Trade Hogs Sustainable Agriculture Conference

In the last moments of the final Plenary, the Cairns Group huddled around French delegation in a corner of the hall
and confronted their attempt to promote recognition and further work on Multifunctionality in Agriculture, in the
final text of the Chairman's report. References to this were deleted, as a result.

Instead of agreeing how to increase use of sustainable agricultural practices, recognising the multiple functions that
agriculture provides for food security, income, social development and the environment, the conference was
hijacked by the upcoming trade agenda of the WTO. It dissolved into a wrangle about possible trade advantages or
distortions in trade from so-called protectionist measures. Poor countries and Civil Society Organisations could
only watch, aghast.

Key points and links

• This conference was an intersessional meeting in preparation for CSD 8 in Apr/May 2000 which will review Chapter 14  (Sustainable Agricultre and Rural Development) and Chapter 10 (Management of Land)
• A report on the conference was fedback to UK-based NGOs via the UNED-UK roundtable, which, with the UKabc will facilitate linking with the CSD Sustainable Agriculture Caucus in preparation for CSD 8.
• UNED-UK has posted a useful Road Map of agreements that relate to the agriculture elements of CSD 8 which provides links to the text of the agreements.
• RAFI's plenary statements called for greater attention to rural poverty, for a ban of Terminator Technologies and switching investment from biotechnology research to work on sustainable agricultural systems (see IISD/ENB Summary report).
• RAFI also emphasised the role of Agricultural Biodiversity in sustaining agriculture and agroecosystem functions and publicised the excellent background paper on "Sustaining the