Farmers' Forum 2020 - Climate Change and Transition to Agroecology: What opportunities to further partnership between farmers’ organizations and IFAD?
The Global Farmers’ Forum is an on-going, bottom-up process of consultation and dialogue between organizations of smallholder farmers and rural producers from all over the world, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Member States.
IFAD is joining efforts with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in scaling up agroecology both through the policy convergence process of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) and the Scaling Up Agroecology Initiative.
Following a proposal put forth during the Farmers’ Forum in 2016, agroecology and climate change were present during a working group in the Farmers’ Forum 2020, held between 6-11 February in IFAD Headquarters, in Rome
Participants provided recommendations based on their own experience on how IFAD can strengthen its support to Agroecology. They encouraged IFAD to work jointly with the Member States in order to mitigate climate change through agroecological practices.
The purpose of this working group held within the Farmers’ Forum 2020 was firstly to map the opportunities for farmer organizations and IFAD to work together on tools, financial instruments, strategies and all innovative solutions both to promote agroecology and to translate it into policy engagement at the national and global levels. Secondly, the working group aimed to transform this mapping into specific recommendations from the Farmers’ Forum to IFAD, its Member States and farmers’ organizations themselves.
The National Association of Small Farmers (ANAP) in Cuba promotes agroecology through peer-to-peer learning methodologies and by strengthening alliances with the research sector in order to put the scientific knowledge into practice. Through its network of small-scale farmers, the Intercontinental Network of Organic Farmers Organizations (INOFO) in the Philippines promotes and defends agroecological practices that are economically viable for them. A member of the World Forum of Fish Harvesters and Fishworkers (WFF) in Nicaragua claimed the need for alliances between small-scale fishing and smallholder farming in order to improve food security and nutrition at global levels. A multistakeholder platform was created in Senegal through INOFO’s activities to tackle climate change with holistic solutions. The Indonesian Peasant Union (SPI) reclaimed for sustainable use of the land.
The working group concluded with a consensus for building a transformation of food and agricultural systems for all people: Farmer organizations must be put in the center of political negotiations for both agroecology and climate change and be part of the design of the projects that are implemented on the local level. Farmers organization expect IFAD and engaged governments to ensure that farmers’ voices are heard on all levels of discussions: local, regional and global.