WFO Secretary General brings the farmers’ voice into the WTO debate on agricultural trade.
Last Thursday, April 1, the Secretary General of the World Farmers’ Organisation (WFO), Arianna Giuliodori, addressed a special edition of the WTO Trade Dialogues on Food, entitled “Enabling Agricultural Trade”.
Conceived and run by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) as a United Nations Food Systems Summit Independent Dialogue, the session explored the issue of agricultural trade within the wider framework of transition towards more sustainable and inclusive food systems.
Here are some key messages from the WFO Secretary General.
- Farmers are economic actors. Therefore, they cannot be against trade: if they cannot sell their product, they cannot feed they children!
- WFO adopted a Policy on Trade in 2013, only two years after its foundation, testifying how important and crucial “trade” for farmers worldwide has always been (CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT WFO POLICY ON TRADE).
- To be enabled to trade, farmers need 1) proper physical and digital infrastructures; 2) fair, inclusive, transparent value chains; 3) Policies that include trade in the wider transition towards more sustainable food systems.
- “One size fits all” won’t ever be the right answer. Let’s start considering farmers as partners sitting at the table with other actors of the value chain and policy makers in order to develop to develop an inclusive trading system that contributes to a more sustainable world and enables farmers to make their choices as entrepreneurs.