, oil, rapeseed, beef. Today, again, the pandemic of 2020 showed the significance of agricultural products and food products, and we see that in export, republics in general and our production provide 20% of the total export. What is the development of production from household chain and commercial system in general? Well, first of all, due to the fact that special attention is paid to the level of the state of the support of rural agriculture. If we look at the year 2019 and year 2020, it confirmed the volume of direct budget support cost more than a billion dollars in the United States or 117 dollars per 1 hectare per year. What is the support for? For the modernization of a material-technical basis, for the development of integration cooperation, for the formation of stable production of household chain and, accordingly, for the development of rural areas in general, as the previous report said, there is a complex system problem that should include various areas. Today, the work on the formation of stable chain continues and there are pleasant conditions for improving the quality of the life of the population. What are the plans in the country? We already have a five-year planning for 2021-25 a number of new program documents that predict the development of the environmentally safe rural agriculture and the supply of full-fledged food and healthy life of the population. As a new direction, we also note and see the development of the digitalization of rural agriculture. The transition to the exact land is gradually being carried out. Smart farms are being created using this satellite system to plan the development of automated systems, collecting information and managing the production of special processes. Of course, there is no doubt that the question of climate change remains in Belarus. Belarus has joined the Paris Agreement and is currently actively working on the internal policy on this issue. We must note that our country is in the area of risk in the land and, of course, the last few years are the most dangerous events of the year, the weather for rural agriculture when in the warm period it is frosty, dry, frosty, icy rains, in the cold period it is warm or strong frost. However, the climate change has a positive influence on rural agriculture because we see and improve the conditions of re-wintering and the cost-efficient maintenance of cattle and the cultivation of plants and the emergence of new types of agricultural culture in our country. I would also like to note that our agricultural sector has an export orientation and today we see the opportunity to go to a new market. This is also part of the production of cattle. The geography of the Belarusian export is 116 countries, and as a new direction there are markets in Asia, Africa, and here we are very closely working with the Chinese People's Republic and 2020 has just shown that this market for our export has become a driver of development. Dear Mr. Chairman, the work of the FAU in terms of the pandemic has not only decreased but also expanded and today's meeting gives us the opportunity to exchange experience in the direction of future cooperation. I hope that this will be a good tradition and will be useful for all participants of such a highly respected meeting. Thank you for your attention. Thank you for having in our minds this vision of where the food system wants to go. This is where we go back again to these issues, with values that we are looking into when we address the food system and you mentioned in here nutrition, you mentioned export revenues, you mentioned livelihoods of lifestyles, you mentioned climate change. This is very interesting contributions. Judith, your time to have a go at them. The floor is yours. We can't hear you. Am I unmuted now? Great. Thank you very much. This is a tough one. If I take first of all the FAU definition of the value chain, it should be inclusive, financially viable and environmentally friendly. I would like to add to that that it must be anchored in the human rights to food and nutrition. I don't know how many people watching this morning watched the state of food security in the world launch of the report from New York yesterday, but I was practically in tears watching it. There are about 811 million people who are now suffering from chronic malnutrition and that is a big increase. 2.4 billion people suffer from moderate or severe food insecurity and that is like 40% of the human population and 3 billion cannot afford healthy diets. That is half our world. Where is that coming from and how does that link to the value chain conversation? I would like to perhaps take it to the level of a very good policy that came out of CFS some years back that I was involved in which is territorial markets connecting small holders to markets because at a certain level if you do not have food self-sufficiency when you have something like a pandemic the long value chains break down and in Ukraine 80% of family farms they were all severely affected but 80% could not get their produce to market that left them with their primary source of income suspended and it left them obviously in the situation of not being able to feed themselves either and this was common right around the world and right around our region of Europe and Central Asia. As a result of that a group of agro-ecologists in Ukraine came to us and asked us for some support in providing some community supported documents to them. Now luckily FAO had given us a little seed funding to translate a primary document called Be Part of CSA into Russian for our friends in Kyrgyzstan so they were transferred to Ukraine and translated into Ukrainian there was the support of the German government and that group is now looking to build direct producer to consumer local solidarity partnerships between producers and consumers and to take this forward now this is something that typifies the kind of thing that is coming out of the pandemic as a positive local solidarity partnerships between producers and consumers and not just CSA it can be working with cooperative shops it can be working collectively with public procurement it can be working with local restaurants and many other things and this collective approach that is inclusive and uses inclusive methodologies to ensure that food is affordable that healthy diets are affordable to people is really where we in the food sovereignty movement the value chain conversation needs to go I would also like to say that this conversation is supposed to include one health now in terms of one health people who are and there are several very reliable studies published by the Lancet and other bodies on this people eating agroecological healthy slash organic slash nutritious food especially if it is plant based have between 20 and 30% less cancer they have between 30 and 40% less non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and heart issues which in turn in the case of COVID has led to less severe forms of COVID where these people have been eating healthy local fresh fruit and vegetables and meat that does not come from industrial production I think if we look at our region of Central Asia it's a region that grows a lot of cabbages a lot of brassica now they can be very well in their huge traditional basis for this for processing into winter supplies of cabbage such as sauerkraut this is something we need to support as we said yesterday small-scale food producers particularly women and develop as was mentioned yesterday women's cooperatives even if there is a historical reluctance to do so now in terms of CSA people sometimes imagine it is an elitist form of distribution to consumers it's not if we look to countries like Germany there are sliding scales whereby people's means are taken into condition it's also vitally important in this type of value chain to work with local authorities not just states but also local authorities because there is devolution of power and local authorities best know who the vulnerable members of the community are and how they can be supported for example during the pandemic there was a huge solidarity movement between producers consumers and local authorities in many cases and home deliveries made to those who were vulnerable and unable to go to the supermarkets even though those supermarkets shelves were bare in many many countries we managed through local producers clubbing together in regions such as the