Global Forum for Food and Agriculture 2014 - How to feed the World!

Global Forum for Food and Agriculture, took place in Berlin on January 16 – 18, 2014 under the title “Empowering Agriculture: Fostering Resilience – Securing Food and Nutrition“. YPARD Georgia had a great opportunity to attend the conference and represent Young Professionals' Platform for Agriculture Development at the forum. 

 

This international conference was organized by the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) in cooperation with GFFA Berlin, the Senate of Berlin and Messe Berlin GmbH. GFFA represents a unique possibility for policy makers, business representatives, scientists and civil society to gather and share ideas about the various issues related to current agri - food policy. 

 

The central question that has been addressed by the conference participants during the opening event was “How to ensure enough food for the growing world population?” One of the distinguished speaker during the event was Sir Gordon Conway who is a professor of International Development at London Imperial College.

 

According to him the world is facing the following 3 key challenges in terms of food security:

As Convey mentioned, crucial obstacles to feed the world by 2050 can be divided into two parts demand side including: population growth, changing diets, biofuel demand and supply side including: rising fuel & fertilizer prices, climate change and land & water scarcity. One important point is clear for everybody namely: “on the same amount of land or less, with the same amount of water or less, should be produced more with less”.

 

Sir Gordon Convey came up with interesting ideas and said that in order to meet the future food demand should be intensified: 

Therefore this intensification should be sustainable meaning that it should meet economic, ecological and social aspects as well as strengthening resilience. 

 

The second part of GFFA forum was devoted to international panel discussions, where each participant could register on the pre-determined topic of discussion and attend the stakeholder meetings. I have attended the following panels: Empowering Agriculture: Foster Resilience – Securing Food and Nutrition, Food systems for better nutrition, Agriculture as key driver for social and economic development in South Eastern Europe and Eastern Europe as key region to contribute to global food security. 

 

While global leaders have been discussing how to tackle the challenges that the world is facing in terms of ensuring the food security, it was mentioned several times the importance of involvement of young qualified people in the sector. Personally I think that today, as we are living in the technology booming world, young people can play a vital role and can contribute for the development of sustainable agriculture globally. 

 

Cooperation Market was one of the important part of the forum, where were presented various consulting companies active in agriculture sector, international development organizations, agriculture technology providers and other stakeholders. I had an opportunity to meet personally the representatives of the following companies and organizations: AFC Consulting Group, GFA Consulting Group, AGEG Consulting Group, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ), Icon Institute and etc. 

 

GFFA is a unique opportunity for global leaders to gather around the discussion table, share knowledge, experience and come up with innovative solutions to better respond the global challenges in agriculture sector.  

 

I would like to address to all YPARD members with this question: We all know that agricultural products are perishable and have certain period of shelf-life. Today there are many evidences that thousand tons of food are damaged and particularly thrown away because of not enough storage facilities. Do we really have to think about increasing the food production in order to meet the demand of 9 billion people by 2050 while considering that every day thousand tons of food are damaged and thrown away because of not adequate storage?