Again this year, the World Farmers’ Organisation (WFO), in the person of the President Arnold Puech d’Alissac, joined the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting (January 16-20, Davos-Klosters, Switzerland) to represent the worldwide farmers’ community and advocate for their interests in the WEF23 international discussion.
Convened under the overall theme “Cooperation in a Fragmented World”, the 2023 WEF Annual Meeting focused on the need for bold collective action to address all the ongoing crises the world is facing nowadays and advance cooperation to come up with win-win-win solutions for tangible system-positive change.
High-level meetings and workshops, forward-looking and constructive dialogues with academics, politicians, business, and civil society leaders, offered an excellent opportunity for the WFO President, Mr Arnold Puech d’Alissac, to elevate the critical role of the farmers and ensure their voice is heard on the most relevant and pressing issues of the global agenda.
Here are some highlights.
WEF “Open Forum: Sustainably Served”
This wonderful landscape outside is not only because you have the snow,
nice houses, and pine trees. It is because you have pastures; on these pastures,
you have grass to feed cows and sheep, and farmers take care of and give value to that.WFO President, Arnold Puech d’Alissac
On Tuesday 17 morning, the WFO President participated in the WEF Open Forum on Sustainability to discuss with the other speakers invited how to strengthen the connections between food-nature-health for more affordable, healthy and sustainable diets.
Mr d’ Alissac brought into the debate the example of The Climakers initiative to point out the concrete solutions to the climate crisis that farmers across the globe are undertaking to advance more sustainable, climate-resilient, and nature-positive agriculture while remarking how adapting to climate change is crucial for farmers both from developing and developed countries.
Then he pointed out that “Farmers, like all entrepreneurs, are driven by the markets. We can and want to be (together with other stakeholders) drivers of change in the markets and the food systems.”
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SDG Tent | Cooking up something new: Innovation to Shape the Future of Food
At the end of the day, the WFO President joined an Independent Food Systems Summit Dialogue at the SDG Tent, an open meeting venue bringing business, civil society and the public sector together to discuss how to deliver sustainable and inclusive development.
Organised by Bayer and Clim-Eat, the dialogue featured the participation of around 80 key representatives from different stakeholder groups (farmers, researchers, international organizations, businesses etc.) and regions (Asia, Americas, EU, Africa) who came together to discuss the social, institutional and technological innovations needed to deliver the SDGs and realize the food systems transformation for people and planet.
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SDG Tent | Tackling the Protein Dilemma
The WFO President started his third day in Davos, on Wednesday, 18, engaging in a high-level discussion on the future of animal farming at the SDG Tent.
Organised by DSM Company the event intended to explore the various solutions to the protein dilemma, including more sustainable farming, innovation technology, and emissions reduction.
During his speech, Mr Arnold Puech d’Alissac highlighted how innovation in agriculture is a crucial driver for sustainable and productive agriculture. Still, there’s a need to shape a conducive “innovation framework” that effectively supports farmers globally with infrastructure and technology, education and training.
The WFO President didn’t miss the opportunity to express farmers’ worries about data management and its effects on the markets, especially if farmers can’t have control of those data.
“In the food chain, we are like a rugby team, everybody is different, but together we can make something fantastic. I’m sure that, from producers to consumers, altogether, we can be very efficient for a more sustainable world“, he stated at the end of his intervention.
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WEF Stakeholder Dialogue “Land Matters”
During the Land Matters Session of the WEF Annual Meeting, the WFO President took the floor to point out that “farmers can’t make investments on the farm to produce more sustainably when they don’t hold the land they work on or can’t count on long-term financial schemes. Every farmer of the world needs this security.”
He also took the occasion to call for a stronger dialogue between Governments and Farmers’ Organizations, with farmers at the table since the beginning, as the way to advance more sustainable land management.