Basque country to get healthy food to many vulnerable people within the community the question of certification has also been mentioned and I would like to say that there is a lower cost to participate guarantee system certification it is participatory which means that the community of eaters and producers are all involved and this is something that can help work on the equality we also mentioned yesterday the importance of mentoring and training and this is something that urgency is now working on as is the Scola Campesina and the farmers field schools for agroecology because agroecology is the basis for all of this in terms of food loss and waste which is one of the SDGs attached to this conversation a study was carried out the total industrial food loss and waste across the total food chain can and sometimes is up to the mid 50 percentile range with CSA it is approximately 6% because it goes direct from producer to plate and also there is direct composting where required and there is very little loss in waste I would like to add a word about the vital importance of school meals and using local fresh healthy produce from collectivised groups of local small scale food producers growing agroecological food the SOPHI report clearly points to the fact that those children where schools were closed were unable to access school meals and their health has suffered severely, really severely in some countries there were meals provided for those children even though the schools were closed and this is something our region also needs to take into consideration and the work with local authorities there is key again because this is the level of devolution that is relevant and when I say producers I would like to include fishers because fish is also an important part of healthy diets and many of the countries in our region also have fisheries so basically what we are saying is that different forms of territorial and local markets and local solidarity groups between producers and consumers are essential to creating an agroecological value chain that will help the countries to become much more self-sufficient and to close I would like to remind you of the definition of value chains that was given at the start and quote from the UN Secretary General at the last edition of the Commission for Social Development in February 2021 he said social and solidarity economy embodies another model that seeks a new balance between economic efficiency and social and environmental resilience now that is exactly the same as the definition of the value chains that was used by FAO for this panel and for this meeting I do need to look at these new models and see how we can develop other forms of economy and I will put into the chat two references one is the reference to the civil society mechanism report on Covid and the other is the reference to the urgency report that I will put in in a second as soon as I have finished and can find it so that is it thank you very much I will put in that reference in a second as soon as I can see to get it and do it thank you very much everybody for this opportunity thank you Judith thank you Judith it is very interesting that you focused on the local local markets short supply chains and everything that needs to go around it and what it actually means from a social economic environmental point of view when we speak of a value chain this what we call the sustainable food value chain sustainable food value chains that has these three dimensions I would like to open the floor and invite also participants at this stage that like to make contribution I understand that we have a representative from Belarus I would like to contribute if this person is there would voluntarily give him or her the floor I don't seem to be able to find this request I got this information that I would like to contribute would please step in I don't know if it's a technical problem okay we'll Pedro it should be Deputy Minister Bogdano he's on the call right so maybe Alexey you could you could take the floor I don't know if it's a problem of connectivity sorry Pedro Alexey Garevich my name is Alexey Garevich no probably he's not directly connected okay so while we when we wait can I come back to you Brian you said that you there were a couple of issues that were pending there that you would like to dig in yeah it was mainly Pedro you know back on the very specific questions you were asking about the value chain selections in the Ukraine context and in your background paper you've highlighted some of the key areas that you wanted to address I think it's back to this the theme that if we start developing new indicators for value chain selection the data requirements are going to increase and I think there is a always an interest in new criteria but the constraint is always going to be the data collection and the comparability of the metrics just as we discuss the issues of true cost of food the elements of how you will actually define the metrics for that are going to be important and difficult of working with governments in this case Ukraine on what are the indicators that are being collected already in the national agricultural planning area that link into the SDGs and once you have the analysis then of how those indicators are being collected is the right systems in place to do that is the data technology and digital technology available to collect that data and then within the country context using that base for both value chains themselves understanding what it is that their respective governments want them to be contributing to and you get the ownership of those criteria and that data and I think that takes us very far forward and then within the SDGs we do have all the necessary targets and indicators that speak to the other values that we're looking for of environment and social sustainability along with economic sustainability and I just think reading the background paper yes there's criteria concerning competitiveness or you know other ones as well that's much harder to start to define you might be able to do a little bit of extra work but in looking at issues of competitiveness but go to the existing SDGs and existing datasets for that VC selection yes thank you I recognize Switzerland I think it's Switzerland that has raised their hand thank you very much and I take the opportunity to be invited to comment or step into this conversation I think Brian Baldwin has raised a very important point concerning the data as an entry point into the value chains discussion and this is something which has been discussed also along the formal FAO governing bodies throughout the last year not only from the angle of the SDG indicators where Brian Baldwin is absolutely right that there's a huge deficit in documenting and making availability data to show progress and to compare alternative scenarios but that's also another entry point related to data and analysis and this is what is done concerning the Xante forward looking quantitative analysis particularly in our region we have huge and very strong networks of analysts from the scientific community but also government related FAO and OCD collaborate in this context there's a good and valuable exchange between member states and different stakeholders and this is an important network which we could build upon because of course we are working in the context of uncertainty this would be rather an increasing uncertainty over time but on the other hand we also have clear and strong market integration in large parts of this region so I would like to use this occasion to also here underline the council's decision and endorsement of FAO really requesting FAO to strengthen its capacity in the Xante risk analysis assessment and increase its foresight analysis going beyond 2030 and doing this particularly also in our region because there is already a very strong basis but it requires of course additional efforts this is one element the other element is and this is again touching on the value chains we do have a huge network of regional trade agreements in this region which is of course linked to the strong market of the European union and the partnering countries being attached to it Switzerland of course being one of those but there is a huge network of other countries that are increasingly trying to integrate their value chains in the European context and there again the council in April or endorse the report of the CCP which