The Senior Officials Meeting of the ASEAN Ministers of Agriculture and Forestry (SOM AMAF) as well as China, Japan and South Korea agreed on three areas of cooperation in the field of agriculture and food security on Wednesday.

SOM AMAF chairman Achmad Suryana who is also chief of the Food Security Board at the Agriculture Ministry, said one of the cooperation areas was the formation of an ASEAN Food Security Information System Plus Three (AFSIS ASEAN Plus Three).

"The system is badly needed to plan food security particularly when it comes to ASEAN key food commodities. If Indonesia has the system it will be very useful to plan food commodity production and consumption as well as export and import," he said.

The system would provide ASEAN+3 with access to information on food commodity production, area of farm land, harvest, and food security policies to enable them to plan food security in the region, he said.

"But if a country says that information on a certain food commodity is confidential the country has the right not to publish it," he said.

At the meeting the ASEAN senior officials also agreed on ASEAN Plus Three Emergency Rice Reserves (APTERR) of 787,000 tonnes.

"ASEAN Plus Three Ministers will on October 7, 2011 sign an APTERR agreement which serves as an ASEAN food reserve scheme for the state of emergency due to disasters," he said.

In addition to rice reserves, the meeting also agreed on the contribution of APTERR Secretariat`s operational funds amounting to US$4 million.

"The fund will be kept as endowment and the interest of the fund can be used to finance operational activities," he said.

According to SOM data, Indonesia has pledged US$107,500 to be channeled in five year's time, while Plus Three countries will contribute US$1 million.

"There will be no more fund contributions after all the countries have paid up the funds as we expect the APTERR Secretariat can fulfill its needs on its own," he said.

The third agreement reached at the meeting was a comprehensive framework of food security and energy security, he said.

"The meeting in principle agreed on the framework, meaning that we still have to develop the concept," he said.


World-Grain