PrepCom I: Statement by Farmers |
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Nations Commission on Sustainable Development World Summit on Sustainable Development Organizational Session 30 April - 2 May 2001 Statement of Farmers
Concerning Participation, Getting Organized for the Summit: IFAP was a contributing author for chapter 32 of Agenda 21 on farmers’ roles in sustainable development, and feels that the Johannesburg event is an important opportunity for farmers to 'tell the stories' of progress that have been made in environment and development in the farm sector. It is also an opportunity to draw attention to the constraints that are impeding further progress. The IFAP Executive Committee meets on 14-16 May 2001 in Canberra, Australia, and will outline specific actions to engage in as a Federation, including participation in multistakeholder events, and in South Africa. Via Campesina, also a focal point for farmers as a major group, has organized to be active in the events leading to the Summit, including the World Food Summit - Five Years Later organized by FAO. Both organizations, whose members include farmers from all regions, but especially small family farmers, including peasant, campesino, indigenous and women farmers, have participated as their capacity and support allowed in early preparations for the Summit, beginning with the successful multistakeholder dialogues on land and agriculture one year ago, at CSD8. Farmers applaud governments for supporting these multistakeholder events with major groups on critical issues of sustainable development and wish to indicate their strong support for continued multistakeholder processes within the Summit meeting itself - preferably not in separate venues far away from government leaders and partners in sustainable development. Key Issues for Farmers: The number one concern of farmers and allied major groups is to get food security, rural development and sustainable livelihoods onto the agenda of WSSD. Clearly, there is a need to move questions of 'rural' environment and 'rural' development, including food insecurity, back to the top of the international agenda. This is especially important, given the Summit is in Africa, where food security is a very urgent issue. The overarching theme for Johannesburg is poverty reduction, and 70 per cent of the world's poverty is in rural areas. Without political will and resource mobilization for community-based food security and rural development, current crisis levels in many rural areas will reach irreversible levels of human suffering and environmental damage. Without farmers, there will be no sustainable development, no rural communities, no food production. Farmers cannot accomplish sustainable agriculture and rural development without other major groups and governments, but neither can other major groups replace farmers and feed the world. Other key issues are: - Building capacity for participatory development: One of the keys to a successful rural development strategy is having well-organised partners to work with. - Targeting development efforts to focus more on people and their organizations is critical to strengthening human and social capital. - On creating a favourable national policy environment: In order to escape from poverty, small farmers need possibilities to go beyond producing food for their families, and generate income from the commercial market. Ensuring that small farmers have secure access to resources on a long-term basis is key. In particular, this means making more progress on land tenure, on water rights, on access to genetic resources - including protection of indigenous knowledge, and access to credit at affordable prices. - We must focus on women farmers - who produce much of the food in developing countries - and strengthen their role in the process. Also youth - especially in the light of the HIV/AIDS situation - should be engaged directly in the solutions to rural development. - Food security and safety is an urgent concern not only for farmers, but for everyone who eats. As recent experiences in Europe and elsewhere have shown, the model of production that has led to mad cow and hoof and mouth diseases, consequent destruction of numerous farmers and ranchers, and hundreds of thousands of animals, is unsustainable in any part of the world. - Extremely difficult problems must considered in the international policy environment: Increasing levels of hunger and poverty despite commitments made at the World Food Summit in 1996 are related to the increasing gap between rich and poor in and between national economies. The effects of globalisation on small farmers are not only important to IFAP and Via Campesina, but it has also become an issue for civil society in general. - Fair markets for farmers: Farmers need to be in the drivers seat of their agricultural business, making their own decisions on innovation, investment and implementation. As industry vertically integrates, farmers are squeezed out, in both developed and developing countries. In conclusion, I wish to address concerns about certain modalities of participation on the road to South Africa: Farmers participated in recent multistakeholder dialogues between major groups and governments including last month in Rome at the FAO meeting of the Committee on Agriculture. They are committed to continuing these dialogues as one form of major group participation through and beyond the World Summit on Sustainable Development. However, the informal dialogues are most effective when they are central to the formal agendas of meetings and recognized in decisions of governments, as with the two dialogues on land and agriculture just mentioned. Participation of major groups in the formal process is therefore essential. Farmers, together with other major groups engaged on these issues, urge that the multistakeholder dialogues be targeted on the most difficult issues to support governments to advance negotiated solutions of the most urgent and intractable issues of trade, technology and finance in food and agriculture. The implementation of negotiated solutions, the most difficult step, must also be at least a possibility, for farmers to support the process as a whole. Thank you for this opportunity to build new momentum to make new progress in the related areas of food security, rural development and sustainable livelihoods.
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