Teaming up to strengthen the role of farmers and face global challenges, from climate change to a food crisis
Collaborate ever more closely together to support the central role of agriculture in the local and global systems, and to strengthen international dialogue between farmers, starting with the Euro-Mediterranean, to make the common front in cope with the growing challenges, from climate change to global food security, undermined by the ongoing conflicts. Thus, this is the meaning of the meeting between the national president of Cia-Agricoltori Italiani Cristiano Fini and the new president of the World Farmers’ Organisation (WFO), Arnold Puech d’Alissac, which was held today in Rome at the headquarter of the Confederation.
Both presidents underlined the central role of food, especially in this historical phase, which invests farmers with an increasingly strategic function for food security globally. Precisely for this reason, according to Fini and d’Alissac, “it is necessary to invest resources and political energies to guarantee healthy food for all. This means supporting the sector economically and building appropriate policies to make agriculture more resilient and productive”. An effort that becomes urgent in this conjuncture, with the drought that cuts production on the field; the war in Ukraine that blocks the commercial trades with dramatic repercussions on food security, especially in African countries heavily dependent on Odesa’s grain; and the increases in raw materials and production costs; the spread of parasites, pathogens, and alien insects.
All these challenges, highlighted by the Cia’s and WFO’s presidents, now require a joint commitment to reclaim more significant consideration of the role of farmers, also from an environmental point of view, and to hasten new dedicated policies.
In this perspective, for Fini, as for d’Alissac, it is essential to encourage innovation and push on new technologies, digital and genetic, to increase the resistance of the plants and crops to diseases and climate changes.