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The Climakers Asia Digital Workshop on "Tackling Climate Change by Farmer Groups in Asia" was successfully held on 5 October for a wide audience of agricultural and food professionals.

Presenters and participants exchanged views on good practices from 9 Asian countries that are making various efforts to tackle climate change.Toru Nakaya, President of IDACA, gave the following opening remarks.

Good morning and good afternoon, everyone, I am Toru Nakaya, President of IDACA, at the same time, President of JA Zenchu or the Central Union of Agricultural Cooperatives in Japan.

It is my great pleasure and honor to say a few words before you, on behalf of IDACA, at the opening ceremony of this workshop.

At the outset of my opening remarks, I would like to express my sincere respect and gratitude to Dr. De Jager President of the World Farmers Organisation (WFO), for giving IDACA an opportunity to organize this workshop.

It is my recognition that WFO has already been successful to extend its policy recommendations in various international fora, based on their activities to collect data from farmers’ organizations around the world, with respect to adaptation to and mitigation of the effect of the climate change.

It is very timely to hold this workshop in Asia, where natural disasters are very common. I hope this workshop will provide you with an opportunity to deepen the discussion not only among farmers but also among other stakeholders.

IDACA was established in 1963 with the strong leadership of Mr. Yasushi Hasumi, the first president of JA ZENCHU, to enhance the potential of Asian agriculture collectively. It has been about 60 years since then.

So far, we have accepted more than 6,500 cooperative leaders from 130 countries around the world, mainly in Asia. We have provided them, the participants, with opportunities to learn how to organize and manage Japanese agricultural cooperatives.

In addition to the training activities, we have contributed for fostering farmers' organizations and promoting agricultural cooperative movement in many parts of the world through research and development cooperation projects.

In the meantime, we have been working with various bodies such as the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of the Government of Japan, Japan International Cooperation Agency, International Cooperative Agency, and the ASEAN Secretariat. It is really a matter of great honor for us at IDACA that we were able to hold the workshop in collaboration with WFO for the first time.

Although it is a limited time of two hours, I hope that it will be meaningful to all of you. Thank you so much for your attention.

The two newly-appointed advisors are Mr. Balasubramanian G Iyer, Regional Director of International Co-operative Alliance-Asia & Pacific (ICA-AP), and Ms. Arianna Giuliodori, Secretary General of WFO (World Farmrs’ Organization).

The selected former participants of the past ICA training courses reported implementation status and progress of their action plans, and including successfully-completed cases.

All IDACA staff members realized again that the ICA-Japan training courses have contributed to development and improvement of agricultural cooperatives for all the participating countries.