A World on Fire: Leaders Met on COP26 to Address Climate Change

This week, the 2030 agenda for climate change and agricultural production was a common topic of discussion in Mexico and abroad. Policymakers also addressed strategies to reduce child labor globally and handle the lack of water in numerous regions.

 Interested in more? Here are the week’s major headlines in Agribusiness & Food!

• Agricultural production has grown steadily during the past two decades to address the needs of a growing population. FAO’s Statistical Yearbook showed that by 2019 the added value generated by agriculture, forestry and fishing reached US$3.5 trillion. In terms of production, primary crops grew by 53 percent between 2000 and 2019, reaching a historical maximum of 9.4 billion tons in 2019. Mexico has also grown significantly in agricultural and fishing production and exports and is well-positioned in the global framework. For the seventh year in a row, Mexico registered a surplus in its agricultural and agro-industrial trade balance. Mexico’s 2030 objectives target the continuous development of the agriculture industry, which is increasingly necessary for the wake of the pandemic. 

• Political leaders opened discussions at the East Glasgow climate summit Monday with a series of warnings urging all countries to take action. The UN warned that the world is digging its own grave given rising sea levels, more powerful storms, deadly heatwaves and rapidly changing ecosystems. The organization highlights that the sustainable goals for 2030 are increasingly far from being achieved, given that the progress that had been made up to this point is being lost. The conference aims to prevent the global temperature from rising more than 1.5° C to reduce the threats posed by global warming, such as deadly heatwaves, water shortages, poor harvests and the collapse of ecosystems.

• Almost one out of every 10 children are involved in child labor, totaling 160 million children around, reported FAO during the Global Forum for Child Labor Solutions. About 70 percent of these children (112 million) work in crop production, livestock, forestry, fishing and aquaculture. Eliminating child labor by 2025 is one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). With only four agricultural seasons left to reach that goal, effective action and “strong and consistent leadership from agri-food stakeholders around the world are critical to achieving SDG target 8.7,” says QU Dongyu, Director-General, FAO.

• The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (SADER) stated that no effort would be spared to support the Central American and Caribbean nations fighting the spread of African swine fever (ASF) and the giant African snail to avoid its dispersion to other territories in the region.