underlined again the importance of FAO to support member states in their effort to analyse trade policies trade agreements and facilitating dialogues on the future development of trade agreements and this particularly in the context of trade and sustainable development where there is an increasing attention of the consumers but also in the regional trade agreements the chapter on trade and sustainable development and thus related questions who have increased relevance and also possibilities to step into also some of the questions thank you very much thank you yes interesting how you are coming from the side of trade and indeed I mean having an idea of the context I mean you can have a vision of where the food system is going to look like according to these values that pursue it but then the context this is what we put in the slide there where you stand at the moment will give you clues as to the strategy that you want to follow to get there understanding context and also the impact of that strategy a projection extant projections if you are going to be following this strategy of supporting this type of value chain what is how is that actually going to happen Judith you wanted to step in yes I did because I wanted to also put my finger on a couple of things first of all all the elements that I mentioned can be clearly linked to the farm to fork strategy of the European Union the other point is that I wanted to draw attention again to the human rights dimension and in particular to the United Nations declaration on the rights of peasants and other people living in rural areas because if we look at our Eastern Europe and Central Asian countries very often the producers are in extreme difficulty yesterday there was a member from Kazakhstan who spoke about all the crops drying up and the animals dying because of the drought and I really do think that any value chains we need to develop need to focus very clearly on those who are the least privileged and not the most privileged in Africa today food prices have risen and virtually doubled in the year or even more than double same in Asia and even here in Ireland my food basket is costing me approximately 80% more than a year ago by driving up prices through so called scarcity even more people more consumers are being marginalized and excluded from healthy diets they're making unhealthy choices so the whole question of trade and subsidizing industrial agriculture as opposed to supporting small scale local food producers a country like Ireland is absolutely not self-sufficient in fruit and vegetables they're self-sufficient in meat which is a huge export industry but people can if I go into the supermarket I see peas and beans from Kenya although local production is this time of the year but it's not there so I really do believe that the territorial and local markets and supporting small scale food producers to group together also not just in production but also in processing is a very useful road to go down it will help us to reduce these terrible, terrible figures for hunger we are so far off the SDGs it's unbelievable so discussing trade where you are speculating on commodities food is not a commodity it is a fundamental human right thank you thank you thank you Judith yes we seem to be going coming back to two issues right and this I heard from Natalia as well this issue about the adding value through processing and the importance of the consumer I mean we tend to concentrate sometimes when we talk about value change on a production level but in this what I'm hearing here is that the concept goes actually while it is important primary production that we should be paying more attention to value additional processing level and the needs of the consumer Natalia if you are still there I would like to hear a little bit more about this automation of the value of the supply chains that you prefer to I'm sure if Natalia is still with us it is connected she is no longer in the middle oh well that's a shame because we would like to hear a little more about this automation probably she was referring to the role of digitalization and logistics and how this technology can help okay I think we only have a couple of minutes unless somebody else would like to intervene to make some remark otherwise I would give the floor to Brian briefly if you would like to just have a few sort of two take-home messages from what you heard and the same for your use before I close it go ahead. Yeah many thanks I think one of the key areas moving forward then in food systems transformation is to innovate as we've been discussing today and also communication particularly with SMEs I also want to highlight the most recent FAO Food Outlook report which actually provides scientific and evidence based analysis that the global food system did not significantly contract had problems during the COVID outbreak and the global food system has remained resilient and being able to provide food across the globe and I'm very pleased that the FAO has provided the scientific evidence to support that and many thanks to all for this excellent discussion and for the FAO in Budapest for hosting it, thank you. Thank you Brian it's been a pleasure really to listen to you it's always a pleasure to listen to your ideas Judith I think that we as Mielanie Europe are collectively are very thankful to FAO for having included us in several panels we feel that it's been a useful contribution here this morning and we certainly look forward to continuing to work with you on the ground on all of the issues that we have mentioned so thank you all very much and we greatly appreciate the invitation Thank you Judith for being with us I had to invite you another one who is always full of ideas and is always ready to give us a hand my take home message we're ready over time is COVID actually and the food system is when we talk about building back better building back better is about making tough decisions right and COVID has somehow showed us that they are out there sectors that have much better in the times of crisis like this and agriculture is one of them it's more holiday culture including of course there has been hotel restaurants in catering tourism industry has suffered and has actually proved that we should support more agriculture and maybe even be the engine you know the support that is going to provide that economic basis social structure as well to build back better from COVID unfortunately investment in agriculture is never enough and well beyond what it should be according to its contribution to national GDP this investment orientation index that we often look at how much investment goes into agriculture related to its importance if we measure it according to its importance to the rest of the economy we are always below one so we should increase investment in agriculture and where do we invest in such a way that we build back better and this is where the issue comes into play what has actually proved now through COVID that is worth investment because it brings resilience to the supply chains and one of them is more other agriculture so with this final thought I would like to thank again the panelists and I hope that you found this I did personally I hope that others found this conversation interesting and I would like to invite you to stay online because in about 15 minutes we're going to move it into the fifth session of the informal consultation Raymond if you're there I don't know if you'd like to take over from here thank you Pedro I'm sorry I have some thank you Pedro for this thank you very much also for all the panelists Brian as well as Judith and Ms. Cadienco so we are going for the break for 15 minutes and they connected as Pedro said we're going to have the interesting case of environmental sustainability and we have an interesting case study from Kazakhstan thank you good morning everyone dear participants ladies and gentlemen welcome to the session 5 on environmental sustainability in agriculture production systems in the regional session priorities read and today our session is focuses on promoting sustainable natural natural resources management and facilitating resilience in agriculture forestry and other land user and other land use sectors including mitigating and adapting to climate change I'd like to kindly remind that we have a translation into Russian language you can see the simultaneous translation on the on the bellow