For Immediate Release
(February 1, 2021) – Solutions from the Land (SfL) has been selected by organizers of a global food security summit next week to hold a side event which will spotlight systems and practices farmers are using to deliver high value solutions to improve food and nutrition security.
The side event, which, like the summit, will be held virtually, will also demonstrate on a world stage that the systems and practices highlighted by SfL will simultaneously enhance health and livelihoods, improve the environment, enhance biodiversity and deliver high value terrestrial solutions to climate change.
Focusing on outcomes, farmers and ranchers participating in the side event – “Agricultural Solutions: Forging Consensus Against Linked Food Security, Nutrition, Health and Climate Challenges” – will showcase how they are harnessing innovation and technology, coupled with conservation and agroecology systems and practices, to meet global sustainable development goals (SDGs).
The SDGs are a collection of 17 interlinked global objectives – ending hunger, restoring clean water and curbing climate change, among them – set in 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly to be achieved by 2030.
“Farmer-to-farmer knowledge sharing,” said SfL President Ernie Shea, “is a highly effective method for inspiring, educating, and equipping agricultural partners to innovate effective local adaptations. It can also sustain productivity, enhance climate resilience, and contribute to the local and global goals for sustainable development. This side event will spotlight the efficacy of this approach to learning and practice adoption.”
“The critical importance of agriculture in meeting world food security, nutrition, health and wellbeing, livelihoods, a changing climate and other environmental goals has never been more visible than seen through the lens of the current global health pandemic,” said SfL Co-Chair A.G. Kawamura, a California grower and shipper of produce and specialty crops.
“Our experience working with multi-stakeholder agricultural land management collaboratives at the regional, state, national and global level has shown us there is no silver bullet approach or technology to enable farms, ranches and forests to achieve global sustainable development goals,” said Kawamura, who will moderate a four-member panel of farmers from around the globe during the 75-minute side event. “Land management policies must embrace a multi-system approach that recognizes the tremendous diversity of agricultural landscapes and ecosystems and enables producers to utilize the systems and practices that best support their farming operations.”
The side event will also include a technical presentation on the sustainable use of soil resources from the director of Innovation, Good practices and Agricultural Technologies at the Argentine Ministry of Agriculture.
Organizing the event along with SfL are the Global Farmer Network, the Global Dairy Platform and the Private Sector Mechanism. Besides the United States, other nations co-hosting the event are Argentina, Australia, and the Netherlands.
For additional information, contact SfL President Ernie Shea at 410-952-0123, or Eshea@SfLDialogue.net.
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Solutions from the Land (SfL) builds and facilitates state, national and global initiatives and alliances through which farmers, ranchers, foresters and collaborating partners showcase examples of innovation and proactively advocate for policies, partnerships, investments and research that will enable agricultural landscapes to deliver near-term, cost-effective, integrated solutions to global mega-challenges: food and energy security; sustainable economic development; climate change and environmental improvement. For more on SfL, click HERE.
