Agriculture is part of the solution to the world's environmental challenge and must play a key role at next June's Rio summit on sustainable development, the Brazilian head of the UN food agency said here Tuesday. "Agriculture ministers from the entire world must be present at the Rio+20 meeting (in June) so that agriculture commits itself to helping clean up the planet," Jose Graziano da Silva, the new boss of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), said.
"Agriculture contributes 30 percent of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming and we must raise the awareness of our farmers," he added during an event organised by local authorities ahead of the opening of the World Social Forum (WSF) here later Tuesday. The Rio+20 summit next June, the fourth major summit on sustainable development since 1972, will call on world leaders to commit themselves to creating a social and "green economy," with priority being given to eradicating hunger.
The WSF, which runs through Sunday, brings together tens of thousands of anti-capitalist militants opposed to the World Economic Forum, the annual gathering of the world's economic and political elites being held at the same time in the Swiss resort of Davos. Forum participants are to mull alternative solutions to the global economic crisis and prepare the ground for a peoples' summit of social movements to be held in parallel to next June's Rio+20 summit on sustainable development.
"Agriculture is not just part of the problem, it is also part of the solution to the environment issue. It can contribute a lot to the planet's sustainable development, by finding techniques less harmful to the environment, by helping with clean energy and with a better redistribution of production," Graziano said. Graziano is a former Brazilian food security minister and the first Latin American to head FAO, a UN agency which battles hunger affecting over a billion people globally.
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