Green Festival 2014: A catalyst for promoting Agriculture

Agriculture is one of the most indispensable sectors cultivating life forms for food, fiber, biofuel, medicinals and other products. Besides sustaining and enhancing human life, As we know, agriculture is interrelated with forestry, fishery, climate change, amongst others. 

What is the Green Festival IPB 2014?

At Bogor Agricultural University (IPB) in Indonesia, the 2014 BEM KM IPB (Students’ Executive Boards) together with the Ministry of Environment of Indonesia held a staggering event known as the Green Festival IPB 2014 on November the 24^th, 2014.

The boards invited IGAF, CIFOR, Earth Hours and other organizations that work within the environmental field to take part in the event. Likewise, young agriculturists were challenged to initiate, think, solve, and act on different issues regarding the agricultural sector. The goal of the festival wasn’t other but to spread out mutual understanding and best practices to tackle agricultural problems in Indonesia and the environment.

During the festival, there were two main attractions: the exhibition and the green talk show. In the first one, IGAF had a golden occasion to promote not only Climate Smart Agriulture (CSA) as a key way to adapt to climate change, but also IGAF Partners, as well as IGAF Eco-projects.

In all, there were more than 100 visitors who were attracted to IGAF’s booth and took YUNGA Challenge Badges and TUNZA Eco-generation’s promotional goods. Moreover, IGAF LC IPB (Local Committee Bogor Agricultural University) attempted to explain the three pillars of CSA, comprising the increasing productivity and resilience (adaptation); reducing/removing GHGs [greenhouse gases] (mitigation); and enhancing achievement of national food security and the millennium development goals (MDGs).

Spreading the voice on the importance of agriculture, CCA & CCM!

During the Green Festival’s talk show, one of the guest speakers preached that agriculture and climate change were interrelated. “Agriculture depends on climatic conditions, he said, but agriculture too contributes to the release of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.”

From the message and the above agenda, we did believe that the Green Festival IPB 2014 was assessed effectively by disseminating the core message on the need of Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) and Climate Change Mitigation (CCM).

Thanks to this event we realized how significant is CSA to seize adaptation and mitigation of climate change. It can be seen in Indonesia where FAO has implemented CSA in form of farmer field schools - a highly regarded approach to ecological pest management based on farmers’ active participation in ecological field assessments.

As young agriculturists, our duty is to keep brainstorming and supporting innovation to build a sustainable agriculture. Stay tuned for our future actions!

Picture credit: by Muhammad Iqbal.