CORRECTION: An earlier version of this news release wrongly described the venue as a joint FAO-WHO panel. The panel was organized by FAO and the World Trade Organization (WTO) as indicated in the rest of the release. [FAO NEWS RELEASE - www.fao.org] Contact FAO Media Relations Office (+39) 06 570 53625 [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> Putting trade to work for the goal of food security FAO Director-General emphasizes need for efficiency gains and balance between agriculture and environmental factors 17 January 2020, Berlin -Trade is a way that countries can tap their own local advantages and close food security gaps, FAO Director-General QU Dongyu said today. "Every country has a different situation and FAO has to deal with all these differences," he said. Trade is a powerful channel through which the gap can be closed between countries , he added at a FAO-WTO joint high-level panel at the Global Forum for Food and Agriculture<https://www.gffa-berlin.de/en/> exploring the theme of "harnessing trade for achieving Sustainable Development Goal 2". The goal that FAO pursues is to "improve efficiency" with an eye to sustainability, natural resources and the environment, he added. Balancing agriculture and environmental factors is something every country, independent of their economic development stage, will have to do to improve production and efficiency, the Director-General said. Alan Wolff, Deputy Director-General of the World Trade Organization, Oumer Hussein, Agriculture Minister for Ethiopia, Zaha Waheed, Fisheries, Marine Resources and Agriculture Minister for Maldives, Beauty Manake, Assistant Agricultural Development and Food Security Minister for Botswana, and Chris Forbes, Deputy Agriculture Minister for Canada, also participated in the round-table event. Some 70 ministers and vice-ministers are meeting at the Global Forum in Berlin. A point of consensus is that trade policies should form part of a larger integrated strategy that, among other objectives, enable smallholder farmers in developing countries - who produce a huge share of the world's food but paradoxically are among the most vulnerable to hunger - to benefit from integration into the world's agrifood value chains. What to do Up to 80 percent of the world's population in 20 to 30 years will live in cities, making urban areas the driving force for the way food systems must evolve, the Director-General emphasized. "We have to rethink agriculture, including crop production and animal husbandry ... and our ways of life," he said. Digitalization can help ensure more efficiency, and e-commerce has great potential to help bridge gaps and promote rural development. New approaches to digitalization are needed, "because we are already a digital world," he noted. The Director-General pointed to FAO's new Hand-in-Hand Initiative<http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/1253626/icode/> as a "new business model" geared to engaging all United Nations agencies, the private and civil sectors and academia to work together :to focus on the vulnerable countries and people. The first two Sustainable Development Goals, calling for an eradication of extreme poverty and of hunger, are priorities, he said. | read this story online<http://www.fao.org/news/archive/news-by-date/2019/en/> | [2019 ##/en] Journalists & editors: For video, photos, audio clips contact: (+39) 06 570 53625 or [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>. Online tools: Footage download via FAO Media Vault<http://tv.fao.org/> Photos via the FAOnews Flickr account<http://www.flickr.com/photos/faonews> FAO's online newsroom<http://www.fao.org/news/newsroom-home/en/> RSS feed<http://www.fao.org/news/rss-feed/en/> of FAO news releases Follow us on Twitter: @FAOnews<https://twitter.com/faonews/> This news release was issued by the Media Office at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). To unsubscribe from this news service click the link below or send an email to [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> with "signoff Media-G-Eng-L" as the only text in the message body. You can also manage your subscription online, here<https://listserv.fao.org/cgi-bin/wa>. To receive news releases in plain text format rather than HTML, contact us. FAO | Viale delle Terme di Caracalla, 00153 Rome, Italy | (+39) 06 570 53625 | www.fao.org<http://www.fao.org> ######################################################################## To unsubscribe from the Media-G-German-L list, click the following link: &*TICKET_URL(Media-G-German-L,SIGNOFF);