The report of the International Agriculture Assessment, approved last week by 57 governments in Johannesburg, is a sobering account of the failure of industrial farming. It calls for a fundamental change in the way we do farming, to better address soaring food prices, hunger, social inequities and environmental disasters.

The report reflects a growing consensus among the global scientific community and most governments that the old paradigm of industrial, energy-intensive and toxic agriculture is a concept of the past. The key message of the report is that small-scale farmers and agro-ecological methods provide the way forward to avert the current food crisis and meet the needs of local communities. For the first time an independent, global assessment acknowledges that farming has a diversity of environmental and social functions and that nations and peoples have the right to democratically determine their best food and agricultural policies.

A new era of agriculture begins today, International agriculture assessment calls for immediate radical changes, Civil Society Statement from Johannesburg, South Africa, 12 April 2008
Civil Society Statement from Johannesburg, South Africa: A new era of agriculture begins today by , Twnside.org.sg, 12 April, 2008