on the bellow globe icon so you can click and select the preferable language that you would like to attend and I'd like to my name is Mahmoud I'm the regional program coordinator for the FAOJF CASILM 2 project which stands for the Central Asian program for Central Asian initiative for sustainable land management phase 2 and I'd like to give the floor to Janil Bozaewa she's the national project manager of the project in Kazakhstan and welcome everyone to our session thank you thank you very much Mahmoud in a while I'm going to share my PPT I hope everyone can see my presentation okay thank you very much Mahmoud one more time for giving me a floor my name is Janil Bozaewa I'm a national project manager of the CASILM 2 project and today I would like to share with you a case study on integrated natural resource management in drought prone areas of Kazakhstan of course before starting my presentation I would like to highlight the importance of the question to the whole region of Central Asia the Central Asia is particularly exposed to desertification to land degradation drought and other natural hazards due to its geographical location and climate conditions as you know the second one is drought as regards the drought it occurs nearly in all territories of the region the negative impact are being worsened by the climate change in particular we can see it now in Kazakhstan a severe drought has happened here in Kazakhstan as regards the agriculture I would like to mention that agriculture remains an important sector in the economy economies of the Central Asian region it plays a big role in GDP and employment in Central Asia for example it creates up to 38% of GDP 25% of employees across the region of course to manage the natural resources in more integrated and complex way there are several constraints and challenges on the territory of Central Asia including Kazakhstan for example they are legislative and institutional challenges for example lack of holistic approach absence of coordination mechanisms there is also a lack of decision support tools for example there are no up to date maps on the condition of land and soil on the territory of Central Asia in Kazakhstan as an example I can say that in Kazakhstan the national map of civilization was updated in 1980s during the Soviet time until now it's not updated and as a third constraint that we can mention that is a barrier for the integrated management of natural resources is a weak development of rural advisory services what is that? it's a lack of capacity of local executives it's also insufficient training materials on integrated natural resource management and technologies it's also a low perception of farmers on INRM all in all of course there are several other additional challenges and constraints that negatively affects the management of land resources but all in all they come to the degradation of natural resources of course within the project we have elaborated several recommendations to the country beneficiaries and to the government of Kazakhstan especially on how to overcome these challenges first of all within the project we are supporting the government of Kazakhstan in improving the intersectoral cooperation between the different sectors for example land water and forestry for that we have established a working group within the Ministry of Agriculture and we are gathering with decision makers each year annually to exchange our ideas the second point is important point that we have did within the project we have tried to incorporate INRM approaches into a new concept of state program on development of agriculture for 2022 and 26 I would like to mention that this our contribution of the project was mostly related to the sustainable management of natural resources as regards the second constraint about which I was mentioning before is a lack of decision support tools so to overcome such challenge we have produced it together with the government of Kazakhstan different types of maps these are land degradation maps salinity maps, agricultural drought and vulnerability maps and also soil organic carbon stocks of course jointly with the global soil partnership we have also trained GIS experts from the national partners, ministries so they can on their own develop such maps as a decision making tools this is very important to say that all these maps and all these activities are being done, conducted jointly with the government so the sustainability of the project results could be ensured in the proper way on the screen you can see the maps that were developed by the project team as extent during within the project as regards the third constraint that we have mentioned before is the weak development of rule advisory services and it could be a great barrier on effectively for example introducing INRM approach on the fields of course within the project we are piloting several INRM approaches but to upscale them and to integrate them to the policy to the planning of the government we need to use for example existing rule advisory services and we need to use for example field of farmer schools for that we have created several training manuals guidelines and brochures for the use of our beneficiaries a part of them of course we have developed several mythologies for multi-stakehold land management and conducted a pilot plan for is integration in our demo sites of course as you see from the screen we have developed several training materials and we have distributed them among our beneficiaries stakeholders and so on a part of them we are trying to involve them more in the field days where the farmers decision makers and other stakeholders could meet and see how the INRM technologies are working as you see from the screen we have several offline capacity building events of course due to the pandemic we have to switch to the more to the online platform but nevertheless we have succeeded to do it in more effective way until now we have completed around thousand training field days for our beneficiaries and by leaving no one behind as you know gender equality and social inclusion is very important for us and we are trying not to leave someone a part of our field days with this I would like to say that of course there are several activities and results that I would like to share with you but due to the time limit I will stop here and I will thank all the panelists and all the members for being here and listening me thank you very much thank you very much Janel well presented I'd like to present now the members of the panel for today's discussion so let me welcome Mr. Marat Uzbaev the head of the office on state land cadester of the committee for land resources management of the minister of agriculture of the Republic of Kazakhstan Mr. Marat Uzbaev welcome to the session and we are very pleased to have you here today for the panel the second participant the second panel member is Mrs. Dilrabo Kodirova she is a doctor of biological sciences professor from the department of soil science and agrochemistry from the Tashkent state agrarian university of the ministry of agriculture of the Republic of Uzbekistan so Ms. Dilrabo Kodirova very welcome we are very happy to see you here in the panel can you hear me well and the third panel member is Mr. Erkin Kozoev who is the chairman of the national union of water users association from the Republic of Kazakhstan so Mr. Kozoev welcome to our panel and we are very pleased to have you here today so today we are going to discuss the three main questions so let me very quickly read these questions so first question would be on the establishing of the sustainable seed base in the countries in order to to address the risks of drought in the region countries so how effectively can we establish seed banks with the further reproduction and sustainable multiplication of drought resistant and soil tolerant crop seeds at national level so this is the first question to the panel and I'd like to invite Dr. Dilrabo Kodirova from the Tashkent state agrarian university and our panel member to discuss for a discussion of this question so the floor is yours Dr. Kodirova please so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so hand over the floor to you, please. Thank you. You have five minutes, please. Thank you for the question, dear colleagues. Yes, it is really a very important and very problematic question for Kazakhstan, for other countries. In my opinion, the