At a WTO Public Forum 2024 side event, experts noted that in order to meet the fundamental principles of agriculture, the WTO’s regulations must be able to assist small-scale farmers in order to promote sustainability and food security.
“Now the world has a technological advancement than ever. But we cannot download the food with this technology. The farmers need to produce it and this is the core spirit of agriculture,” they mentioned.
They explained that although small-scale farmers worldwide are the main drivers of sustainability, they have also been the most negatively impacted by environmental degradation and climate change.
They were speaking at the event titled “Trade rules for supporting small- scale farming as contributors to green trade in agriculture” is jointly organized by the COAST Foundation, an NGO of Bangladesh, and Humundi, an NGO of Belgium, on Tuesday.
The speakers were Ranja Sengupta, Senior Researcher and Head of TWN India Trust, Helene Bank, Board Leader of Handelskampanjen, Norway; Jonas Jaccard of Humundi, an NGO with headquarters in Brussels; and Ogwuche Sunday, Senior Counsellor of the Mission of Nigeria to the WTO.
The lecture was moderated by Barkat Ullah Maruf, Bangladeshi director of the COAST Foundation’s partnership and development communication department.
According to Barkat Ullah Maruf’s statement, Bangladesh’s small-scale farmers bear the brunt of the country’s environmental degradation and the effects of climate change.
“They are not able to produce crops as per their investment. At the same time, their engagement in global trade has been rather limited and precarious, made more vulnerable by global price volatility and an uncertain global market,” he added.
According to Ogwuche Sunday, Nigeria’s small-scale farmers have little access to technology and are significantly less equipped to participate in the existing agricultural trade negotiating format.
He continued, “They are the center of agricultural production, yet they are not in the conversation.”
According to Jonas Jaccard, despite the EU’s status as one of the major players in WTO agriculture negotiations, small-scale farmers throughout Europe are bearing the brunt of declining agricultural product prices as a result of the WTO’s unjust subsidies policies.
In her address, Helene Bank claimed that small-scale farmers are more knowledgeable about the area and know how to make better use of its resources.
She continued, “They are suffering not from inadequate financing but from inadequate policy.”
According to Ranja Sengupta of Third World Network (TWN), India, the goal of the WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture was to guarantee agricultural sustainability in accordance with the SDGs.
Sadly, though, it hasn’t succeeded in doing so. They had the option to embrace public stockholding as a remedy, but they chose not to,” she continued.
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