Addressing point 4:
Mission for long term sustainability of smallholder producer communities:
The UN agencies correctly have and continue to sound alarms about the urgent need for the rural poor smallholder producer communities (about 50% of the world’s population), to return to producer oriented, economies of scope development, following ecological/ natural/ organic agriculture systems, being sustainable in the long term, thus ensuring their access to nutritious food needs, at little or no cost and also feed the world. In contrast, the United States, Canada, Australia and some EU governments are pushing for the high cost external input, chemical intensive and corporate-dominated industrial farming systems and now also GMOs. UNCTAD report, link at:
“Trade and Environment Review 2013: Wake Up Before It’s Too Late,”
has contributions from more than 60 scientist/ experts around the world, mostly re iterating the findings of the IAASTD report, link at:
Reports also argue that smallholder producer communities following low cost organic/ natural/ ecological agriculture systems of their area is the answer for “feeding the world,” not the high cost conventional Industrial/ GMOs with a focus on mono cultures agriculture systems, being the cause of distress, deep debt and suicides.
The UN reports rightly calls for, major changes in food, agriculture and trade systems, to focus on meeting the conversion needs of the rural poor smallholder producer communities, if they are to access their requirement of nutritious food, thus reducing hunger, malnutrition, poverty and suicides whilst improving livelihoods, increasing net profits and purchasing power, effects of climate change and ensuring their long term sustainability.
These reports also demand that global trade rules be reformed in order to work toward these ends as the proposed trade deals like the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the U.S.- EU Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) are primarily designed to strengthen the hold of multinational corporate and financial institutions managing the global agriculture economy are mostly working against the rural poor smallholder producer communities. Further ,with food prices (and speculation in food prices) on the rise, the report states that the present conventional systems are seeking to accomplish the opposite by continuing to push for their high cost green revolution/ GMO technologies..
Thus, the reports call upon the Governments, National and Global Agriculture and Research Systems to shift from their conventional, high cost mono culture dependent external input based industrial production to following the low cost successful ecological/ natural agriculture systems, as applicable to the soil and agro climatic conditions in each area, that optimizes nutrition and improves agriculture productivity of smallholder producer communities.
Г-н Subhash Mehta