On July 26, 2021, AFA’s Secretary-General Ms. Estrella Penunia delivered an opening speech during the UNFSS Plenary’s Opening Session. With the theme “A Bold Ambition to Improve Food Systems,” Ms. Penunia highlighted the current state of our global food systems, and she emphasized what being bold means for small-scale food producers and family farmers.
Read the transcript of Ms. Penunia’s speech below:
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Thank you, Dear Chair.
It is an honor to be here with you today.
We are challenged, dared, and inspired by the title of the opening session – Bold Ambition For the Food Systems. And for us, to be bold is just not merely to improve, but to be bold is to transform, to change into something out of the box, something out of the ordinary, something out of the usual way of doing things.
And I have heard it here from the panelists. Because there is something very wrong really with our current food systems-which is highly industrialized and dominated by big business and capitalists. A system that results to poverty, hunger and malnutrition mainly affecting small scale food producers and family farmers. It is a system that results to biodiversity loss, ecosystem degradation, and where the youth is unattracted to agriculture. A system where family farmers and agriculture are oftentimes neglected and marginalized, seen only as victims, or at worse, perpetrators.
To be bold is to transform our food system into something that is sustainable, resilient, regenerative, healthy, nutritious just, and empowering to people, including family farmers, which include producers in crops, livestock, fisheries, forestry, herding, and pastoralism.
We, family farmers organizations in Asia Pacific, including PIFON, INOFO, WFO, have conducted 11 independent dialogues in 10 countries, and 6 regional independent dialogues in Asia Pacific, participated by 1500 farmers, representing 18M people, our members.
We are committed to contribute to a healthy people and a healthy planet while bringing back the dignity for family farmers. And we have seen best practices from our farmers on how to make this triple wins. We sum up in three main contributions :
First, Agroecology and integrated, biodiverse, organic farming systems in farms, fisheries, and forests.
Second, is inclusive value chains that gives farmers more market power, more involvement in value chain processes, than mere producers or mere price takers.
Third, is empowering the agency of Family Farmers, including women and young farmers, so we can have a voice, and be able to influence in shaping the policies that affect us.
In this pre-Summit and in the Summit itself, we ask for bold policies and actions that will help us contribute and play our role and play our contributions in these three aspects:
First, ensuring rights of family farmers and indigenous peoples, to our natural resources, especially lands, waters, forests, and seeds; on incentivizing agroecology and transition to agroecology, ecosystem restoration, including promoting local, traditional crops which are oftentimes neglected and underutilized by mainstream scientists, as well as strengthening domestic and regional markets on making vibrant agriculture-based economy through cooperatives with family farmers, with the strong engagement of women and young farmers; and provision of adequate infrastructure and facilities in the rural areas. An inclusive governance through the strengthening of national committees of family farming, that is gender and youth sensitive, and that has farmers as equal partners in the implementation of the plan.
And lastly, long-term, adequate financing directed to farmers through their organizations and cooperatives so that farmer’s organizations are empowered to be able to respond effectively and quickly to the needs of our members.
We are hopeful that these policies and actions can see results through the solution clusters and the Coalitions that will be formed as we go through the rigors of discussions in the pre-Summit and in the Summit.
We are hopeful that we have experienced very good multi-stakeholder experience in the Green Revolution in the 1960’s and 1970”s. In Asia, it was very successful. But we know the problems that the Green Revolution brought in terms of biodiversity and ecosystem. We would like that same kind of partnerships between research, scientists, governments, private sector and farmers, but leading to a transformed food system that is agro-ecological, that is empowering farmers and that brings healthy and nutritious foods to our tables.
Thank you, back to you, Chair.
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