CECOEDECON
Statement by Ajay K Jha, CECOEDECON, India1
Respectable Co-Chairs, I thank you for this opportunity, and highly inspiring opening of this joint session, reiterating the commitment to high ambition, universality with differentiation, international solidarity, strong accountability and review framework, and firm belief in doability of the challenges that lies before us.
Excellencies and Friends;
I would like to attract your attention to the global partnerships in agriculture and food security. While we welcome that the focus given to small-scale farmers in Goal 2 of SDGs is reflected in the FfD zero draft 2, we are concerned about the primacy given to private finance and treating private finance from farmers at par with institutional private finance; as both have entirely different purposes and objectives. While agriculture may be the biggest private enterprise and is likely to remain so in future, that by itself does not reduce the importance of increasing public investments and better aid in agriculture. The report of the High Level Task Force on Global Cooperation emphasizes that while 90% of the private investment in agriculture remains clustered in food and beverages processing and marketing3 and only 5% of the FDI in agriculture goes to LMICs and 4% to the LICs.4
Respectable Co-Chairs
Mega PPPs in agriculture like New Alliance on Food and Nutritional Security and Global Alliance on Climate Smart Agriculture accompanies with them the danger of
1 Feedback and remarks are welcome at k.ajay.j@gmail.com & cecoedecon@gmail.com
2 Para 12, zero draft of the AAA
3 Report of the High Level Task Force on Global Cooperation, 2010
4 FAO, 2012
transferring unimaginably huge tracts of land out of the control of farmers, at times at the cost of $1 per ha., which is already happening.
Smallholder farmers, faced with the impacts of climate change definitely need greater protection including by way of insurance. Only last month, more than 200,000 ha of cropped lands were destroyed in India due to unseasonal hailstorms. Hundreds of farmers either died or committed suicide.
Transformational deliverables cannot be realized in agriculture and food security in global partnerships unless we have;
a. Stronger commitment to agriculture, food sovereignty based on agro-ecological approaches that ensure that scarce resources are not diverted towards false and techno-managerial solutions like GMOs, Bio-fuels, soil carbon markets etc.
b. a clear vision of role and centrality of small and family farmers and indigenous food producers, and fisherfolk including women in these partnerships, based on improved access to land and tenurial rights
c. Stronger safeguards and standards for agribusiness companies
d. Clear commitment that climate finance will be additional to the ODA
e. Elimination of agricultural subsidies in developed countries
f. Implementation of the Duty free quota free access provisions for LDCs .
I thank you.
Respectable Co-Chairs, I thank you for this opportunity, and highly inspiring opening of this joint session, reiterating the commitment to high ambition, universality with differentiation, international solidarity, strong accountability and review framework, and firm belief in doability of the challenges that lies before us.
Excellencies and Friends;
I would like to attract your attention to the global partnerships in agriculture and food security. While we welcome that the focus given to small-scale farmers in Goal 2 of SDGs is reflected in the FfD zero draft 2, we are concerned about the primacy given to private finance and treating private finance from farmers at par with institutional private finance; as both have entirely different purposes and objectives. While agriculture may be the biggest private enterprise and is likely to remain so in future, that by itself does not reduce the importance of increasing public investments and better aid in agriculture. The report of the High Level Task Force on Global Cooperation emphasizes that while 90% of the private investment in agriculture remains clustered in food and beverages processing and marketing3 and only 5% of the FDI in agriculture goes to LMICs and 4% to the LICs.4
Respectable Co-Chairs
Mega PPPs in agriculture like New Alliance on Food and Nutritional Security and Global Alliance on Climate Smart Agriculture accompanies with them the danger of
1 Feedback and remarks are welcome at k.ajay.j@gmail.com & cecoedecon@gmail.com
2 Para 12, zero draft of the AAA
3 Report of the High Level Task Force on Global Cooperation, 2010
4 FAO, 2012
transferring unimaginably huge tracts of land out of the control of farmers, at times at the cost of $1 per ha., which is already happening.
Smallholder farmers, faced with the impacts of climate change definitely need greater protection including by way of insurance. Only last month, more than 200,000 ha of cropped lands were destroyed in India due to unseasonal hailstorms. Hundreds of farmers either died or committed suicide.
Transformational deliverables cannot be realized in agriculture and food security in global partnerships unless we have;
a. Stronger commitment to agriculture, food sovereignty based on agro-ecological approaches that ensure that scarce resources are not diverted towards false and techno-managerial solutions like GMOs, Bio-fuels, soil carbon markets etc.
b. a clear vision of role and centrality of small and family farmers and indigenous food producers, and fisherfolk including women in these partnerships, based on improved access to land and tenurial rights
c. Stronger safeguards and standards for agribusiness companies
d. Clear commitment that climate finance will be additional to the ODA
e. Elimination of agricultural subsidies in developed countries
f. Implementation of the Duty free quota free access provisions for LDCs .
I thank you.