SEAMEO BIOTROP was invited by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to participate in the Global Launch of the United Nation (UN) Decade of Family Farming 2019-2028 program held at FAO headquarters in Rome, Italy (27-29/5). Represented by Dr Aslan as Acting Deputy Director for Program, the Centre presented its roles in fostering the youth and community to support the Family Farming Program Initiative in Indonesia and to assist the Government of Indonesia (GoI) in eradicating poverty level.

“Among many aspects of Family Farming, we suggest Indonesia to focus in developing literacy, nutrition, and entrepreneurship aspects of the youth, because this country has strategic demography and youth is the biggest contributor to unemployment according to data issued by the Statistical Central Bureau of Indonesia. Moreover, BIOTROP has also run school garden program and vocational school development program in the 30 schools throughout Indonesia, thus, it can be a good model for wider implementation scale,” said Dr Aslan. This recommendation was well welcomed by the Secretary General of the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) of the Republic of Indonesia HE Ir. Syukur Iwantoro, M.S., M.B.A, and the Indonesian Ambassador to Italy HE Ms. Esti Andayani.

In the future, Dr Aslan said that BIOTROP and MoA will further discuss the synergy between the Centre’s and MoA’s programs including the opportunity for students from agriculture vocational school fostered by the Centre to continue their study in agriculture polytechnic with full funding support from the GoI.

Ms. Esti also encouraged BIOTROP to take part in the activities of the Farmers’ Agricultural and Rural Training Center (FARTC) in Tanzania which was established by the GoI, by providing experts to deliver training courses in agriculture for African farmers. This can also be supported by the database of superior seeds collected by Dr Supriyanto, the Centre’s expert in natural products who is also the SMARTS-BE program’s coordinator.

In addition, Mr. Pierre Ferrand, a representative from FAO Regional Asia based in Bangkok, Thailand also invited Family Farming team from Asia Pacific including BIOTROP to collaborate in formulating and conducting effective programs that can be implemented in this region in near future.