DILIMAN, Quezon City–The Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Training Institute (DA-ATI) took part in the workshop for the development of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Guideline on Home Yard Food Garden Area, along with the delegation from Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Representing the Philippine delegation on behalf of the DA-ATI Director Rosana P. Mula, Ph.D. are staff from the Partnerships and Accreditation Division (PAD) namely, OIC-Chief Ms. Nemielynn P. Pangilinan and Technical Staff Mr. Justin Paolo D. Interno.
The Indonesian counterpart of the ASEAN Sectoral Working Group on Agricultural Training and Extension (AWGATE) Focal Point Person Dr. Siti Munifah warmly welcomed the participants of the workshop. “Yearly, 2.67 billion people lack access to food, and millions of children under 5 years are affected by stunting, food wasting, and being overweight. Furthermore, increase in population, climate change, food loss and food wastage, and dietary factors put more burden on food security and nutrition. In line with the situation, we need initiative to ensure food security and nutrition through food sustainability and resilience.” Further, Dr. Munifah emphasized that home yard and community gardening is key to achieving localized nutrition and food security.
A panel session featuring the food security champions and development implementers followed immediately. In the session, various speakers shared their experiences relative to home yard food gardening and family farming as a pathway to food security. Pierre Ferrand from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific discussed “Strengthening Food Security through the approach of family farming to support the utilization of home yards in ASEAN.” He contextualized the concept of family farming as “a way of organizing agricultural, forestry, fisheries, pastoral, and aquaculture production which is managed and operated by a family and predominantly reliant on family capital and labour, including both women’s and men’s.”
Furthermore, Ferrand shared a glimpse of some of the challenges of family farming in the Asia Pacific region: ageing rural population, displacement of the small-scale farmers, fishers, indigenous peoples, and pastoralists due to lack of legal recognition of their customary tenure rights, and limited access to productive resources and opportunities for women, among others. He also elaborated that home yard gardening, as synergized with agroecological principles, shall sustainably help empower families in the region.
Afterwards, Rinna Syawal of the Indonesian National Food Agency shared her first-hand experience about home yard farming in Indonesia. Through their experience, it is recommended to push for innovative, technological and policy-institutional solutions, multi-stakeholder collaboration, and other enabling environments to sustain home yard gardening in ASEAN.
Nemielynn P. Pangilinan also thoroughly discussed the Philippine context of utilizing home yard gardening, citing the DA National Urban and Peri-urban Agriculture Program (NUPAP), and its related support services, especially the extensive implementation of the Plant, Plant, Plant Program among Filipino households and communities during the COVID-19 Pandemic. She also highlighted that through the NUPAP, households were able to decrease their monthly volume of vegetables purchased, at least for the past year. This development could be attributed to the intensive rollout of capacity-building interventions, improved access to information and knowledge on urban agriculture and home yard gardening, and other accessible agricultural support services that are in line with the One DA Reform Agenda campaigned by Dr. William D. Dar.
Cases which are shared by the resource speakers will form part of the improved version of the guidelines.
The ASEAN-wide “Workshop on the Development of Guidelines on Home Yard Food Garden Area” was conducted on June 21, 2022, with the initiative of the Indonesian Government to amplify the family farming agenda and enrich its discussion towards the ASEAN Senior Officials Meeting (SOM) Forum. The outputs will be further examined by the other ASEAN Member States (AMSs) to enhance the guidelines.
Meanwhile, the Philippines has pledged to actively take part in observing the United Nations Decade of Family Farming (2019-2028) by coming up with a 10-year Philippine Action Plan for Family Farming (PAP4FF), including action steps for the home yard gardening setup.
