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Opening message from FAO’s Director General
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“Today, the world still produces food mainly based on the principles of the Green Revolution. Most of this production is based on high-input and resource-intensive farming systems at a high cost for the environment. As a result, soil, forests, water, air quality and biodiversity continue to degrade.
And this focus on increasing production at any cost has not been sufficient to eradicate hunger, despite the fact that nowadays we produce more than enough to feed everyone. In addition, we are seeing a global epidemic of obesity.
This is situation is unsustainable. We have reached an inflection point.
We need to promote a transformative change in the way that we produce and consume food. We need to put forward sustainable food systems that offer health and nutritious food, and preserve the environment.
Agroecology can offer several contributions to this process.”
José Graziano da Silva
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The Symposium: activities and outcomes
Building on the 1st International Symposium on Agroecology in 2014 and the subsequent regional seminars organized in 2015-2016, the 2nd International Symposium on Agroecology: Scaling Up Agroecology to achieve the SDGs, took place at FAO Headquarters in Rome on 3-5 April 2018.
About 760 participants from 350 organizations, 72 governments and 6 United Nations agencies attended and more than 100 speakers and facilitators reflected, discussed and shared their visions and knowledge on how to scale up agroecology. Country representatives, policy-makers, farmers and agroecology practitioners, scientists, civil society organizations, foundations and private sector representatives participated in several interactive panels covering a range of key issues related to agroecology, from policy issues to innovative markets and co-creation of knowledge. Additionally, innovation, financing and inter-agency cooperation were discussed in dedicated parallel sessions.
The video recordings of the sessions can be found here.
The Symposium attracted wide global attention: more than 700 news articles and over 9 000 posts on social media were published on the event, reaching an estimated audience of 46 million people.
During the last day of the Symposium, it was launched the Scaling up Agroecology Initiative, a forward-looking proposal for action built on the outcomes of the international and regional symposia. This represents a 10–year endeavor to harness practices, policies, knowledge and alliances on agroecology to achieve equitable and sustainable food systems. The Initiative aims at accompanying and supporting national agroecology transition processes by focusing on three areas: knowledge and innovation, policy guidance and networks.
As FAO provides a neutral space for exchanging knowledge and experiences on agroecology, it will continue to play a role in bringing together a wide range of actors to learn from each other’s experiences, to share policy lessons, and to collaborate in supporting and scaling up agroecology in the future.
For further information on the Symposium and the latest news related to agroecology, you can visit the Symposium website or the Agroecology Knowledge Hub here.
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