Photo: GIZ/Dorothea Hohengarten

Agriculture must become more political

This is the central message of weltohnehunger.org’s latest web magazine issue. In other words: Policy matters! — And it does so in many fields: human rights, land rights, sectoral policies, trade policy, general governance, and project management. To name just a few.

Recently, the African Green Revolution Forum — arguably Africa’s highest-ranking agribusiness and agricultural policy platform — agreed that the African agricultural sector has great potential to create wealth and employment, and that it is politics that has not yet set it onto the right course, not having formulated effective incentives and often promoting other sectors and organized interests.

The simultaneous promotion of competitiveness and social balance in rural areas requires a concerted effort by essentially very different stakeholders from politics, civil society, farmers’ organizations, business and research — not only in Africa. The BMZ also wants to strengthen the levers of politics and those actors who are rallying around this great consensus.

The Special Initiative One World No Hunger succeeded in winning excellent and several very high-ranking authors from different directions for this issue of their web magazine — the chosen theme seems to stimulate political fantasies.

Ingo Melchers, Senior Advisor at the Special Initiative, wishes an interesting read. Comments, including critical ones, are always welcome.