FAO and ITU organized the Asia and Pacific Digital Agriculture Solutions Forum 2023 in Thailand from 27-28 September 2023 at Hotel Berkeley, Bangkok, Thailand. 

Significant advances have occurred in the last three years propelled under the impetus of COVID-19 pandemic and the reinvigorated attention and interest in everything digital. Digital agriculture did not escape such accelerated march towards digital economy, digital innovations within the agrifood systems and rural transformation necessitated by the urgent needs to achieve the Strategic Development Goals. 

Agrifood systems have been battered and challenged to a great extent by the effects of the pandemic and its consequences following by a cascade of crises including the Russian war on Ukraine, and the consequences impacts on global economy, energy and food markets and the increasing challenge of rising interest rates on the global economy, agrifood sector, food security, malnutrition, and poverty. The United Nations Food Systems Summit was an important global milestone aimed to address these challenges and include countries to renew their commitments to a fundamental transformation of the agrifood systems and reestablish the progress towards achieving the Strategic Development Goals under the Agenda 2030.

In Asia and the Pacific, the impetus toward greater investments in innovation and digitalization is growing by the day and the current digital landscape is vastly different than what it was just 5 years ago. Most countries have established ambitious national digital strategies and set out to support private digital innovations and promote digital ecosystems to foster greater digitalization and to overcome the many constraints and challenges facing the translation of national ambition into practical implementation on the ground. Certainly, many in the region have made significant strides in expanding mobile internet coverage and the use of mobile phones and smart technologies has expanded hugely among the population in most countries making access, use and deployment of digital services, solutions and innovations both feasible and economically accessible.

Since the last Asia-Pacific Digital Agriculture Solutions Forum 2020, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) launched a flagship program – 1000 Digital Village Initiative to scale up its engagement, support of digital agriculture among Member States. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has also continued its support to countries through its whole-of Government approach to developing smart villages and smart Islands. Likewise, many developments have also gained much experience through their specialized initiatives, including the UNCDF initiatives around digital finance inclusion and IFI focus on supporting the enabling environment for advancing digitalization of agri-food value chains and facilitate the agri-tech startup ecosystems and enabling conditions.

The Asia-Pacific Digital Agriculture Forum 2023 brought together all these advances, experiences and help facilitate knowledge exchange among Member states, private actors, development partners, NGOs and other stakeholders. The Forum explored these key issues and will help members to identify, develop and sustain digital solutions for agriculture.  This year DASF 2023 had the following thematic focus “From solutions to ecosystem development: “Scaling up promising digital innovations and lowering barriers to deployment and to persistent digital divide”.