Food Security Forum

ADB’s Strategy 2030 calls for urgent attention to meet the challenges of poverty, food insecurity, and rural prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region.

The Rural Development and Food Security Forum aims to seek knowledge on enabling policies, technologies, and investments that will help DMCs/ADB generate rural prosperity and effective stewardship to land and water (fresh and marine) resources.

Virginia Newton-Lewis

Virginia specializes in water security as it relates to WASH. She has worked on a wide range of water issues including food security, irrigation, water resources management, and flood risk management. She holds a PhD from the University of East Anglia, where she explored the topic of agricultural-to-urban water allocation.

Kundhavi Kadiresan

Kundhavi Kadiresan, who holds a PhD in Economics and an MA in International Business, is Assistant Director-General and FAO’s Regional Representative for Asia and the Pacific. She has more than 25 years of managerial experience in economic and policy development. Kadiresan, an economist, has spent most of her professional career with the World Bank Group. She has worked in Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America, where she led senior-level policy dialogues and managed large loan portfolios.

Musdhalifa Machmud

Musdhalifah Machmud is engaged as Deputy Minister of Food and Agriculture, the Coordinating Ministry of Economic Affairs, Republic of Indonesia. She manages for Food and Agriculture, including strategic policies which made by the Ministry. Her coordination and strategic policies includes rice, red meat, corn, soya bean, palm oil, cocoa, tea, rubber, sugarcane, biofuels, horticulture products, fertilizer, seeds, and other agriculture issues. Between 1988 and 2003, she served the Ministry of Forestry.