2-5 November Conference Agriculture, Food and Climate Change

An international conference organised by our ministry of Economics, Agriculture and Innovation, together with the World Bank, FAO, Norway and Etihopia, is discussing these topics this week.  A number of organisations are not at all happy about it;  a letter of protest with as key elements:  No farmers and CSOs were involved in the planning – who gave these organisers their mandate?    / There is no transparency, it was made very difficult to join the conference / ecology should come first, not industrial agriculture / the priority is  ’technological fixes’, and  carbon markets instead of  PUBLIC financing of  adaptation to climate change / earlier findings by IAASTD have been shelved.

 

Platform ABC organised a side event about  ‘BOTTOM-UP’ projects, on Wednesday 3 November from 1-3

Speakers were : Joop de Koeijer (farmer, member of NAV and Via Campesina)  / Janice Jiggins, researcher at Wageningen (Communications and Inoovation Studies), and involved in the IAASTD project, and  / Koos Michel, Oxfam/Novib.

This handout provides info about their talks and the resources they find useful.

This message was submitted for the ‘Chairman’s Summary’ after the debate that followed.

Lunch provided: As an illustration of Joop’s wish that oilseed crops such as lupins should be re-introduced, buns with fillings made of lupins and soy were provided from ’the vegetarian butcher’ (www.devegetarischeslager.nl).  An environment-friendly su bsitute for meat. See this info on lupins  for more info. 

For info that was provided on the efforts to reform the CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) see ‘Leeshoek (= library) on GLB (= CAP), entry for 3 november