NEW DELHI: BRICS nations, including India, have launched “BRICS Land Restoration Partnership” to address the issues of land degradation, desertification, and soil fertility loss in the group’s 11 member countries, and collectively reiterated their resolve to make the global agri-food system fair, inclusive, innovative, and sustainable.
The move was supported by these countries at the 15th BRICS Agriculture Ministers’ meeting in Brasilia, Brazil on Thursday. It was the first agriculture ministers’ meeting of the expanded BRICS which now has 11 members.
India was represented by Union agriculture and rural development minister minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan at the meeting. Chouhan in his speech on the occasion emphasized the need to place the welfare of small and marginal farmers at the center of global agricultural strategies.
BRICS nations collectively account for 47% of the world’s population and contribute 36% of global GDP. Besides the five old members such as Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, six new members – Egypt, Ethiopia, UAE, Iran, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia – joined the group in the past one year.
The meeting underlined the need to make agricultural trade fair, control global price volatility, and ensure remunerative prices for small farmers. India stressed on the importance of public food stockholding systems, minimum support prices (MSP), and value chains that connect smallholders directly to consumers.
In the joint declaration, the BRICS nations collectively emphasized their commitments to food security, climate adaptation, empowerment of women and youth, sustainable fisheries and livestock development, soil and land restoration, digital agriculture certification, and promotion of financial and trade mechanisms for the agricultural economies of the Global South.
“The formal announcement of the ‘BRICS Land Restoration Partnership’ further reinforced the group’s collective commitment to halting land degradation and desertification,” said an official statement, issued in Delhi.
It said, “During the meeting, India called for deeper collaboration to combat climate change by sharing its key programs – National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture (NMSA), National Innovations on Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA), waste to wealth, circular economy, bio-fertilizers, and traditional farming practices.”
