You will be pleased to read the CGIAR Chairman's forward, written for UNCTAD’s Trade and Environment Review 2013 - "Wake Up Before Its Too Late ", endorsing the paradigm shift required in agriculture.
Some highlights:
Better understanding of the multi – functionality of agriculture being of pivotal importance for the significant role it can play in development of rural poor producer communities’ access to safe, sufficient, nutritious food and mitigating/ adapting to climate change
· Around one billion people chronically suffer from starvation and another billion are malnourished (70% of these two billion are themselves small producers/ agriculture labour) as they do not have the money to access sufficient nutritious food for their own needs
· Priority in conventional systems remains on productivity and economies of scale, with the focus being on ‘Industrial Agriculture’
· Paradigm shift and Fundamental transformation towards sustainable low cost agriculture systems needs to be recognized to ensure the ‘Right of everyone to safe, sufficient nutritious food is a reality before the MDG’s deadline of 2015 (June 20, 12, Rio +20
declaration).
Links are given below to the press release of Sept 18, 2013, and the report:
http://unctad.org/en/pages/PressRelease.aspx?OriginalVersionID=154
, http://unctad.org/en/pages/PublicationWebflyer.aspx?publicationid=666
It is very encouraging that the report focuses on the current crisis in global agriculture and calls upon Governments to change and follow a smallholder producer friendly enabling AR4D path, primarily to put them to work on farm, producing most/ all the nutritious food needs for themselves and markets in the vicinity and tackle the multiple challenges of rural poverty, hunger, malnutrition, suicides, environmental degradation and the effects of climate change. This
requires a rapid and significant shift from conventional monoculture-based and high-external-input-dependent ‘economies of scale’ industrial production towards mosaics of sustainable, regenerative ‘economies of scope’, integrated low cost agriculture systems of each area that considerably improves livelihoods, production, net income and purchasing power of smallholder producer communities.
This report adds to the growing weight of opinion that conventional industrial agriculture will not deliver future nutritious food security and that efforts to promote low cost ecological farming practices, as adapted by successful farmers of each area, season after season, need to be widely and rapidly scaled-out for producer communities to access the required nutritious food and at little or no cost, thus making agriculture sustainable for nutritious food security and in the long term and substantially contributing to the economic development of developing countries.
I am attaching the ‘White paper’ (contributed by CSOs for GCARD, Montpelier, March 2010), as it had then initiated the Paradigm shift in AR4D- Old to New, matrix also attached, focus being on following integrated agriculture of the area, financing of producer orgs/ companies (Private Sector) set up by the rural smallholder producer communities but staffed by professionals (general practitioners [GPs] and MBAs in agriculture), to take over all responsibilities and manage risks, leaving members mostly to on farm activities.
Hopefully, the CGIAR and national agricultural research and education systems (NARES) with the intervention of all stakeholders, ensure that the mandates are re written to include the proposed paradigm shift in the report, also being reflected in their research agenda and gets translated into policy recommendations by Governments, international bodies and multilateral UN agencies.
Warm regards
Subhash
M. Subhash Mehta