AsiaDHRRA organized a virtual Regional Forum on “Rural Transformation: Harnessing Digital Agriculture towards Strengthening Small-farmers’ Resilience” on 9 August 2022. It was actively participated by 57 delegates from AsiaDHRRA partner Civil Society Organizations (CSO) and Rural Peoples’ Organizations (RPO) in Southeast Asian countries, including Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam; and development partners from the AFA, FAO Philippines, MEDA, GrowAsia, FSSI, AFD, IFAD, Trias, and GlowCorp.
The objective of the regional forum is to gain a deeper understanding of digital agriculture and the challenges and opportunities it brings to the rural agricultural sector in South East Asia. The event presented the results of two regional studies: “Scoping Study on Policy Analysis on Enabling Rural Digitalization Development using a Territorial Development Approach” and “Scaling Up Inclusive Digitalization in Agricultural Value Chains .”Invited RPO and consultants similarly presented existing digital agriculture initiatives.
Important Results:
From the session temperature check, prioritization on the focus of digitalization centered on the small-scale farmers’ needs was ranked as follows:
- Support farmers’ organizations and producers to link better to market
- Managing productions through digital innovations
- Improving farmer organizations’ management operation system
- Managing farmers’ organizations’ financial systems and services
- Improving Agri-technical extension by adopting virtual and digital tools
