Meeting of the Regional Ad Hoc Working Groupon Linking Farmers to Markets

APAARI’s initiatives in research prioritization has led to two major regional collaborative programs, namely Asia-Pacific Consortium on Agricultural Biotechnology (APCoAB) and Regional Agricultural Information System (APARIS), both of which have been supported by the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR). In 2001, APAARI member institutions identified agribusiness approaches and development as an important regional research agenda.These agribusiness approaches and development shall address (1) increased productivity and competitiveness of farmers through rural innovation, and (2) value adding post harvest technologies. Since 2002, APAARI has been active in organizing regional events in support of GFAR and FAO activities related to the Global Post-harvest Initiative: Linking Farmers to Markets.

In 2004 and 2005, APAARI sub regional groups conducted research needs assessment, and updated their research priorities considering the emergence of new events and issues, namely, globalization and market dimensions, recent progress in science including biotechnology and information technology revolution, renewed focus on rural development, provision of policy and technical support to subsistence or family producers, and the new agri-food research paradigm ‘from farm to fork.’ In South and West Asia for instance, new research areas deserving additional emphasis include agro-enterprise development (focus on legumes, post harvest technology for value adding products), and policy and institutional reforms with special emphasis on strategies to encourage higher investments in infrastructure, and enabling policies on marketing, credit and commodity pricing. In the Pacific, serious gaps have been identified in important research areas such as value adding and post harvest management, markets and marketing. In Southeast Asia (SEA), main priority areas include (1) food safety and security, specifically agriculture and fisheries product quality, value adding of products for competitiveness, productivity and profitability, export/import competitiveness, policy researches related to food safety, market changes, biotechnology and other emerging issues; and (2) farmers/fisher folks’ capability enhancement including value chain analysis and improved market access, entrepreneurial development of farmers and fisher folks, provision of access to credit, and intra/inter-household production access. SEA recognized that research must transform subsistence farming into agroentrepreneurship. Moreover, SEA suggested regional collaboration on joint venture on agriculture and fisheries R & D that will provide co-financing, information and knowledge exchange, linkage, networking and capacity building.