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Regional Stakeholder Meeting on Agricultural Recovery, Food Security and Trade Policies in Southern Africa
This Synthesis was prepared by Chiedza L Muchopa
26 - 27 March 2003
Gaborone, Botswana
Conference organised in partnership with CTA (Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation ACP-EU).
FANRPAN would like to thank the speakers and participants to the Conference.
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Abstract
This report summarises the recommendations and conclusions of the
Regional Dialogue on Agricultural Recovery, Food Security and Trade
Policies in Southern Africa, held in Gaborone on 26-27 March 2003. The
dialogue brought together senior policy advisors from Ministries of
Agriculture in the SADC member countries, representatives from
FANRPAN national policy nodes and other invited persons from
international aid agencies currently dealing with food and agricultural
recovery strategies in the region (USAID, EU, WFP, UNDP, World Bank,
DFID, FAO and SADC). During this meeting the invited professionals
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identified and examined key and immediate policy strategies that need
to be addressed to ensure the permanent recovery of the agricultural
sector and promotion of regional trade
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advised FANRPAN by indicating where member states and development
agencies will need to target their technical and financial support to
implement the proposed recovery measures, including action steps to
be taken
Keynote presentations were followed by group discussions on emerging
policy issues. Two of the three keynote presentations highlighted
preliminary findings from two studies commissioned by FANRPAN. The
studies indicated that issues such as the management of strategic food
reserves, domestic marketing and pricing policies, input supply strategies,
as well as measures to promote speedy cross border movement of food are
at the forefront of key policy measures that need to be addressed to come up
with long term lasting solutions. The other keynote presentation gave an
international perspective on agricultural recovery and long term food
policy. Technical papers were delivered in emerging policy issues groups as
a resource to move discussions from a general to the specific focus on
agricultural recovery, trade and food security.
The policy dialogue proposed agricultural and trade policy recovery
strategies for onward submission by FANRPAN to the SADC FANR
Ministers at their annual meeting. The following broad recommendations
were made in several areas and action steps to be taken were identified for some of these areas: re-establishing a regional and integrated approach to
agricultural research, promoting financially viable and sustainable
irrigation, promoting crop diversification, investing in improving the
production base, improving the quality of information systems for food
security, allowing markets and food security to solve most food security
problems, improving market access at local, regional and international
level, and harmonisation of seed polices. Also noted was that good
governance and political commitment for regional integration will facilitate
the implementation of most of the recommendations. In particular,
increasing agricultural productivity was seen as the main priority to
achieve food security in the region. The policy dialogue emphasised the
need to set priorities, on which African nations must focus and achieve
sustained growth. FANRPAN was commended on the steps it is taking as a
network to improve the food security situation in the region.
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