A communiqué approved by agriculture ministers and officials from over 60 countries has declared that sustainable production is key to tackling hunger and malnutrition, while largely skirting controversies around trade affecting supply and demand for food, farm goods, and forestry.

The ministers, who met in Berlin on 17 January at an annual event organised by the German government, proclaimed that “only resilient, diversified, and sustainable agrifood systems can provide the foundation for achieving the human right to adequate food.”

Major farm exporting and importing countries attended the event. The conference organisers said that governments participating included Argentina, China, Egypt, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, and Vietnam, as well as officials from the European Commission, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the World Bank.

No senior US participant joined the event, despite food and agriculture remaining a major sticking point in ongoing talks between the US and EU for a bilateral trade deal, known formally as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

However, Russian and German agriculture ministers reportedly expressed satisfaction with separate bilateral talks on trade in farm goods, following Moscow’s imposition of sanctions on EU food exports.

Rising demand for renewables

Limited fossil fuel supplies – and their impact on climate change and the environment – mean countries must consider replacing non-renewable with renewable resources, the ministers warned.

Rising demand for farm goods in the non-food sector can help create jobs and raise farm incomes, the statement says.

“These markets can thus also play an important role in combating poverty, if smallholders are appropriately integrated,” the ministers declared.

Over the last decade, demand for agricultural products such as maize, rapeseed, sugar, and palm oil has been spurred by growing demand for bioenergy. Although high oil prices have until recently been a major factor behind the demand growth, many governments have also used subsidies, tariffs, and blending mandates to boost industrial development in the sector – along with other tools such as export restrictions on raw materials, renewable energy targets, and sustainability criteria.

Some governments have already expressed fears that the new policies are distorting trade, with disputes on biodiesel in particular proliferating at the WTO.

Food comes first

Ministers acknowledged that agricultural raw materials have been used as food, feed, building materials, and in crafts and trades “since time immemorial.”

However, new uses for renewable resources create fresh opportunities, they declared, dubbing these the “bioeconomy.”

At the same time, sustainable food production “remains the priority goal,” the communiqué said.

FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva expressed similar sentiments in remarks the previous day. “There is no question that food comes first,” he said at a related meeting in Berlin.

“But nowadays we need to move from the food versus fuel debate to a food and fuel debate,” he warned.

Paradigm shift

Da Silva cautioned that the food supply issues highlighted by ministers was only one part of the story.

“We have made great progress in the supply side, but there are still over 800 million people who go to bed hungry every day.”

He also warned that – in addition to improving access to food for the poor – global agriculture needed to undergo a “paradigm shift” if it was to remain sustainable in the long run.

“Business as usual would mean a huge and simultaneous increase in the need for food, energy and water in the next decades,” Da Silva said, estimating that this could amount to a need for 60 percent more food, 50 percent more energy, and 40 percent more water by 2050.

A changing reality?

The ministers’ focus on demand growth nonetheless seemed at odds with the most recent report from the FAO on food prices.

The agency announced that 2014 was the third consecutive year of falling prices, as prices gradually came down from a sharp peak in 2011.

“Continued large supplies and record stocks combined with a stronger US dollar and falling oil prices contributed to the decline,” the organisation said.

Biofuels in particular have been affected by the collapse in oil prices, which have come down from a peak of around US$140 a barrel in 2008 to just under US$50 today.

"Ample supplies aside, the drop in oil prices obviously makes ethanol production less attractive," said FAO senior economist Abdolreza Abbassian.

Some experts questioned whether the ministers had been right to focus heavily on challenges associated with growth in demand, especially against the backdrop of slowing economic growth rates in developing country powerhouses such as China and India.

“Much of the communiqué sounds as if it is from the distant past – or from a different planet,” one policy analyst told Bridges.

A global focus

The summit, now in its seventh year and a regular fixture on the calendar of many agriculture ministers, nonetheless provided the German government a welcome opportunity to demonstrate its ability to bring together actors on food and agriculture to focus on global issues.

“Germans are very proud of the fact that they have gathered a huge number of representatives from all around the world,” said one official familiar with the event.

Germany, along with many EU countries, has seen growing controversy recently over the proposed new Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, which campaigners contend could erode standards for health and safety and the environment.

German agriculture minister Christian Schmidt defended the proposed deal in recent comments to Reuters. “For Germany as an export country, the agreement is of great importance,” he said.

“We already export food worth €1.6 billion every year to the United States with a rising trend, so our agriculture also has an interest in the agreement,” he said.

Germany, Russia meeting

In the margins of the summit, a meeting between Schmidt and Russian agriculture minister Nikolai Fyodorov reportedly led to progress in discussions over mutual trade in food products in the framework of current laws, Russian news agency ITAR-TASS reported.

“We cannot solve pressing political problems, but we can maintain dialogue in the current conditions,” the German minister reportedly said. “We can make trade between our countries more intensive.”

Fyodorov concurred, telling journalists that the two ministers had “discussed possible expansion of cooperation and mutual trade in agricultural products.”

This would take place “strictly within the frameworks of the current legislation of Russia, the Customs Union, Germany, and the European Union.”

Fyodorov also said that if Greece left the EU – a scenario which Germany and other EU members have sought to avoid – it would no longer be affected by the current ban on food imports, introduced last year.