Peace for Food – High Level Roundtable

Global stakeholders, including key government and OECD officials, World Bank, Academic community, agriculture sector leaders and members from our national business organizations met in Paris this week to take current stock of food markets, in the context of the food crisis, and discuss which policies are needed to ensure progress in agriculture innovation and tackling climate and sustainability challenges.

This high-level interactive discussion served as a highlight of our Peace for Food campaign, which we have launched in July 2022 in response to the recent challenges to global food security. The event contributes to identifying concrete targeted and effective transformative solutions to the key challenges facing the agriculture sector in these challenging times.

Addressing over 120 international participants, our Executive Director Hanni Rosenbaum stressed how our campaign aims to « demonstrate and highlight different actors’ responsibilities to support free flow of trade in agri-food products, to provide livelihoods along the food chain our partnership is inspired on a global scale by the need to build bridges between public and private sectors to ensure business is seen as an effective solutions partner in the challenges we face. » The program also featured over 10 OECD Ambassadors, World Bank representatives, OECD Deputy Secretary General Ulrik Knudsen, Trade and Agriculture Director Marion Jansen, Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS) Chair, and Chief Economist, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Seth Meyer, and business leaders from our Business at OECD Food and Agriculture Committee.

The discussion contributed practical insights on how to address the risks facing global food systems and the campaign enables an on-going dialogue across critical players in public, private, and non-governmental sectors, which is critically needed to ensure that respective efforts are complementary and remain responsive to evolving needs.

Following the meeting, we will produce a synthesis report as an input to the OECD Agriculture Ministerial in November, the theme of which is ‘building sustainable agriculture and food systems in a changing environment: shared challenges, transformative solutions’.