A view on the UNCTAD's Trade and Environment Report

Opinion article by: Veronica Vasquez Zuluaga(*) (vvelasq5@eafit.edu.co )

Law undergraduate student at Universidad EAFIT, Colombia

As everyone knows, weather is changing, and these shifts have made the agriculture change. The Trade and Environment report 2013 by UNCTAD is based on agriculture of the entire World, critical aspects of agriculture, the economy for the agriculture and gives some recommendations to have stable agriculture.

The report starts with a premise; the imbalance between where the food is produced and where it is needed, this report gives some advises to maintain the balance. It recommends the industrial productions, the implementation of fertilizers and agro- chemicals. Instead, it says that the goal should be “sustainable regenerative production systems that also improve the productivity of small-scale farmers and foster rural development”. Also gives the government’s ways to implement good mechanisms to agriculture to farmers, for example give them clean water, soil and landscape preservation, protection of biodiversity etc.

In the regions where the weather doesn’t let agriculture grow, have more troubles with hunger, drought, rising food prices and access to land. These situations may lead massive migrations and to international conflicts over food and resources such as soil and water. It reaffirm that the priority is give the rural poor areas the possibility of being self-sufficient in food and to earn enough income through agriculture so that they can get food.

Anyway the UNCTAD invites to make some adaptions in trade rules to encourage as much food production as possible, as much trade food as necessary. We need to continue working to protect environment because it is the purest resource that the human kind have.