A newly released report by the U.N. Division for Sustainable Development, Food and Agriculture: The future of sustainability, provides strategic input to the “Sustainable Development in the 21st Century Report” to be launched at the Rio+20 Summit.
On our current trajectory, severe disruptions to national and regional food systems are highly likely to happen – the main question is when. Exposing unforeseen areas of consensus – with contributions from more than 70 global agri-food leaders in the business, policy, green, and social arenas – the report lays out concrete steps for sustainable and resilient food and agriculture systems. By opening the silos of partisan thinking to invite reasoned discussion, it also exposes areas of disagreement and advances a key set of specific “high impact” areas where smart decisions will make the most difference.
The report highlights nine key areas of consensus have emerged as the key paths of action:
- Organized small and medium farmers, fully including women farmers, should be a primary focus of investment – recognizing that private enterprise will play a significant role in many solutions.
- Desine the goal in terms of human nutrition rather than simply “more production.”
- Pursue high yields within a healthy ecology – they are not mutually exclusive and policy and research must reflect that.
- Impel innovation and the availability of diverse technologies suitable in different socioeconomic and ecological contexts.
- Significantly reduce waste along the entire food chain.
- Avoid diverting food crops and productive land for biofuels, but explore decentralized biofuel systems to promote energy and livelihood security that also diversify and restore rural landscapes.
- Insist on intelligent and transparent measurement of results – we cannot manage what we cannot measure.
- Develop and adapt public and private institutions that can effectively respond to these new goals.
- Motivate and reward investments and business systems that result in measurable impacts to the “public good.”
Sara J. Scherr
May 8, 2012 at 8:11amTiim’s comment is very interesting and a new perspective relevant to thinking about sustainable agricultural landscapes. We need to focus more intentionally on developing synergies, as well as managing better the trade-off’s.
I do encourage people to read this report. It is one of the few out there that explicitly recognizes the enormous range of perspectives on the future of agriculture. They invited groups of experts with different perspectives–from sustainable agriculture & NRM (which EcoAgriculture coordinated), poverty and livelihoods, international grade and agribusiness–to assess the current state of affairs and the best paths forward. I was actually surprised to see the degree of consensus, although there remain significant areas of disagreement. But how refreshing to have them out in the open, and with serious yet respectful consideration of different viewpoints. Also, surely sufficient consensus to motivate action
Sara
Tim Gieseke
May 8, 2012 at 7:36amVery progressive steps. I would like to add an broader economic facet to #9 to begin a broader discussion on one of the core issues; the economic issues related to the tragedy of the commons. If we can begin to imagine the antithesis of the “tragedy of the commons” as being “Symbiotic Demand” we may begin to steer the big ship. An illustration is at: https://prezi.com/tpfaewgz1jie/apportioning-ecological-values-and-costs-through-symbiotic-demand/