Presented at the 39th Meeting of the ASEAN Ministers on Agriculture and Forestry (39th AMAF) in Chiang Mai, Thailand on 28 September 2017, ASEAN Sustainable Agrifood Systems (ASEAN SAS) project shared its four collective factors that brought an estimated 98 million euros of additional income to 125,000 farmers during 2011-2017.

The four factors are composed of: multi-level policy linkages, multi-stakeholder and Public-Private Partnerships, farmer inclusivity in the value chain and leadership and capacity building. The factors come from the concerted efforts of the ASEAN SAS partners including public and private sectors, education institutes and civil society organisations in the ASEAN Member States.

Dr. Surmsuk Salakpetch, Deputy Director-General of the Department of Agriculture, Thailand, said: “The ASEAN-German cooperation on agriculture has played a key role in enhancing the capability of stakeholders in developing a sustainable production system. Thailand, as the host of the ASEAN SAS and ASEAN Climate Resilience Network (CRN), is happy that results and recommendations of the projects have been approved and supported by the ASEAN ministers of agriculture and forestry for further action.”

The ASEAN SAS and its associated public-private partnerships received EUR 15m initial funds from the German government with an additional EUR 15m leveraged from public and private partners.

Ms. Claudia Ebach, Counsellor for Food and Agriculture, Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Bangkok said: “Currently, ASEAN is facing great challenges in the agricultural and food sector: enabling everyone to have access to safe, healthy and affordable food, to meet an ever increasing demand by people while, at the same time, protecting a shrinking natural resource base. In order to tackle these issues, the ASEAN SAS has brought together different stakeholders to impart knowledge, lessons learned and experiences. I am confident that this German-ASEAN cooperation will be a valuable contribution to higher and more sustainable standards of living for the farmers, producers, traders and distributors, as well as to enhanced competitiveness in the agricultural sector.”

Hosted by Thailand’s Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, the 39th AMAF welcomes over 300 high level decision makers from all 10 Member States to discuss regional cooperation to increase the international competitiveness of ASEAN’s food, agriculture and forestry products. It also aims to strengthen the food security in the region and joint positions in international fora.