The “Deccan High-Level Principles on Food Security and Nutrition, 2023”, and an international initiative for research on millets and other ancient grains — these are the two key initiatives piloted by India under its presidency that have seen consensus in the G20 Agriculture Deputies Group.
Sources said both initiatives are likely to figure in the G20 outcome document.
The Agriculture Deputies Group, created in 2011 during France’s G20 presidency to deal with volatility in global food prices, has emerged as a key forum to enhance cooperation among G20 members on food security and nutrition in view of challenges posed by Covid-19 and Russia-Ukraine conflict in recent years. The working group facilitates “information exchange and cooperation on a range of global issues such as food security, nutrition, antimicrobial resistance, food waste and loss, sustainability, and resilient and inclusive food value chains.”
The G20 Agriculture Ministers, during their meeting in Hyderabad on June 15-16, acknowledged the focus on “making inclusive digital infrastructure to make it a catalyst for socioeconomic transformation of the agriculture ecosystem and farmer-centric public and private digital innovations.”
Four meetings of the Agriculture Working Group have taken place under India’s presidency: Agriculture Deputies Meeting (ADM) in Indore in February; another ADM in Chandigarh on March 29-31; Meeting of Agricultural Chief Scientists in Varanasi on April 17-19; and the third ADM and Agriculture Ministers Meeting in Hyderabad in June.
In the “Outcome Document & Chair’s Summary”, released after the G20 Agriculture Ministers’ Meeting, all ministers agreed to paragraphs 1, 2 and 6-26 of the 22-page document. During the meeting, Russia dissociated itself from paragraphs 3 and 4, with a reference to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine which was adopted from the Bali Leaders’ Declaration 2022. Barring paragraphs 3,4 and 5, the ministers agreed on all remaining points, including the two key initiatives piloted by India during its G20 presidency.
Since its launch in 2011, the G20 Agriculture Deputies Group has seen several initiatives on agriculture, food security and nutrition. For instance, the Agricultural Market Information System, an inter-agency platform to enhance food market transparency and policy response for food security, which was launched in 2011 by G20 Ministers of Agriculture following the global food price hikes in 2007-08 and 2010.
AMIS, headquartered in Rome, assesses global food supplies — it focuses on wheat, maize, rice, and soybeans — and provides a platform to coordinate policy action in times of market uncertainty.
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The Group on Earth Observations Global Agricultural Monitoring Initiative (GEOGLAM), which is aimed at increasing the market transparency and improve food security by producing and disseminating relevant, timely, and actionable information on agricultural conditions and outlooks of production at national, regional, and global scales, was also launched after the French G20 Presidency (2011). Another initiative is Wheat Initiative, proposed by research and funding organisations from several countries and originally named as the International Research Initiative for Wheat Improvement with the acronym IRIWI. It was also launched on September 15, 2011.
The Tropical Agriculture Platform (TAP), a G20 initiative to promote agricultural innovation in the tropics, was launched at the first G20-led Meeting of Agriculture Chief Scientists in September 2012, Mexico.
Platform for Agriculture Risk Management (PARM), a global partnership on agricultural risk management (ARM) for development, was established in 2013 as an outcome of G20 discussions on agricultural growth.
