Nature Positive Production is one of the critical themes at the Food Systems Summit (FSS) that is held in New York today, 23rd of September 2021. How to keep our production in the planetary boundaries, how to respect the nature and its ecosystems while ensuring food security for all and decent income for producers.
This was also the topic of a webinar that was organized on 21st September by FFD and Fingo. We wanted to focus on understanding how the numerous smallholders in developing countries could become actors of nature positive production system and what could be done to support them in the transition.
The key messages from the webinar are summarized below:
We need to look at the systems and not only production. Agriculture, forests and whole landscape need to be seen holistically.
Multistakeholder approach is needed. This should not be left only for the governments.
Participation of farmers in the process is crucial. They are the managers and keepers of their resources.
We need to ensure that women have both possibilities and access to assets, services and finance.
Innovation platforms, which ensure the linkage between research and practitioners can act as an instrument of change and how to adapt knowledge into the local context.
Global value chains require changes in policies and standards to support more nature positive production.
There is a need to ensure transparent data on value chains
Primary producers should have a decent price for their efforts.
The dominance of big corporations should be balanced with the work of consumer unions, financial and educational institutions, certification bodies and producer organizations.
We would like to thank all the participants who attended the webinar representing NGOs, research institutions, ministries and farmer organizations from the global South.
We also express our gratitude to Director Aulikki Hulmi from the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, who opened the webinar and Professor Juha Helenius from University of Helsinki who explored the dimensions of meaning of nature positive production.
A special thank you to Samuel Tumwesigye who delivered a keynote presentation at the webinar. Mr. Tumwesigye was a co-author of Fingo’s report “Potential Impacts of the EU Green Deal Farm to Fork Strategy on Africa's Climate Agenda and food Sovereignty”. According to his studies, increasing demand for organic products in the EU help to increase organic production in the global south and the implementation of new nature positive policies will help with nature positive production in the global south. Challenges, however, persist in the form of food insecurity, lack of green technology, lack of skills development, irregular framework for agro-chemical use and investment funding for green production. In addition, it is important to note that stricter rules for EU for production may turn producers to look for markets in China.
If you would like to watch the webinar online, you can find it here: https://youtu.be/oNK780LnQNE
Please note that the group discussions are not included in the recording.