main factors that are present in the present time can be reflected as a weak development of intergovernmental cooperation between state organizations, such as organizations that are in charge of the management of natural resources, land resources, water resources, forest resources. Also, the implementation of strategic documents and the direction of the country. Kazakhstan is currently weakening the direction of the management of natural resources, its strategies. As you understand, we need to develop, first of all, our strategy. This is not only about our activists, but also intergovernmental colleagues who analyze the situation in our country. I would also like to note that Kazakhstan currently has a large territory that has been formed, that is, with various natural, reliable climatic conditions. And there really is no such general direction as the absence of regional plans, that is, the development of the territory taking into account natural climatic conditions. We also have problems in intergovernmental cooperation with our neighbors and partners. We have problems with water use, with the use of trans-border rivers. This is really necessary for intergovernmental cooperation and the development of concrete proposals. And, as I consider, joint agreements in work and cooperation. Also, as we see from the fact that there is no such general direction, that is, planning, we have a question of further financing of these projects and in general of the world. It is very difficult at the moment for us, in part, to allocate financial means, to convince, that is, to allocate additional funds to our Ministry of Finance. For such projects, and in this part, that is, the priority of the allocation of funds is given to the socially significant, in principle, projects. But then, for some reason, financing on our project is left in a small amount, in small budget funds. Also, taking into account the transition to a different economic format. At present, we are developing more and more medial entrepreneurship, the volumes are increasing, the farmers and the owners are being created. And in this part, there is no notification or training of farmers, the application of new technology for the consumption of soil resources and the use of other resources. We have faced the fact that each farmer himself makes a decision, what to sow for him, when to remove the seedlings and how to apply technology. In this part, we currently have work to do, of course, but taking into account the scale and taking into account, as they say, the organization of these enterprises, local sponsored bodies, is doing a weak and resilient work in this part. Also, as you understand, this year we had a very big drought in separate regions, roughly speaking, southern regions, such as the Zalardin region and the Mongolskaya region. We had a big drought, which led to a very big drought, and literally last week, from our president, to the address of the government, given new instructions, namely, in part, the development of a strong position and the use of natural resources, in part, the absence of such a situation in the future. Of course, I would also like to hear from my colleagues, from my colleagues within this conference, their suggestions, their way of solving this problem. Thank you. Now, let me go on and ask Mr. Erkin Kozoev, the chairman of the National Union of Water Users Association of Kyrgyzstan, for the panel discussion. And my question for discussion would be, what bottlenecks exist in scaling up conservation agriculture practices, including water conservation practices and technologies? And how could these bottlenecks or barriers, can we overcome? Thank you. And Mr. Kozoev. Thank you. Good afternoon, dear colleagues and partners. As you know, in connection with the growth of the population in the global scale, the supply of security, the supply of goods, the supply of goods is a serious challenge of humanity. The state of the soil is also playing a significant role in solving such a global challenge. The demand for land water resources can be said to be very high today. Today, the main resource in the global and local scale is degraded. The reason for this is the lack of land management, inadequate practice of management of land and water resources. The example of this is the lack of knowledge-based agrotechnologies, the lack of use of innovative technologies. The lack of water, wind, erosion, waste, the lack of water, the lack of goods from the agricultural production, etc. If there is no new approach, the plant can lose the agricultural resources and the lack of water resources, which significantly affect the land's population and the quality of the agricultural products. The results of the agrotechnological reform in the 1990s were over 75% of the agricultural land with the exception of waste transferred to the private property. Instead of 523 entrances, today there are approximately 453,000 small agricultural products, sub-objects, as they say. Next, the majority of the agricultural population has become farmers. I don't know the approach to land management. There were problems with the use of agrotechnical techniques, the use of all the equipment, the rational difficulties of the water and water erosion. The degradation of the soil in the water resources and the waste is the use of water-saving technologies. Of course, what are the advantages of existing on the path of large-scale soil protection and water-saving land? And how can these obstacles be determined? Of course, these are the use of free-range soil. In other words, the use of plant-based coatings. The use of corresponding soil processing techniques of special importance. The use of water-saving technologies, such as dripping and rain-saving plants. The use of self-defense and science-based agrotechnical technologies. The use of mulch-based plant-based fields and so on. I will not stop at the positive aspects of this approach. I will tell you that we have progressed in this direction. The first is the expansion of the scale of the free-range soil, mulch-based plant-based coating. Such methods are used only for the sake of a certain knowledge of the farmer. The scale of the use of the method leaves the person who is better. There is no propaganda, the information of the farmers about the positive aspects of this method. Such measures were carried out only within the framework of all successful projects. There are various opinions and special effects used for such a method. There was evidence in the debate of two agronomists in one seminar that one is called a positive, the other is called a pairs of his opinions. Such cases have happened. I will not talk about the scale, but I will talk about the region, all over the place, the practice seminar on the other place, the authorities and the regional leadership of the agrarian sector. And on this, the world of agronomists must be connected to the projects that work in this direction. The second use of the corresponding soil is the processing of special equipment. What do we have here? As you know, all of us say that the equipment is older. The modern equipment is very small. Now the farmers have more time to buy the equipment, the credit or the profit, for a small part. But this is very, very insufficient. For the scale, the only way is if the farmer's owners are economically strong and that they can buy such equipment themselves. Or they need some kind of state program to secure the modern equipment of the farmers so that the production capacity of all the products is more and more. The third use of the agrarian technology is such as the rain and rainfall. In the old rainfall, the use of the last year in the framework of the World Bank, FAO, and PRON and the use of the farmers themselves increased significantly. Today, about 4,000 hectares of monolithic gardens are flooded with drip irrigation. The drainage of drip irrigation is for the lost culture. There are such examples. This is mostly sugar. This is absolutely insufficient. It is possible to use about 200,000 hectares of rich soil due to the drainage of the drip irrigation. This is an analysis made in place of the greenhouse. And about 200,000 hectares of well-groomed soil is transferred to the drip irrigation policy. This requires large investment investments. During the Soviet times, the Chuzhka Valley, for example, was famous for the rainfall. In particular, the monolithic gardens flooded