Participants wishing to contribute to the Conference are invited to send to the Secretariat a summary - not exceeding 1000 words – describing research results or case studies related to organic agriculture and food security. More specifically:
- Case studies must involve several hundred farmers to offer meaningful lessons, including statistically analyzed data;
- Case studies could feature either success or failure in organic agriculture;
- Conclusions should be made on opportunities and constraints offered by organic food supply systems to food security in the medium and longer term and at different levels: household; local community; national; and international (such projections are most likely impossible due to lack of data but some reasonable assumption may be feasible).
- the main food security dimension to which your paper belongs: food availability; food access; food stability; or food utilization (see annotations on Conference themes below);
- the agro-ecological areas to which your paper belongs: arid and semi-arid areas of uncertain rainfall; humid and per-humid lowlands; temperate and irrigated lands; or hill and mountain areas.
Papers should be sent to the Conference Secretariat (mail: organicag@fao.org) by 1 March 2007. By 15 April 2007, you will be informed whether your paper is accepted for publishing in the Conference Proceedings. Selected but not all accepted papers will be orally presented at the Conference.
Conference material
All accepted papers will be published in the Conference Proceedings. Papers received through this Conference call, together with a literature review, will shape the content of the main Conference’ documents on the contribution of organic agriculture to each of the four dimensions of food security. These four synthesis documents will allow the preparation of an analytical document on organic agriculture and food security/sovereignty.
All the above will be published electronically prior to the Conference. These and the Conference’ summary deliberations will be published in a Report, in both electronic and hard formats. A hard copy of the Report will be made available to all Conference participants free of charge, obviously after the Conference.
Guidance to authors on the Conference themes
FAO definitions:
- Food security: when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food which meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life (World Food Summit, 1996);
- National food security: when a sufficient, stable and safe supply of food is available in a country to satisfy basic needs and market demand (SPFS );
- Household food security: when a household can produce or obtain sufficient food to meet all of its members’ nutrition needs (SPFS);
- Sustainable food security: when national and household food security are assured and natural resources are managed sustainably (SPFS).
Food availability covers both domestic production and import capacity, including:
- o Improving productivity, especially of small-scale farmers, during and beyond transition;
- Enhancing urban food supplies, including both urban provisioning and urban/peri-urban agriculture;
- Supporting local knowledge-based food systems and ability to produce;
- Developing rural markets;
- Promoting alternative markets and rural-urban networks;
- Improving the functioning of input/output markets and international trade;
- Generating adapted technology, scale-appropriate, site-specific and based on efficient energy use and recycled local renewable resources.
- Promoting income earning and livelihoods through access to new market opportunities (e.g. labour markets, return on labour costs, food prices/premiums);
- Facilitating the creation of rural non-farm enterprises (e.g. agro-ecotourism);
- Enhancing access to productive assets, including land, biodiversity and environmental services (e.g. nutrient cycling, predation, pollination);
- Reducing production input costs and debt;
- Improving access to credit and saving services, including the functioning of rural financial systems;
- Promoting food self-sufficiency and self-reliance, social emancipation and community control on agriculture and food systems;
- Contributing to rural development, including reversing rural exodus.
- Facilitating diversification and reducing production variability and risk (e.g. increasing resistance to pests and diseases);
- Mitigating and adapting to climate change and variability;
- Stabilizing marginal lands and increasing soil resilience to stress (e.g. droughts);
- Contributing to water productivity and use efficiency;
- Contributing to local biodiversity and participatory seed/breed systems;
- Contributing to production-consumption shortfalls through food stocks and safety nets;
- Decreasing import dependency through vibrant local food systems.
- Minimizing losses of post-harvest operations (e.g. storage);
- Improving efficiency of transportation and distribution systems;
- Complying with food safety regulations;
- Contributing to safe drinking water and sanitation;
- Improving food quality and nutritional efficiency;
- Improving health and immunological parameters;
- Reducing toxic exposure to farmers and non-point sources of pollution.
Food Security: Concepts and Measurements (ESC, 2002)
Strengthening Coherence in FAO’s Initiatives to Fight Hunger (C:2003/16)
Eradicating Extreme Poverty and Hunger: Towards a Coherent Policy Agenda (ESA, 2006)
Mid-Term Review of Achieving the World Food Summit Target (CFS:2006/3)