Secretary-General, in Video Message, Calls for Efforts to Help Smallholder

 

Farmers Worldwide Produce Enough Food, Increase Resilience

 

Following is the text of UN Secretary-General’s video message to the IFPRI 2020 Policy Consultation and Conference “Building Resilience for Food and Nutrition, in Addis Ababa today:

Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,

I am pleased to greet the IFPRI (International Food Policy Research Institute) 2020 Policy Consultation and Conference.  Your work is vital to helping achieve our shared vision of zero hunger and producing food sustainably for all.

Climate change is already having a devastating impact on all aspects of food security, from production and prices to food quality and safety.

In this International Year of Family Farming, we have to do everything we can to enable the 500 million smallholder farmers around the world to produce enough food and increase their resilience to the shocks caused by a warming world.

This means special attention to the challenges faced by women farmers, who are often the backbone of small-scale food production.

I am encouraged by progress towards forging a Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture, which can bring together Governments, farmers, fishers and forest user groups, civil society, the private sector and research institutions.

At the Climate Summit I am convening on 23 September in New York, I will be pressing for actions that can sustainably increase agricultural productivity, and that can reduce and remove the emissions associated with agriculture.

Let us all do our part to combat climate change and end global hunger.  Let us be on the side of people — and on the right side of history.  Thank you.

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For information media • not an official record