G20 agriculture ministers should focus on small farmers to address food price volatility

"When the G20 Ministers of Agriculture develop an action plan to address food price volatility and its impact on the poor, they should focus on both urgent actions and the vital role of smallholder farmers," Shenggen Fan, director-general of the International Food Policy Research Institute, writes in an Inter Press Service opinion piece.

"But before the international community issues any new recommendations, they first need to make good on previous commitments, including the G8's L'Aquila pledge in 2009 to invest 22 billion dollars in agriculture, which must be targeted to small-scale farmers. When it comes to achieving food security and reducing poverty, poor farmers in developing countries might be part of the challenge, but they are definitely indispensable to the solution," he concludes (6/15).