President Jokowi Visits 2018 Asian Agriculture and Food Forum Exhibition

President Jokowi when visiting booths in 2018 ASAFF Exhibition at Jakarta Convention Center (JCC), Saturday (30/6). (Photo: BPMI)

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo on Saturday (30/6) visited the 2018 Asian Agriculture and Food Forum (ASAFF) Exhibition held at Jakarta Convention Center (JCC) . The exhibition is part of a series of the ASAFF events held by the Indonesian Farmers Association (HKTI) on June 28 – July 1.

The theme for this year’s ASAFF Exhibition is “Transforming Challenges into Opportunities: Agricultural Innovation and Food Security”. The exhibition not only displays agricultural commodities, but also various innovations in agricultural sector.

Committing on innovation in agricultural sector, Minister of Agriculture Amran Sulaiman said that innovation is the key to the success in agricultural sector and to achieve food self-sufficiency. “Food self-sufficiency and food sovereignty can be achieved if we promote and develop innovations. The key to the success in agricultural sector is to encourage innovation from seeds to post-harvest processing,” the Minister told reporters.

Echoing the same sentiment, Presidential Chief of Staff and Chairman of the HKTI Moeldoko said that countries with advanced agricultural sector are those with innovation in technology and Indonesia’s agricultural sector can be more developed with a better use of technology.

“Most of our farmers still use traditional approaches in farming. Thus, through this event, entrepreneurs and inventors are expected to maintain communication to develop products that can be used by farmers,” Moeldoko said. (BPMI/EN) (STU/EP/Naster)