with drip irrigation. We need to come back to this. We need to invest in the direction of green economy with non-drill water from the banks of the technology. Young people over the last three years in Central Asia, especially in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, this year showed the vitality of non-drill water from the banks of the technology. This technology is always significant with the preservation of the soil of the drip irrigation. The economy of Russia is new. Minerals, well-groomed, well-groomed, and so on. This is our organization. We work in this direction with international organizations to learn about the concept of project documents in this direction. In 2020, the Plenipro Foundation has prepared a project for us. It is part of the project, which is usually conducted with us. I would like to summarize this. I would say that the obstacle to the scale of the drip irrigation is the lack of a system approach to the intensive drip irrigation. Of course, we need to take care of the soil. Thank you for your attention. Thank you very much, Mr. Kozhoev. This is well-noted. Now I would like to open the floor for the discussion. And we have some guest speakers. The guest speakers are today as well. And so I would like to introduce Rahim Ashakbayev, who is the director of TALAP Center for Applied Research in Kazakhstan. And also, Mr. Victor Aslanov, the chair of the Association of Individual Entrepreneurs and Legal Entities, Kazakhstan Growers Union. And so the floor is open for open discussion. And let me very quickly synthesize what we discussed just with the panel members. So we had the panel members from three different sectors from the civil society sector from academia and from the government from national government organization from different countries in Central Asia. And we implement this project in five countries in Central Asia and Turkey. This is why we wanted all the at least three countries to speak out for this topic. And we heard three different areas during this discussion, during the panel discussion. So we were discussing on the ground level how can we establish the seed banks. And we heard some practices that Agrarian University in Tashkent and they are applying new varieties drought resistant and salt tolerant varieties. Then we've heard from Mr. Uzbayev the main barriers for applying the degraded natural resources management at national level. And some key aspects here to highlight was the financial barriers and also the inter agency collaboration of this collaboration, I would say. And also we've heard from Mr. Uzbayev the main issues such as erosion and no rotation then non-compliance of water crop balance norms. And these are the barriers for applying the conservation agriculture practices and also that we need to apply more approaches such as rotation mulching and also no-till approaches and he gave some examples from Kyrgyzstan. So I'd like to thank all the panel members and now the floor is open for open discussion and unfortunately due to the time limit we have about 20 minutes for discussion and I see some questions in the chat books. The question was given by Judith Hitchman to Dilrabo to Dr. Kadirva and she asked are these varieties open pollinated? So if let me collect all the questions and then we will open the floor for discussion and there was Mr. I don't see any other questions in the chat books at the moment and let me also collect one more question from I don't see the name who is trading the hand Bing just a second. Here it's Bingo Olcay so please you can ask the question. Yes thank you very much my name is Olcay and I am the technical director for Nieleni Food Sovereignty Movement in Europe and Central Asia which some of our speakers were here today and yesterday. I just would like to take attention to some issues and I would like to ask the speakers to also comment on those so always just in Nieleni Eka we were just saying that the answer to climate change is the right to use and for that we definitely need appropriate legislations to apply agroecology and I would like to take attention to article 19 of the United Nations Declarations on the Right of Peasants and other people working in rural areas and also the CBD Farmers' Rights Article 9 use, exchange and sell farmer's seeds and propagating material. So, I would like to ask the speakers on the examples from their countries on how they are adapting their work on those legislations and also would like to give two examples from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan because the speakers are from there as well and it's our focus region. In relation to seeds, Zanva Zamin in Tajikistan, they focus their work in developing local seed production systems as well as engaging with relevant institutional actors in order to promote their importance and they are promoting local seed production, they are promoting seed banks, the creation of local seed banks in order to build rural resilience. Thank you, start my video. Sorry for that. So, I would like to ask how they are in contact with social movements which are doing this work on the ground with the farmers and in Zanva Zamin case, they are women farmers and Dikan Muraz, the seed guardian network we can say, which Adi has established a network and there are 250 small-scale farmers, mainly women, again in maintenance of a seed treasury in Kyrgyzstan. So, I would like to ask they are also part of the amendment of seed legislation in Kyrgyzstan and they are trying to introduce the notion of farmer's seed production which at the moment not sufficiently recognized. So, I would like to ask you all actually how we can work together in order to apply what we are doing and using the international treaties and legislations which supports the small-scale farmers, agroecology and the right of farmers and collective right of farmers. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mr. Al-Jari. Your question is well noted. So, the floor is open for discussion and who would like to respond to this question? From the from our project site, from the Kaseium II project site, I would like to also mention just a few words and we apply also seed multiplication practices in Tajikistan and we mostly focus on drought-resistant and salt-tolerant crops. And these are dual-purpose crops. So, we produce forage crops and then food crops as well and some cash crops too. And our project site is, we have four districts in the near Dushanbe, not far from Dushanbe, our location. And we also follow the instructions and guidance from the United Nations Convention on Combating Dissertification. And we will be, I'd like to say that we'll be also very pleased to cooperate with other organizations which work on this direction. And just to mention that our work in Tajikistan also mostly implemented with the women farmer groups in those project areas. So, women association of women also involved in this in this process. So, if other other participants can also comment and answer, we'll appreciate that. Thank you. That's it from my side. Okay, then there was a question raised for Ms. Dr. Kadyrva from Ms. Judith Hichman and she asked, are these open pollinated varieties? Ms. Dr. Kadyrva, could you comment on this regarding the seeds that you mentioned in your discussion? So, I don't see her response. So, maybe we can hear from her later again. So, dear participants, do you have any other questions for the panelists? And I see raising hands from two participants. Mr. Kairat Najmidenev, please, the floor is yours. Mahmood, thank you very much. Colleagues, good morning, good afternoon. Thank you very much for the presentation. It was really interesting to hear about this project, which has been implemented already several years in Central Asia, countries in all five countries plus Turkey. We raised today a question about drought that we experienced in severe droughts that we experienced in Central Asia. And Mr. Kuzlaev mentioned about the other speakers. It's a very severe one. It's affected all five countries in Central Asia region. And I think the ideas and approaches and recommendations and technologies that improvements that have been already developed by the Kassel project would be very much useful for this area, for all these countries. Particularly if you talk about Kazakhstan, according to some estimates, according to some experts, this drought is the most severe drought for the last 30 or even 