Moving small scale centre stage
BADNERA, MAHARASHTRA, INDIA 4 OCTOBER 2017 : Unidentified woman walking on road with her cow to the filed.
The United Nations Food Systems pre-Summit is going on this week (26-28 July) in Rome and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is hosting several events, including Bold Actions for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment in Food Systems with IFAD Goodwill Ambassador Sabrina Elba. This session will discuss priority investments for achieving gender equality and supporting women’s empowerment across food systems, and present commitments to mobilise increased resources and initiatives to give more opportunities to rural women to become successful food producers.
Another session will look at ensuring no one is left behind in the food supply chain and a further one will explore listening to small-scale producers and agri-entrepreneurs. Lastly Mobilizing trillions for food systems transformation – Financing for impact, leveraging the pivotal role of the Public Development Banks (PDBs). IFAD is leading a group of public development banks to help shift agricultural investments to more environmentally sustainable and fairer food systems.
All of these are probably worth a listen, as the need for finance and keeping the smaller producers in the loop of feeding the global community locally is right up dairy’s path. Support for women, who tend to represent in the smaller farms, is a useful idea as well.
Let’s face it, dairy is often about the small-scale producer at the farming side, and addressing the current systems, where failures result in hundreds of millions of people poor and hungry, must be a priority. Achieving the future where every person has access to health and affordable food, where food production meets environmental needs and helps biodiversity, and where people who produce the food we all eat are paid a living wage, means that food systems as they stand must change, and as IFAD says, the needs of rural people have to be at the centre.
The best news is this is a virtual platform, so no matter where you are in the world, you can follow the proceedings. Register here: www.unfoodsystems.org/registration.
- Suzanne Christiansen, editor, Dairy Industries International.
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Great points here and if one adds in India with the importance of dairy for supporting families and women then we are talking about over 170M people