Food standards accord signed in Abu Dhabi

‘Leap of faith’ looks to assure future of farming businesses.

ABU DHABI // Officials from several countries signed the Declaration of Abu Dhabi on Tuesday in an attempt to persuade food producers to adopt a common set of criteria for sustainable agricultural practices and develop a method to monitor the results.

“So how are we going to do this?” said Joseph Wozniak, manager of the International Trade Centre in Switzerland. “Three things, first let’s move forward a common set of criteria that we all agree on. Let’s identify all farms so we can trace them and report on progress, and finally, let’s try to find a mechanism to report to.”

At the conference, held at Jumeirah Etihad Towers, Mr Wozniak suggested aligning “investments to support these criteria at the same time to leverage the nature and the initiatives in place. It will also help direct funds and capacity building”.

Being a signatory of the declaration means companies agree with the set objectives and wish to align with counterparts to promote them, Mr Wozniak said.

“We also want to be a small platform to keep the discussion up and going on these topics, because this is a journey,” said Peter-Erik Ywema, general manager of the Sustainable Agricultural Initiative platform in The Netherlands. “If you want to go far you need to go together but if you want to go fast, go alone.”

He said that in a lot of ways, the declaration was a leap of faith as the process itself will result in lessons learnt that can be further implemented in the framework of the accord.

“The ultimate goal is to find and control a lot of hurdles together, very often initiatives look to just themselves but that’s why the leap of faith now is important to make a step outwards and materialise on a technical level,” Mr Ywema said. “It’s all about the farmers and sustainability to create the future of farming.”.