35 years. Some experts say that last time it was in 1991. Some experts say that it was the last one, the strongest one was in 1975 even. So it was about 30 or even 40, 45 years ago when Kazakhstan experienced such a severe drought. Drought is affecting all regions of Kazakhstan, not only because, I mean, generally, in our region, agriculture is very much affected by climate conditions and particularly by droughts. But the drought of such severity was not experienced in Kazakhstan for many years. So the expectation is that the grain producing will drop by 30 or even 40 percent. This is, again, this is only preliminary estimation, but as you know Kazakhstan plays a very important role as one of the biggest producers of wheat in the region and experts of wheat in the region supplying wheat flour and wheat grain to all Central Asian countries and beyond and also to Afghanistan. So it will affect the security as well. So in this connection, we already started discussing it with Kassel. I had a discussion with VRL, with Ekrem, LTO of this project, Mahmood and Yochim. I think in this situation, we need to really to provide our help to the government in Central Asia, particularly in Kazakhstan, talking about and we have a good instrument called drought assessment. And I think we need to try to implement this assessment within the Kassel project and we need to arrange it as soon as possible, as urgent as we can do. If we talk about Kazakhstan particularly, I would recommend normally drought assessment, you know, we do it more, we do it more sort of agrotechnical from agrotechnical point of view, but for Kazakhstan, it should be not only agrotechnical point of view, but also from this social, economic, marketing and interoperative view, because we already have a lot of talk in the government about, you know, putting some ban on export of fodder and feed to grain already some people's talking hay, you know, in order to ensure the supply in terms of supply in the country. So for this particular view, I think we need to really think how we can help the government to overcome the situation and in general, with the agricultural sector in all five Central Asian countries, in a particular I'm talking about Kazakhstan. So this is my, let's say, recommendation and question. You can consider it's also as a request from my side to conduct drought assessment in all affected Central Asian countries. And first of all, I'm talking about Kazakhstan, but also Uzbekistan, Uzbekistan also experiencing drought this year. They had short-term production of carrots and potatoes and other vegetables that also affected all Central Asian market. This is my proposal and request from my side. Thank you very much. Over to you. Yeah, thank you very much. Dear Kairat, this is, yeah, well, well noted, will be also following up with the team on the request and support to the government agencies as in the due course. And yeah, it's a good, it's a good question, actually, and it needs the holistic, I would say, systematic approach to prevent and also to systematically reduce the risks of drought in all Central Asian countries. And the cooperation between the different agencies is the key here to success in this situation, I think. I'm not closing this question, we'll discuss more. Let's hear from also from Victor Aslanov, the chair of association of individual entrepreneurs and legal entities from Kazakhstan. It's Kazakhstan Grover's Union. Victor, the floor is yours, please. Fao about the stable management of the Basbish, and that's my question. There is a lot of talk about field cultures, about the mountains, about the fields, all this was definitely very interesting for me, but still, how to achieve a stable management of the Basbish in our countries, quite a large mass of land is used as a Basbish and we are now facing problems and problems both institutional and economic, and exclusively, let's say, between the population, that is, there is not enough some kind of synergy, there is not enough experience, maybe colleagues from Pakistan and Kyrgyzstan, how to achieve understanding, first of all, between the users of the Basbish, and the second question to our scientists is how to return degraded Basbish to the contrary, maybe there is good practice for intensive use of the Basbish, thank you very much for your attention. Thank you very much, Mr. Aslanov, your question is well noted as well, let me also ask the third question, there is also another question from Mr. Osekbayev, I see that there is a long question on the chat box, maybe Mr. Osekbayev, would you like to take the floor and ask you and ask the question, please. Okay, let me synthesize his question, he's also referring to the drought issue in Kazakhstan, and it's a priority issue in the government at the moment, and the president Tokayev of Kazakhstan also is paying very critical attention to this issue at the moment, and so he mentions that FIO and Jeff's assistance is timely for this window of opportunity and to develop, to introduce new policies and development capacity of the government, and we need analytical tools to predict drought, so he has a question, what analytical tools FIO may offer to the governments in Central Asian countries, so we have already a response from Mr. Cheng from the Budapest office in FIO, so he's suggesting there is a tool called crop and food security assessment mission, which is an option to assess the drought impact, and also we have other tools such as agriculture stress index system, it's called ACES, so this is also one of the good tools that can predict and show on the map the real-time areas that are with the high risk of drought, and we have a team in FIO offices in Rome and Budapest who work closely with our project as well, and we were involved in data collection for this tool, and there are also other tools, and we will communicate closely with colleagues and we'll come up with a better, let's say, suggestions to immediately react and to assess the drought in the countries which is happening at the moment, so are there any responses from the participants? I'd like to open the floor for the responses if you have any. Maybe Mr. Cheng can respond, may I invite you, Mr. Feng, regarding this tool that you mentioned, FSAM, could you comment on the effectiveness of this tool? Thank you Mamou, yeah, I remember a way of, need by a project in November 2018, we had a regional training workshop to introduce overall early warning systems to how to, you know, connect information, you know, to use common information, soy information, and marketing information together, and in particular, we also introduced the tool for crop and food security assessment missions, you know, this was widely used for FIO to support national government to do assessment right after the crop season, you know, suffering or expect to have a big reduction in agriculture production, so this one is a technique and a need by a hardcore juice team, and also in our regional team, we have also a technique people can provide assistance on this one. I think because in Kazakhstan, it's very important weight production and crop production country, shortfall and suffered by drought impact not only to the country itself, also impact regional and international markets, so I will, you know, to recommend to explore the possibilities to start, save some missions as soon as possible, you know, we can, if you have, need more information, we can discuss after this session on this issue. Thank you, hope to you. Thank you, Mr. Fang Cheng. So yes, we, I remember in, also in December 2019, we had the regional workshop in Tashkent and your team kindly also introduced the different tools, analytical tools on assessing and assessing the risks of drought, including the, including other colleagues so the countries at the moment, not all countries are applying these tools at the moment, but for some countries in Central Asia, we are collecting the meteor data to feed into these models and then later on to have results on this analysis. But what you mentioned, this new tool, it could also be very handful, so we very much appreciate if you can provide more information and more like manuals on this and so that we can also follow up on this. Thank you very much. So any other questions from the, from the participants, the floor is open. Anyone would like to respond to earlier questions on drought issues, maybe the panel members