On the 15th of February 2016, the first day of the #AgriBiotech WEBINAR by FAO was held. This event was held in Auditorium Mandiri, Bogor Agricultural University and hosted by IAAS LC IPB. It started with Linda Elvina Holy’s welcoming speech as IAAS LC IPB’s Executive Commitee, followed by a speech by the National Director of IAAS Indonesia, Siti Nisrina Hasna. After a short break we proceeded with the viewing of the seminar, live from Rome. Four keynote speakers from universities each gave their thoughts on biotechnology application in the agricultural sector. These four experts are Prof. Louise Fresco, Prof. Gebisa Ejeta, Pedro Machado, and Prof. Gunter Pauli. We then continued with a forum discussion on what students think should be changed and discussed what we must propose to FAO and the policy makers on the future of agriculture, especially here in Indonesia.
On the 16th of February 2016, The WEBINAR Program was continued with more inspiring speeches from keynote speakers and eye opening thoughts from students all over the world. The first session on this 2nd day was the high-level segment, this session was organized into two sessions which were moderated by Marcela Villareal from FAO Italy. This session was opened by Jose Graziano da Silva, FAO Director-General. Four keynote speakers presented their statements on the discussed topic, the keynote speakers are Nestor Roulet (Argentina), Frederic Seppey (Canada), Katalin Toth (Hungary), and Papa Abdoulaye Seck (Senegal). During break, Citra Atrina explained about IYSCA (International Youth Symposium on Creative Agriculture) to the participants of the Webinar Program.
On the 2nd High-Level session, four keynote speakers from other countries presented their speeches, they were Begum Matia Chowdhury (Bangladesh), Henri Eyebe Ayissi (Cameroon), Hans Hoogeveen (Netherlands), and Michael Scuse (United States Of America). The 2nd session was closed with a closing statement by Mr. Jose Graziano da Silva. After that, the next session which we have all been waiting for started, the name of this session is Student Interactive Session. On the Student Interactive Session, students from seven universities presented their perspectives on #AgriBiotech to FAO. One of the universities which participated on this session is Bogor Agricultural University, with M. Irvan Herviansyah from IAAS Indonesia as a delegate. With the last session, the #AgriBiotech webinar officially ended. We hope that this event can make the agriculture of Indonesia better and make people, especially the young generation, conscious that agriculture is very important, now and in the future.