Common Ground on Food and Agricultural Systems

The dominant model for agricultural development has not adequately considered environmental and social externalities, leading to their insufficient integration into decision-making processes that shape agriculture and food systems. There is a critical need for comprehensive regulation of the agricultural sector to design and implement concrete transition pathways towards more sustainable agriculture and food systems at various scales,

At World Trade Organization (WTO), the key characteristic according to which support to agricultural producers is classified is their ability to distort international trade rather than their incidence and impacts on social or environmental dimensions. There is a lack of studies and analytical framework to guide policy decisions, such as understanding how specific support, in general, and in different agricultural sub-sectors, are linked to biodiversity, economic, social, and trade outcomes.