Asia & Pacific
Regional Agro-industries Forum for Asia and the Pacific
3-6 November 2009. Yangling, China
BACKGROUND
In April 2008, FAO, UNIDO, IFAD and the Government of India organized the Global Agro-industries Forum (GAIF) with a view to raising awareness, exchanging information, considering strategies and promoting partnerships for future actions towards the development of competitive agro-industries with over 500 senior-level participants.
The Asia-Pacific regional workshop held during GAIF concluded that the diversity of development situations in the region required context-specific interventions and that action should be taken to resolve the following three challenges:
1) promoting investments in physical and social infrastructure;
2) creating an enabling environment for agro-industries; and
3) integrating smallholder farmers into competitive agro-industries.
As a follow-up to the commitments made by the UN agencies during GAIF, FAO, IFAD and UNIDO will convene a Regional Agro-Industries Forum for Asia and the Pacific (RAIF-AP), with the support of the Shaanxi Provincial People´s Government of China. The forum will be held in Yangling, China, from 3 to 6 November 2009.
OBJECTIVES
The aim of the Regional Agro-Industries Forum for Asia and the Pacific (RAIF-AP) is to assist governments of member countries in the Asia-Pacific region in creating an enabling environment that will allow industry stakeholders to develop competitive agro-industries that incorporate smallholders as significant stakeholders in agrifood supply chains.
The objectives of the RAIF-AP are:
- to discuss best practices from the Asia-Pacific region for implementation at national and local levels of agro-industrial strategies of relevance to member countries;
- to promote a dialogue among the private sector, governments and smallholders; and
- to facilitate the emergence of multi-stakeholder programmes for agro-industries development based on concrete cases from member countries in the region.
The expected outcomes of the forum are:
Two leading experts have addressed the forum on the challenges they faced and lessons they learned when:
1) creating an enabling environment for agro-industries; and 2) including smallholder farmers into competitive agro-industries;
Forum participants have discussed the organizers´ position strategy on four technical topics of relevance to the region (tentative):
- Support to food safety guarantee systems in agro-industries
- Human resources development
- Financing small agro-industry
- The processed food market in Asia and the Pacific
Solutions identified for real-life problems of agro-industry development and partnerships built for their implementation through peer-assist workshops.
