Welcome Remark: Mekong CREATES Agri-food Systems Forum 2026

5 June 2026 | Yangon

Good morning distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,

It is very nice to see many familiar faces in the room.

Let me start my opening remark with two confessions.

First – I did not write this speech using AI. You can trust me that this is a very organic speech.

Second – I will not be holding any food in my hand during the speech.

For those who just met me for the first time – I am known for holding different foods in my hand during my speeches to demonstrate.

For example, a mango to demonstrate food safety and trust or – a cookie to demonstrate the complex nature of intertwined supply chains in food systems.

However, today I will leave all those topics to distinguished representatives from WHO and FAO who will be delivering opening speeches.

Let me start with a brief thank you.

I thank Mekong Institute and New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade for continued trust and collaboration since 2019 until today.

I must also thank Mr. Dahmane Houcine of France Embassy, Mr. Lila Bashyal of Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Dr Nilmini Hemachandra of World Health Organization (WHO), colleagues from World Food Programme and SBN Myanmar, representatives from different organizations, associations and private sector for being in this room here today despite your busy schedules.

We all know that Myanmar as a country is facing multiple crisis today – disruptions, fragmentations and resource scarcity fueled by climate shocks and natural disasters. Myanmar is grateful for development partners for continued support and its own people for not giving up and staying resilient.

However, what surprised me is how we undervalue the importance of coordination. We have been signing agreements and MoUs. But we have to ask ourselves – are we really coordinating? Because collaboration without coordination is a waste of resources, especially during today times of resource scarcity.

When we have too little resources or operational freedom, we have to make difficult choices to prioritize the activities and mobilize our resources. At this state, coordination becomes essential to find commonalities and shared interest so we can have the efficient use of the limited resources.

Today I am very excited because two very important systems touching the very lives of the people – food systems and health systems – will be finding ways to coordinate and possibly cooperate with an aim to improve critical area in agri-food systems, food safety.

We have food system actors in the room – producers, input suppliers, supporting industries and other stakeholders. We have health system actors in the room too – public health institutions, healthcare service providers, laboratories and other stakeholders.

I am excited because this is the first time in my 14 years of social entrepreneur journey that these two systems meaningfully interact and find ways to coordinate using data or evidence as the bridge, with an aim to improve food safety.

Experts from the two systems will be sharing grounded and scientific data, trends and insights through presentations and the lived experiences and perspectives through panel discussions.

You might feel a little overwhelmed with data and research statistics but if you survived that, right after the coffee break, we have an exciting session where we will be sharing the insights from last year food systems forum 2025 and launching a more inclusive initiative, Myanmar Agri-food Week.

I would like to kindly request the distinguished guests from the front row to stay until then because I believe you will be able to identify pockets of opportunities in this initiative.

After the lunch, we have interesting presentations from Mekong CREATES alumni such as digitalizing the food safety data and fortified rice kernel production which will be followed by an interactive discussion of a panel with experts from food systems and health systems.

In a nutshell, I believe today would serve you not as a day of another event but a day with unique, cross-sectoral learnings understanding the importance of evidence in coordinating priorities in agri-food industry and healthcare industry.

Thank you very much once again for participating in-person today and I look forward to engaging with each and every one of you throughout the day. I hope you have a pleasant day ahead. Thank you.