from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, would you like to respond please? Yes, please. Mr. Matraim Yusupov from Kazakhstan, the project for your project manager in Kyrgyzstan, Kyrgyzstan, yes, please, the resource. In general, in Central Asia, we are the witnesses of the negative consequences of climate change, global warming, global warming, and there is a drought, there is a lack of water, this certainly affects the whole of Central Asia and Kazakhstan, including, in fact, the nature of the whole of our climate conditions has always been considered a risk, but the process is inevitably going on, but in the coming year, as the climatologists know, this is very often happening, in the last 50 years, this process in the region is already four times more often, that is, we cannot, as before, yes, many scientists and experts say this is a risk phenomenon, but the global climate change, I think, as an expert on water resources, I think even this and the repeatability of the theory is likely to have all come out of the root, therefore, we must be prepared for this phenomenon, we also, for example, this year, here it is, we are destroying the ground, we are in the Chujka Valley, Chujka region, we were 2 times, 50 percent, only provided with water resources, it was, first of all, the water user, the farmer who is in the final areas of the irrigation system, we, the government, the ministry of agriculture, what we did, in general, with the method of water processing and various methods of processing, water supply, installation of limits in order not to lose respect at all, this is how we came up with the situation, of course, for farmers because of their own time, especially in the water supply, the number is decreasing, about 40 percent are in the Chujka region, it is almost one third of the Russian land is in the Chujka region, some of the farmers, while being in the rural areas, may not at all lose respect, so we are with all the farmers, the industrial sector should not slow down, should not attack the situation, and we should do a lot of work with the farmers in the water supply, do a lot of different jobs, of course, if the number of farmers in Kyrgyzstan, 10 million hectares of land, millions of hectares, this is the Russian land, about 300,000 garden land, and the other is still empty, here, of course, the Russian land, we can regulate it with different irrigation technologies, but last year in Kyrgyzstan, in the central area of especially in Kazakhstan, it is in the garden lands where there is no water supply, we may have serious problems, we have to be ready for this, in the framework of the project, we also have a lot of technologies, water management technologies, and other technologies, digital technology, we are not giving, we are destroying the lands, for example, the remote sensors, we are installing water distribution in all places, and we are doing water management activities, here is the owner of the plant, we are also installing water distribution in them so that it is easy, we are engaged in land use, how land is used, because our colleagues have already said, we have this paper version of the entire Central Asia map, now we have a series of satellite systems, we synchronized the map of land use, now we are engaged in laying the layers of the central map, the biobotanical map, when we will have a clear picture where, what is the result, through satellites, we can perfectly imagine, you see all the maps where for example, because of the drought, the future destruction of our land and resources, we are introducing technologies, for example, the technology from the coast, such as hydrotrans from the water sources, we remove it, we raise the water, pour it, restore it later, we use artificial glaciers in the preliminary zone, thank you, thank you very much, Mr. Yusupov, this is well noted, so we see that a lot of efforts are being implemented in Kyrgyzstan, this is very good noted, very well noted, dear participants, I'd like to inform you that our session is ending at the moment, due to time limitations, and I left the email address in the chat box, so please, if you have more questions, you can write to our colleague, Ms. Aijan, and we will do our best to respond to all your remaining questions, so I'd like to very quickly synthesize the discussion, so we heard from the participants that the main issue at the moment in Central Asia is the drought issue, which is hitting all the five countries, and from the discussions we see that the immediate actions are required, and we'll, from FAO site, from our project site, we'll also be following up and do our best to address these issues from our perspective, so with this note, I'd like to thank all of you for your lively discussion, and your interesting questions, and again, if you have more questions, please send them to our colleague email in the chat box, and with this, I'd like to wish all of you to stay healthy, and thank you again for your time and your interest. Thank you. Bye-bye. Thank you very much, Makhmut, for this excellent facilitation and for the discussion today, as well as, of course, also the presentation by Shanil. Let me also, on behalf of the regional office, thank Mr. Uzubayev as well as Ms. Kodirova and Mr. Kozoev for this participation also in the panel. I'm really glad that all of the participants are staying with us. We're following the two sessions also today. We had a good turnout here on Zoom, but also on YouTube, if you, of course, would like to follow the sessions, again, YouTube is always available, and so are there also the presentations. So the two sessions we had today are for completing our picture for this informal consultation with the focus on the value chains, with the focus on, let's say, food systems transformation. I think the session in the morning had very interesting points raised related to FEOS work on WTO colleagues at Alimentarius, but of course also the issue on really focusing on SDG targets in order to evaluate also the successfulness and for the supporting also countries in their capacity for data collections. And it was very interesting also to have the issue raised that we should strengthen our ex-undi-analysis and analytical capacity and drawing, in this case, on the capacities which the region already have. I do not want to summarize further on the interesting session on environmental sustainability. Mahmoud has just done this. Let me quickly look ahead also for tomorrow. So we are counting on you participation. Tomorrow we have three sessions starting at nine o'clock again as of today. We have two technical discussions on the key aspects of one health on one hand and nature-based solutions on the others with interesting panelists, with interesting contributions, and of course also a discussion on the regional priority on food security and nutrition with a very specific case study on local school meals and a case study also from Kyrgyzstan related to a logistical center. The one health session will of course focus on the one health approach in its complexity, including animal and environmental health in the region, and of course keeping also in mind, preventing and limiting disease transmissions. And I think coming out of the COVID implications, this will be an important discussion to go ahead as will it be also the session on nature-based solutions, which starts then at 10.15 tomorrow with a focus on application of degraded agro ecosystems and the session will highlight also the challenges of implementation in agriculture, taking also into consideration that we have a lack of data and of information. And I was mentioning already the session on connecting school meals related to food systems, food security in the region, which starts at 11.30 tomorrow. And each of the sessions, as mentioned, have interesting panelists. We appreciate you to join on Zoom also tomorrow or on YouTube. The letter of course is easy to follow because it doesn't require any registration. If you want to consult the background information, please do so available on the website. And we of course encouraging your inputs, your views and your discussion in order to obtain further information for our future priorities. With this, I would like to thank you all for today. Wish you a nice afternoon, nice evening, and looking forward to see you also tomorrow. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thank you. Thank you. Goodbye. Thank you.