Indonesia, FAO Work Together to End Hunger

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Statistics Indonesia and the Ministry of Agriculture, with support from The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), worked together towards an integrated approach to agriculture and food security statistics to reach Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) in Indonesia, particularly "Goal 2 aimed to End Hunger."

The commitment was reiterated during a conference between the government agencies and FAO announced in the 28th Asia Pacific Conference of Statistic (#APCAS) that is going to be held in Bali on February 10-14.

Indonesia is one of the fastest-growing regions in the Asia Pacific. Its momentum has produced a rapidly surging population and widespread economic progress. This accelerating development has created huge challenges for the community in relation to food security, poverty reduction, and increasing resilience to face climate changes.

"Agriculture is at the root of these challenges. Progressive, responsive, agriculture policy, are vital to ensuring Indonesia’s prosperity is both forward-looking and sustainable. Agricultural statistics are forming the foundation of the policies, especially to reach the SDG Goals," said  Stephen Rudgard, FAO Representative in Indonesia.

Indonesia is now moving forward to develop its agricultural policy based on a coordinated approach to agriculture statistics, to avoid overlap and contradiction that often existed in policies of ministries and institutions in the past, resulting from the use of different definitions, measurements and methodologies.

"Statistic Indonesia welcomes the conference of 28th APCAS in Indonesia. The conference is very important, particularly, to improve the System of Agricultural Statistics in the Asia Pacific to be able to provide data that is accurate, timely and relevant to support the SDGs. Statistic Indonesia will conduct  Agricultural Census in 2023, in this conference we can learn best practices from Asia Pacific countries that already used the latest and modern technology in doing their agricultural statistic tasks, " said Suhariyanto, Head of Statistic Indonesia in his remarks.

The Ministry of Agriculture has committed to integrating agricultural data in provinces and districts with collaboration with Statistic Indonesia.

"The availability of accurate data in accordance with the facts on the ground is very important as a foundation in preparing appropriate agricultural development programs and policies to achieve targets that have been decided," said Dr. Ketut Kariyasa, Head of the Data and Information, at Ministry of Agriculture

As the host of 28th APCAS, Indonesia will share its experiences with other senior statistics officials from FAO member countries of the Asia and Pacific region, and draw from their good practices.

The 28th session of APCAS is expected to focus on the countries’s progress in achieving the indicators of the sustainable development goals under FAO’s responsibility. The conference will also discuss global and regional statistics to support the countries' policy, and the use of cost-effective technologies such as the use of tablets for data collection and Big Data from satellite images/ earth observation data.

The membership of APCAS is open to all country members of FAO. Currently 31 countries are members of APCAS, including Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, Fiji, France, India, Indonesia, Islamic Republic of Iran, Japan, Lao PDR, Maldives, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, New Zealand, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Republic of Korea, Samoa, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Timor Leste, Tonga, United Kingdom, United States of America, and Viet Nam.

FAO | Tempo