IFPRI Policy Seminar, From Farm to Table: Agrifood Systems and Trade Challenges in the Southern Cone

Food systems around the world face serious social, nutritional, and environmental challenges, and must evolve to meet new, multiple, and interrelated objectives. As public policies are reshaped to support this transformation, two fundamental factors must be considered:

(1) Technological innovations are required to meet the demand for higher productivity in an environmentally friendly manner.

(2) Smooth international trade flows are essential and require improved trade rules to facilitate flows from countries with the greatest potential for supply growth based on environmentally friendly production systems to countries with the greatest limitations in achieving food self-sufficiency.

Pursuing these objectives can pose a significant challenge for developing countries, which will need to adjust and transform their production and distribution practices, especially those countries that actively participate in food trade. For South America’s Southern Cone, which has become the world’s largest net food exporting region, attention to these issues should be paramount.

In response, IFPRI’s Latin America and Caribbean Program is launching the publication From Farm to Table: Agrifood Systems and Trade Challenges in the Southern Cone. This analytical work, aims to inform the political processes for transforming the Southern Cone’s regional food system.

Speakers will present an analysis of the main challenges faced by national agrifood systems in the Southern Cone, especially in relation to new regulations and barriers that may affect international trade and export conditions. They will also discuss how the regional food system could better contribute to the global food system through trade, investment, the development of value chains, and technology transfer.