Intercultural dialogue in the broadest sense occurs every time people from different cultures meet and listen to one another’s point of view. In agriculture, this takes place through travel and migration, international institutions, and meetings and trade negotiations. It occurs every time an expert from one culture shows an expert from another something new in the laboratory or fi eld - and gets feedback on its appropriateness in the local setting.
For thousands of years, the world’s farmers, particularly in developing countries, have developed the crop and animal genetic diversity on which food security everywhere depends. Dialogue between rich and poor countries in the form of negotiations on the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture led to the recognition of farmers’ rights and the establishment of a multilateral system of access and benefit-sharing.
The advent of agriculture required security of land tenure, at least for the growing season, if farmers were to invest effort and resources in growing crops. Today, women, indigenous people and other disadvantaged groups who may be landless or have insecure claims to land need to be included in dialogue on land policy and agrarian reform with the goal of improving this situation.
Dialogue between developing countries facing similar food and agriculture problems makes perfect sense. South-South cooperation in the form of sharing of expertise and technologies has resulted in the transfer of many solutions suited to local conditions. Viet Nam has introduced push rotary hoes and weeders and a stove that burns rice husks to farmers elsewhere in Asia and in Africa. The treadle pump for irrigation, which originated in Bangladesh, has become popular in Africa. Exchanges of technical experts between regions also benefit agriculture.
Open-minded dialogue is important between different groups in the same country. Indigenous peoples may have highly evolved systems for managing livestock and crop genetic resources, in which men and women play different roles. Government planners and policy makers sometimes overlook this knowledge, which could greatly improve their policies and programmes.
