The United Nations General Assembly formally adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development with a pledge by 193 world leaders to double the agricultural productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers and ensure sustainable food production systems by 2030. Gathering at the UN Headquarters in New York for the Sustainable Development Summit, international leaders signed off the so-called Agenda 2030 – a framework applicable to all countries to help eradicate poverty and achieve sustainable development.
The agenda seeks to fight inequality and tackle climate change and guide policy decisions over the next 15 years. The plan – comprising 17 Sustainable Development Goals and 169 associated targets – hopes to eradicate poverty, develop sustainable agriculture, and create food security systems, including:
- By 2030, double the agricultural productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers, in particular women, indigenous peoples, family farmers, pastoralists and fishers, including through secure and equal access to land, other productive resources and inputs, knowledge, financial services, markets and opportunities for value addition and non-farm employment;
- By 2030, ensure sustainable food production systems and implement resilient agricultural practices that increase productivity and production, that help maintain ecosystems, that strengthen capacity for adaptation to climate change, extreme weather, drought, flooding and other disasters and that progressively improve land and soil quality;
- By 2020, maintain the genetic diversity of seeds, cultivated plants and farmed and domesticated animals and their related wild species, including through soundly managed and diversified seed and plant banks at the national, regional and international levels, and promote access to and fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the utilization of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge, as internationally agreed;
- Increase investment, including through enhanced international cooperation, in rural infrastructure, agricultural research and extension services, technological solutions for sustainable agriculture, and plant and livestock gene banks in order to enhance agricultural productive capacity in developing countries, in particular least developed countries;
- Correct and prevent trade restrictions and distortions in world agricultural markets, including through the parallel elimination of all forms of agricultural export subsidies and all export measures with equivalent effect, in accordance with the mandate of the Doha Development Round;
- Adopt measures to ensure the proper functioning of food commodity markets and their derivatives and facilitate timely access to market information, including on food reserves, in order to help limit extreme food price volatility.