Yesterday, an alliance of the consultative groups there with whom Glasshouse Partnership works, launched a new policy called Farming First which calls on national governments to put agriculutre back at the heart of the global political agenda.
If we don’t, according to Ajay Vashee, the first African President of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers, in an interview with Dow Jones, ‘…in 24 months we’re going to see a resurgence of the food crisis…’.
At a time when the world is understandably obsessed with the economic and financial crisis, agriculture and its relationship to sustainable developnment clearly risk being sidelined.
The policy document, Farming First, is an attempt to avoid that. It has six key principles:
1. Safeguard natural resources
2. Share knowledge
3. Build local access
4. Protect harvests
5. Enable access to markets
6. Prioritize research imperatives
‘Farming First’ is available on the UN web site:
http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/dsdaofwmg/mgpdfs/mgcsd17commposi.pdf