As a multi-stakeholder platform, we believe in the power of open and honest communication towards building effective and productive relationships and developing appropriate collaborative interventions. While we pursue our efforts to disseminate trends and best practices, we understand the value of constantly seeking updates from those directly implementing agricultural projects and gathering information on issues that hinder the growth of the agricultural sector and delay the possible support to smallholder farmers and fisherfolk.

With this, we are launching the Agri Conversations, the Philippine edition of Grow Asia's "Confessionals", which aims to tackle challenges faced by various agricultural industry players to collate feedback and share insights and lessons learned. The outputs of the sessions will be used to produce summary reports which will be shared with various government agencies. Each session will revolve around a specific issue or topic and the confirmed participants could be requested to share proposed subtopics or submit their questions beforehand to facilitate a smoother exchange of information.

Specifically, this activity aims to achieve the following objectives:

• Facilitate an exchange of information on upcoming and/or best practices that will help companies navigate around specific challenges
• Gather insights on the challenges faced by various companies and organizations related to the government's responses to various concerns
• Solicit recommendations on how to improve support mechanisms and how to best respond to various challenges related to agriculture.

These will be used as references to a summary of challenges and recommendations that will be used for a dialogue with concerned government agencies and units.

Following the Agri Conversations will be the "Government Dialogues", a member-only event that will provide opportunities for ECCP and PPSA members to participate in a series of 'Question and Answer' sessions with concerned government officials/agencies based on the outputs from the Agri Conversations.

As a commencement of the Agri Conversations, we are organizing a dialogue on African Swine Fever (ASF), which continues to affect the livestock industry and the economy as a whole.