Farming has to Come First to Achieve the MDGs

摘要

Returning crops and the farmer to the centre of policy decisions is fundamental to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and to sustainable development. As the food crisis of 2008 showed, governments, businesses, scientists and civil society groups need to focus on the sources of our food and nutrition security. To avoid such events, all these groups must work togetherto enable the millions of farm families, especially smallholders and women farmers, to increase crop production sustainably through the maintenance of effective markets, more collaborative research. and committed knowledge sharing. The fertilizer industry is committed to building alliances and partnerships that will enable farmers worldwide access to knowledge. technologies and capacities. Our experience as a private partner is that in most countries the main constraint is not availability of technology or knowledge, but how to deliver the same to the farmers' gate. We call this "last-mile delivery" - of knowledge, services, tools, innovation and markets. We endorse paragraph 42 of the proposed outcome document, but believe it needs to include reference to infrastructure. functional markets and commitment to CAADP agreements.