Overview of FFTC
Continuing commitment to the sustainable agricultural development of the ASPAC region
Over the past 50 years, the Asian and Pacific (ASPAC) region has undergone an unprecedented transformation in terms of agricultural production, food security, and rural development. However, given that the per capita availability of land in the region is one-sixth of that in the rest of the world, and that nearly three-fifths of the future rise in world population will occur in this region, increases in food and agricultural production will have to be realized from its ever-shrinking and generally deteriorating land, water, and other production resources. Moreover, the increasing role of agriculture in the global economy amid technological innovation and globalization trends has placed the region’s small-scale farmers in a more vulnerable state.
Information is vital in terms of enabling small-scale farmers to achieve improved agricultural productivity, make effective use of natural resources, raise their income, and produce food that is accessible, available and affordable to all. For the Food and Fertilizer Technology Center (FFTC) for the Asian and Pacific (ASPAC) region, serving small-scale farmers by bringing them information on improved agricultural technology is an evolving task and a continuing commitment.
General Information
FFTC has an unusual role among the world’s international agricultural centers. It collects and disseminates research results generated by agricultural centers in the ASPAC region. The aim is to provide farmers with knowledge and information about new technology, so that they can achieve higher yields and incomes.
The world has evolved a highly effective research system for developing new agricultural technology. Large amounts of research data are being generated every year. However, a great deal of it is not being put to any practical use. The success of agricultural research should be seen in terms of the benefits it brings to farmers and consumers.
The Center also acts as an intermediary between international and national agricultural institutes in the ASPAC region. In this way, the Center makes each country’s research available to its neighbors. This gives more scope for collaborative work, and helps avoid duplication of effort. The Center’s information services have always had a regional focus, and all its programs involve participants and partners from Asian and Pacific countries.
History
FFTC was established in 1970 to act as a clearing house for the research carried out in the ASPAC region, and to help bring the results to extension workers and farmers. The creation of the Center was in response to severe periodic shortages of both food and fertilizer in the 1970s. It was apparent at that time that a lack of technical information among farmers was the basis of the problem, compounded by an inadequate fertilizer supply and a shortage of improved seeds. The underlying motive for the creation of the Center was the concern about food shortages in the densely populated Asian countries.
For the past 36 years, FFTC has played an immensely important and productive role in collecting, exchanging, and disseminating information and technology on a very wide range of modern agriculture and agriculture-related topics, covering the full spectrum of small farm needs and activities relevant to the ASPAC region. This integrated technology approach is what makes FFTC a unique international center. While most agricultural research centers are specialized, and study a single crop or a single agro-ecological zone, FFTC offers practical technologies that are matched to the reality of the region’s small-scale farmers, whose farm incomes are determined by total farm production.
By far one of FFTC’s most significant milestones, and for which it is now widely recognized, is laying the foundation for an established mechanism for technology transfer within the region. The Center’s mechanism of collecting, exchanging, and disseminating information on improved and advanced agricultural technology constitutes a systematic institutional cooperation and complementation among the Asian and Pacific countries, bridging the technological and economic gap between the rich and poor countries. Through its various activities like seminars, training courses and workshops, thousands of scientists, administrators, policymakers and extension workers not only had the chance to learn about the latest developments in the field of agriculture, but equally important, they had the opportunity to learn from their more advanced neighbors and to meet experts from other countries.
Through its various activities, FFTC has accumulated a huge body of knowledge and information on agriculture made possible through the works of hundreds of people from member countries and partner institutions. Disseminated through publications, training courses and demonstration projects, and recently through its website and database, these knowledge and information have given countless resource-poor farmers and extension specialists in the region new opportunities and new solutions to their problems.
Looking Forward
Now, after more than three decades, the Center is faced with more daunting challenges, as well as vast opportunities, arising from the promise of globalization contrasting with the disquieting reality of the stubbornly high numbers of hungry and poor people in the region. Although a deficit in food and fertilizer is not anymore as serious as it was in the 1970s, the farmers’ need for practical information about new technology has become greater than ever.
For the Center, the challenging task ahead is to explore the opportunities presented by the current technological and information revolution, to render Asian agriculture more competitive and productive, resilient, sustainable, and equitable toward the broad-based agricultural growth and overall development of the region.
