Food and Agriculture : The Future of Sustainability

This report intends to cut across worldviews and foster meaningful discussions on the trends and challenges in agriculture. It proposes nine areas of consensus emerge as the key paths of action: 1.Organized small and medium farmers, fully including women farmers, should be a primary focus of investment - recognizing that private enterprise will play a significant role in many solutions. 2. Define the goal in terms of human nutrition rather than simply "more production." 3. Pursue high yields within a healthy ecology - they are not mutually exclusive and policy and research must reflect that. 4. Impel innovation and the availability of diverse technologies suitable in different socioeconomic and ecological contexts. 5. Significantly reduce waste along the entire food chain. 6. Avoid diverting food crops and productive land for biofuels, but explore decentralized biofuel systems to promote energy and livelihood security that also diversify and restore rural landscapes. 7. Insist on intelligent and transparent measurement of results - we cannot manage what we cannot measure. 8. Develop and adapt public and private institutions that can effectively respond to these new goals. 9. Motivate and reward investments and business systems that result in measurable impacts to the "public good."

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