The agricultural sector of America, which produces a third of world food it must be seen as “part of the solution” to the global environmental crisis and must be part of the “environmental negotiations” to make its contribution in a world context “that has no real dimension of what agriculture is in the Americas”. .
The director general of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation in Agriculture (IICA), Manuel Otero, head of this organization specialized in the agricultural sector of the Inter-American System, said this Saturday at the COP27 climate summit held in the Egyptian city of Sharm the Sheikh.
And he stressed that the work of farmers is essential to ensure food security in the Americas and the Caribbean.
“To get food on our tables we need farmers in rural areas. And for food to be healthy we need health, well-being and prosperity in the countryside,” Otero said. “The quality of life in cities depends on the quality of life and prosperity in the countryside,” he added, during a panel organized by the World Food Prize Foundation.
Otero presented at the meeting where global solutions to address climate change are discussed a consensus document signed by agriculture ministers across America which underlined “that there can be no environmental sustainability if there is no food security”, for which the region has a leading role.
In this sense, he warned, calls for a transition to production without greenhouse gas emissions, or for the elimination of sectors or crops, are problematic and require a lot of “responsibility”.
“The transitions have to be gradual, if you tell me we have to move to the very advanced positions of agroecology, now there is no science, innovation needed or available. We have to move with caution,” Otero told the news agency EFE .
Just this Saturday we celebrate the agriculture day at COP27, which is already entering its week of political deliberations, and in this context the Argentine expert expressed his concern that the role of the region is not considered or that agriculture is even accused of environmental damage without considering that, either way, done, it is guarantor of food safety world.
In this sense, Otero defended agriculture in the Americas for its “tendency, which will consolidate” to improve land use, to control deforestation and its emissions.
“It is a continent that breathes agriculture. We have a past, a present, but above all a future that needs to be built or perhaps rebuilt in some aspects, with this more sustainable agriculture that we have come to present today at this COP, because many good things are happening “, added the director of the IICA.
Responsibility
In his opinion, given the responsibility of agriculture in global warming, he indicated: “We are all guilty”, even if within that “co-responsibility, it must be clear that only a third” of harmful emissions come from agri-food systems.
“The crisis is so serious that we all have to take responsibility,” he insisted.
At the same time, the expert said he was very satisfied with the positions that invite us to face the global climate and food crisis “with a systemic vision”.
“This is perfect and we accept it, I like production from producer to consumer, because it is utopian to think that we will have healthy, abundant and quality food if we don’t start from the beginning, which is to have agricultural production, and for this you have to have producers on their farms and those producers must be in more or less prosperous rural areas where there are services,” he reasoned.
In any case, Otero stressed that “agriculture can only be sustainable” and that if it’s not, “it’s not agriculture”.
Source: EFE
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Source: Clarin
