Twenty-six community radios and three national broadcasting federations, covering five national languages across five countries of South and South East Asia have worked in a synchrony to run a radio campaign to sensitize and inform listeners about the role of family farmers in feeding the world. With radio programs in Bengali, Hindi, Bahasa Indonesia, Nepali and the Filipino, the community radio campaign has successfully reached more than one million listeners across the region.

Seventy-four per cent of the world’s family farmers are located in the Asia-Pacific region, including small-scale farmers, fisherfolks and livestock producers. Small-scale food producers, farmers, forest producers, fishers and herders produce 80 percent of the region’s food. Acknowledging such high significance of family farming, the radio campaign is aptly titled ‘Family farming at the heart of sustainable food systems.’

The community radio campaign is organised on the occasion of the United Nations Decade of Family Farming, UNDFF. Radio programs produced by local broadcasters from Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Nepal and the Philippines highlight issues that are specific to a country as well as topics that are common to an entire region.

The Philippines, Indonesia and Nepal have the unique honor of having approved national action plans for family farming in the Asia-Pacific region, while Bangladesh and India are on their way to finalize their plans. Highlighting the significance of the national action plans, a special radio program has been produced focusing entirely on the challenges and opportunities around the plans. Similarly, a special radio program focusses on the state of family farming in the South Asian region, underscoring the common cultural, social and economic basis among the countries of that region. Some of the other programs highlight pertinent issues related to family farmers at country levels. The campaign programs highlight the voices of local farmers and the family farming community leaders, in addition to policy makers and representatives of the civil society.

To ensure the dissemination of verified and validated information, program producers were supported with well researched fact sheets that include the most recent and verified information about the status of family farming in the region. The radio campaign, which is organized under the aegis of the ComDev Asia is led by AMARC Asia-Pacific and supported by the the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations‘.

The radio programs are available in the national and English languages and can be downloaded from ComDev Asia website.

For more information, please contact ro@amarc-ap.org