Today, the World Farmers’ Organisation (WFO) hosted the first virtual meeting of the recently established ad-hoc “WFO Task Force on Trade“.

The Task Force on Trade gathers together the Facilitators of all WFO Working Groups and Committees, 16 Delegates from interested WFO Member Organisations and the WFO Secretary General (and/or staff of the WFO International Secretariat). (WFO Task Force on Trade – List of Participants)

Last year the WFO General Assembly adopted “The Policy Development Roadmap 2021-2022” that includes a political mandate to the WFO Board to establish an ad-hoc Task Force with the objective to coordinate the discussion among WFO Members aimed at exploring interests and proposals for opening the process of revision of the WFO Policy Paper on Trade by 2023.

Agricultural trade helps to even out demand and supply imbalances, thus contributing to food security and promoting resource use efficiency and economic growth. It is also a way of providing farmers with increased market opportunities and better income.

Today’s meeting set off WFO Members’ Commitment to work together to advance towards reinforcing the global agricultural trading system to operate in a fair, transparent and predictable trading environment.

It set up the priority areas to be addressed and the actions needed to update the WFO Policy Paper on Trade according to the current development of the international discussion.

In WFO, we firmly believe that successful advocacy relies on strong policies and policies can be strong only when they really reflect the position of our Members.

This is the value for national farmers’ organisations of being part of a global organisation, like the WFO: being empowered to influence the implementation of the international agenda at the national level!