Indonesia Provides Agricultural Training for 6 Countries

Indonesia continues to reinforce the South-South cooperation by providing agricultural apprenticeships and training for Bangladesh, Fiji, Laos, Sri Lanka, Timor Leste and Comoros (East Africa), a senior official said.
Director General for European and American Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Retno Marsudi said when opening the activities here on Thursday that the training and apprentice programs were carried out as part of Indonesia’s commitment to helping other developing countries in the agricultural sector.
She said that the agricultural sector was Indonesia’s important soft power policy asset. In this case Indonesia has played an important role in facilitating experience-sharing process on agriculture through training, apprentice and the sending of experts to various Asian and African countries as well to the pacific and Africa over the last three decades.
Through the cooperation in the agricultural sector, Retno Marsudi was convinced that developing countries could contribute to efforts of increasing world food resilience which now gained a world attention.
In the meantime, the secretary general of the Agriculture Ministry, Hari Priyono said that Indonesia’s various agricultural policies aimed at fostering national food resilience has brought in a result such as reflected in the success of national rice self-efficiency in 2008.
He said that the agricultural sector occupied the strategic position in the country’s economy, and the government would continue to make efforts to meet national consumption need and ensure people’s access to food which was one of the very basic rights of the people.