For Environment, Democracy and Livelihoods
We have been celebrating World Food Day for the last four years. While it was time to celebrate it this year, the whole world was succumbing to COVID-19. From the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic the team was actively involved in exploring for better understanding the impact of COVID-19 on food and agriculture, and the best practices to cope with the situation at the local levels. Such a situation forced us to revisit our past approach of celebrating food festivals on the occasion of World Food Day. Thus, the Alliance of Agriculture for Food (AAF) decided to organize this year’s World Food Day programme as a virtual forum connecting and bringing together all possible agencies to the forum for public debate on food and agriculture. With active engagement and commitment of the members, we could organize thematic sessions besides closing and opening ceremonies, post-paid food gifts, symbolic distribution of organic food to COVID-19 affected groups, and release of Dohori Geet (duet folk song) on the issues of food and agriculture.
The major objective of the program was to create public awareness on the issues of food and agriculture to realize the importance of agriculture for food in the current context of agriculture development in Nepal. The goal was to create a forum to raise the collective voices of the general public, farmers, and farming communities to create pressure on policy shapers/makers for formulating effective policy measures pertaining to food and agriculture showing the cases of critical issues as well as best practices at ground.