Senior officials from the Group of 20 nations will meet with scientists in Montpellier, France, next week to discuss how they can boost the contribution agricultural research makes to global food security and development in poorer states.
The Sept. 12-13 conference comes at a time when international food prices are close to record highs, and a severe drought in the Horn of Africa has left close to 13 million hungry people in need of urgent aid.
“This is the first time the G20 has woken up to the importance of agricultural research for development,” said Mark Holderness, executive secretary of the Rome-based Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR). There is a need both for increased investment from G20 nations and stronger partnerships to share their expertise with less-developed countries, he added.
The food price crisis of 2008 – and the social unrest it provoked around the world – were a wake-up call, highlighting long years of donor indifference towards agriculture. But when global markets headed even higher earlier this year, rich governments finally realised food security was a problem that wasn’t going to go away, he said.
“We are coming out of two decades of complacency,” said Holderness, who will produce a summary of the G20 vision that emerges from the Montpellier meeting. “We know we have the ability to provide and develop the answers, but we are not doing it in a joined-up way. The G20 has a political and an investment imperative (to act).” (…)
Read the full post on Alertnet