To Balance Food Systems
Sunita, a smallholder farmer in India, barely ever receives a price higher than the production cost for her corn; nor does Abike for her wheat in Nigeria, even though demand is soaring. Both – like the majority of the world’s farmers – are tormented by cheaper imports fuelled by agricultural trade agreements within the World Trade Organisation (WTO) framework. This drives down the farmgate prices for farmers in food-importing countries while incentivising industrial agricultural production in food-exporting countries, which depends on extensive use of fertilisers, energy and pesticides, and contributes to biodiversity loss.