Dietrich E. Leihner
Director of Research, Extension and Training Division (SDR), FAO
Dear representatives of the World Association of Community
Radio Broadcasters,
Dear Executive Director of the Developing Countries Farm
Radio Network,
Dear representatives of radio broadcasting stations of the Niger,
Mali, the Republic of Tanzania and South Africa,
Heads of FAO services,
Experts,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a great pleasure for me today to welcome you to FAO, precisely at the time in which our organization is holding the 31st Session of its Conference.
The Research, Extension and Training Division and the Information Division of FAO wished to welcome you here in Rome on this occasion to reflect on the best ways and means in which FAO can make available to you contents that are adapted and pertinent to your radio broadcasting programmes.
Indeed, at the Workshop on “Information and Communication Technologies Servicing Rural Radio”, which was held in February 2001, you issued an important recommendation: “Farm radio broadcasters should identify in a more systematic way farmers’ information requirements, as well as the needs of specific groups like women and children.”
Ladies and gentlemen, you also stated that “the information provided by international agencies and available on the Internet is often of a general nature: national and/or local teams should further explore and interpret such data”.
FAO has been working since then to implement such recommendations by mobilizing the technical divisions concerned (Agricultural Marketing, Agrometeorology, Biodiversity and Genetic Resources, Fisheries, Food Security, Forestry, Global Information and Early Warning, Nutrition, Post-Harvest Operations, Special Programme for Food Security, World Agricultural Information Center) to make accessible the available information.
The fact sheets produced by such divisions and which you have received, will serve as a basis for discussion, so that they may be enriched by the results of investigations which you carried out in your countries before addressing the information and communication needs of your audiences.
I hope that the technical working sessions organized by each technical division will be characterized by fruitful and edifying exchanges on listeners’ expectations.
This Workshop will thus mark the beginning of a process of development and drafting of food security contents.
Naturally, such contents will complete those collected locally by farm radio reporters and producers in their daily work.
I wish to take this opportunity to very warmly thank all the technical divisions that accepted to work with us on this enterprise.
The World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC) has decided to launch its food security information and early warning service in Africa; it has honoured us by choosing us as its privileged partner to provide its network and Web site with contents on food security; the agreement protocol which will seal this partnership will be signed during the conference and the Workshop will amply discuss this sort of information agency on food security.
One of the results expected from your presence here in Rome, is to provide coverage of the Workshop through interviews especially focusing on the code of conduct and on the code of pesticide use, on gender and development, on the international agreement on biodiversity, on the situation of food insecurity, on the situation of agriculture and food in the world, and so on and so forth.
The special feature of your work, of your reports, is that for the first time they will be made in five major African languages: Swahili, Peulh, Zulu, Haoussa and Bambara.
I cannot end this address without emphasizing the importance of the audio-script and visual products expected to come out of this meeting: radio scripts, CD-ROMs, audio tapes produced in non-perishable forms which will be used by two major world networks of radio development broadcasters: AMARC and the Developing Countries Farm Radio Network which I would like to greet and thank for having accepted our invitation.
In declaring open the Workshop on “Rural Radio and Food Security”, I wish you the best of luck in your work.
