Reformed global trade policies that eschew protectionism and promote open and transparent markets can help mitigate the risk of severe price spikes on both national and international markets, reduce price volatility and help reverse worsening food insecurity among vulnerable populations, the deliberations of the January 16th – 18th Twelfth Global Forum for Food and Agriculture (GFFA) in Berlin has concluded.
Three days of deliberations by more than seventy countries on finding solutions to the global food crisis reached the conclusion that the fostering of agricultural and trade policies that promote food security, reduce poverty and address global challenges “in ways that avoid distorting production” are priority pursuits in the fight against global hunger.
The Berlin forum which examined various key global food security issues including the creation of fairer rules for agricultural trade and designing trade policies that generally promote agricultural development concluded that “trade contributes to better access to food for consumers and can create greater economic opportunities for producers as well as create much-needed jobs.” The gains from trade, the forum concluded in its Communique, “can play a major role in the promotion of inclusive economic development and the alleviation of poverty, especially in rural areas.”
The Berlin Conference was staged against the backdrop of a condition in which more than 820 million people the world over are currently afflicted by hunger and a further 2.5 billion suffer from some form of “micronutrient deficiency.” And the conclusions of the Food Forum also assert that fending off the already existing food and nutrition crises requires that the global agricultural sector and food systems “produce adequate quantities of safe, nutritious and affordable food and reduce loss and waste” and that it do so “sustainably.”
Setting aside the threats to global food sufficiency linked to inefficient production methods and waste, the Berlin Communique asserts that threats to global food sufficiency are also accentuated by evidence of worsening climate change which is resulting in “yield losses and declines in many parts of the world, with these being spread unevenly across regions.” This phenomenon, apart from affecting global food security, is also impacting farmers’ incomes and having the greatest impact on “the poor and the vulnerable,” the Communique concluded.
Reminding that the world’s natural resources that are fundamental to agricultural production and biodiversity are finite, the Berlin forum warns that these resources are already “under great stress and deteriorating over time.” It also points to further vulnerabilities linked to the fact that “fertile land and water endowments are not equally distributed globally and neither are other means of production, technology, innovations, know-how and capacities to invest.”
Acknowledging what it says has been “the positive contribution that trade has made to meet the increasing demand for adequate, safe, nutritious and affordable food for consumers as well as to global economic growth and poverty alleviation and thus to food security, political stability and peace, the forum communique asserted that “trade policies should form part of a larger integrated and coherent strategy towards improved sustainability of agriculture and food systems.” Trade, it says, “is vital to connect producers and consumers and to supply countries, regions and communities that have a structural food supply deficit.”
Enhanced agricultural trade, the Communique contends, can be facilitated by strengthening trade rules and creating “transparent and inclusive local, regional and global value chains and promot(ing) corresponding responsible investments, in particular in the poorest regions of the world…………We are convinced that trade contributes to better access to food for consumers and can create greater economic opportunities for all producers as well as much-needed jobs across food systems”, the document adds. Trade, the Berlin deliberations concluded, “generates welfare gains by encouraging resource-efficient and cost-efficient production and by enhancing productivity and quality, adding that “the gains from trade can play a major role in the promotion of inclusive economic development and the alleviation of poverty, especially in rural areas.”
