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In Central Asian countries, A move towards better data sharing in agricultural markets
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16 May 2011 |
Speaking at the Astana Economic Forum held in early May in Kazakhstan, FAO Director General Jacques Diouf called Central Asian nations to strengthen regional cooperation in order to stabilize their agricultural markets and improve their food security.
Central Asian agricultural markets are indeed fairly imbalanced. For example, Kirghizstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are net importers of agricultural products and rely on harvests from members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan among others). Yet, as we recently mentioned it, these countries suffered from unprecedented drought spells that affected their crops and led them to curb exports, thus destabilizing international agricultural trade.
So, to cope with such risks, the FAO advocates better cooperation between the region's countries, and this on two levels:
• By boosting the free movement of agricultural and food products in Central Asian countries to fix possible shortages;
• By implementing joint monitoring systems, regarding both climate forecasting as well as crop levels and the situation of reserves.
Better regional adaptation is required to stabilize agricultural prices and improve food security. To reach this goal, information sharing seems to be, now more than ever, a sine qua non condition. For this measure to be truly effective, it must imperatively be implemented at the international level through a database available to all. This issue will be addressed at the Agricultural G20 to be held in Paris at the end of June. |
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Advocating for
agricultural market
regulation and global
food governance | |
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