MANILA, Philippines — This glimpse of a 75-year-old female Indonesian farmer harvesting rice in a boat in a flooded field in Java won the first prize in the 2014 SEARCA Photo Contest sponsored by the Philippine government-hosted, Los Baños-based Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization-Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEAMEO SEARCA). Taken by Aji Styawan of Java, it bested 1,224 other entries submitted by 341 photo buffs from the 11 member-countries of SEAMEO, an inter-government treaty body founded in 1965 to promote cooperation among Southeast Asian nations in the fields of education, science, and culture. Theme of the art competition’s 2014 edition was ‘Climate Change and Agriculture in Southeast Asia: Faces of Vulnerability and Resilience.’ The entries poured in from Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Timor-Leste, and Vietnam. The contest, SEARCA director Gil C. Saguiguit Jr. said, was launched in 2006 ‘to catch a glimpse of the contemporary issues in agriculture and rural development in the SEAMEO region through quality photographic images that capture the current state and future endeavors of the center’s major stakeholders: the agriculture and rural communities in Southeast Asia.’
