Today, the Secretary General of the World Farmers’ Organisation (WFO), was invited to join forest and farm producer organisations (FFPOs) at the web conference “Multidimensional Resilience – Smallholder Producers and Farmers Managing Risks”, hosted by Food and Forest Development Finland (FFD), AgriCord and the Forest and Farm Facility (FFF) in collaboration with the Asian Farmers’ Association (AFA) and the Pan-African Farmers’ Organization (PAFO).
In the face of COVID-19 smallholder farmers and forest producers have been facing the challenge of how to balance between short term shocks and longer-term risks such as climate change. One of the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis has been the disruption of agricultural and forestry supply chains and a re-shuffling of actors.
The event aimed to:
- Gain an understanding of FFPOs responses and strategies (locally, nationally, regionally) in demonstrating greater resilience, with a specific focus on climate change and Covid-19 responses.
- Exchange approaches and insights with key actors around risk reduction strategies, increase awareness of FFPOs resilience and share best practices for improved resilience.
- Establish priorities in building the resilience of smallholder producers, supply-chains, and food systems, and in connecting FFPOs with related processes, initiatives and institutions.
Opening the event, the WFO Secretary General, Arianna Giuliodori, exchange powerful words with the audience.
“There is one thing that COVID-19 has for sure put under everybody’s eye: we are all part of an engine that is interconnected and fragile. The second thing is that the food system is at the heart of human life, and farmers are the driving factor in this,” she stated.
She drew the attention on the importance of innovation that goes beyond technology to exploit the potential of farmers, especially family farmers, to tackle climate risks and non-climate stresses such as COVID-19 pandemic.
Closing her speech, she highlighted the need of stronger and stronger farmers’ organisations at the local, national and regional level, joining their hands and working together with other relevant stakeholders to achieve sustainability in its three dimensions, environmental, social and economic.
Furthermore, the event provided an excellent venue to announce the first farmer-driven virtual event on COVID-19, “COVID-19: Resist Now to Build Back Better” to be hosted by WFO on July 3rd.
In case you missed it, here is the link to the event recording:
Recommendations from the conference are available at the following link:
https://www.ffd.fi/webconferencematerials/multidimensionalresilience