On Friday 6 May the iPES-Food expert group unveiled its ideas, including building up regional grain stocks and reducing biofuel production, to help the European Union overcome the global crisis of high agricultural prices resulting from the Russia-provoked war in Ukraine.
The iPES-Food report, co-chaired by Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, turns its back on current responses to the crisis, which “exacerbate current trends”. The experts are opposed to measures aiming to suspend environmental regulations, increase industrial food production or “promote fertiliser-dependent and export-oriented agriculture”.
The experts make several other recommendations, including providing financial assistance and debt relief to vulnerable countries, cracking down on “excessive commodity speculation” and improving market transparency, diversifying food production and restructuring trade flows, and reducing livestock numbers and dependence on fertilisers and fossil fuels in food production.
The EU has taken various measures to increase agricultural production and to provide for derogations on the use of set-aside land.
Link to the iPES-Food report: https://aeur.eu/f/1jc (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)