Feeding the World – the Role of Agricultural Cooperatives

Internasjonal seminar International Cooperative Agricultural Organization (ICAO), Radisson Blu Plaza Hotel, Oslo, Norway

Dear,

This important seminar is an opportunity to support and highlight the United Nations International Year of Cooperatives 2012.  We need to raise awareness of the contribution of cooperatives in the agricultural sector to socio-economic development, particularly their impact on poverty reduction, employ­ment generation and social integration. 

The United Nations conference on sustainable development, Rio+ 20, sent a clear message in June: Food security and nutrition has become a pressing global challenge.

FAO has estimated that world food production must increase by 70 percent by 2050. This challenge is related both to global population growth and to the increased food consumption, which is due to the enhanced general welfare level in many countries. 

The problems we experience regarding food security are intensified by climate-change. This summer, drought in the United States pushed up maize prices by almost 23 per­cent. Rising food prices has so far mainly affected consumers in developing countries that already use most of their income to buy food. 

I was recently in India, where climate change threatens food production. The concerns of the farmers I met in India were in many ways not so different from the concerns of Norwegian farmers.   All farmers are looking for ways to produce more safe and nutritious food to their population and to be able to ensure the livelihood of their families.   One important difference between the farmers in Norway and India was that many farmers I met in India were not part of a producer organization. To me and for the Indian farmers, this is an important difference, because the role of cooperatives is fundamental. Coopera­tives offer opportunities that farmers, particularly smallholders, cannot achieve individually. By collective efforts farmers can use cooperatives to establish common basic services related to their plant-production and their animal husbandry. 

In Norway the cooperatives are of major importance in the agricultural sector, and this has been the situation for many decades. They have ensured market access for the farmers and more or less the same producer-prices to all farmers, regardless of their extent of produc­tion and where they are located in our long country. By doing this, the cooperatives have ensured:

• food production all over the country,
• sustainable resource management and
• sufficient level of food-production for Norwegian consumers.

The Norwegian government will continue to build our agricultural policy on the contri­bution from the cooperatives. 

Based on our positive experiences with cooperatives in the Norwegian agricul­ture, I am certain that farmers in developing countries should be encouraged to increased partici­pation in cooperatives. More participation in the cooperative movement will not only be of importance for progress in the food production. I will also underline the key role cooperatives have on farmer’s democratic participation and general socio-economic develop­ment. 

There is a great need to increase global food production. To contribute to this common goal, the Norwegian government will do what we can to increase our national food production. We will also strengthen our development aid to the agricultural sector. 

In addition, I will strongly underline the very important key role FAO has in the common effort to make sure all people have sufficient access to food. We will use FAO as a facilitator for securing food to a growing world. 

Thank you,