The 1st Middle East Vegetarian (MEVEG) Congress, Part 28 of a Multi-part Series

Our next speaker, Thomas, I’d like to share a bit of information about him. Thomas has a master’s (degree) in agriculture. He worked for five years for the German pioneer Fair Trade Company, GEPA, and for about 14 years he’s been with IFOAM (International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements) in different management functions, etc.

“I’d like to speak a word for organic agriculture being the most sustainable method. And not only that, being even the most economical way of producing food, not only in the future but also now.” “Organic agriculture is a production system that sustains the health of soils, ecosystem and people. People before commodities, that’s important.”

“Organic agriculture combines three things: tradition, innovation and science to benefit the shared environment and promote fair relationships and the good quality of life for all involved.”

“The top scandal in the world is hunger. And we heard it this morning; GMOs have been created to fight hunger. Where are we? We are going up with hungry people in the world. The one point… some billion people are hungry now, every day. At the same time, we have 130 to 140% food production. So what? How can that be? Everybody is talking about moving the world (forward) for more kinds of sustainability. GMOs are praising the idea to feed the world. Where are they? They are not feeding the world.”

“And we know that, specifically, traditional agriculture carries a lot of knowledge to protect nature. We have lost it over the years. Before, it was very clear that nature is our buddy. We cannot even damage it because it’s ours. With the industrialized agriculture approach, we have lost this knowledge, and we treat the Earth like a different component of the economy, but not as ours. Higher sustainable productivity increase will have a major impact on poverty reduction.”

“There is a study available from 2008, that says ‘organic agriculture has the potential to reduce CO2 concentration in the atmosphere by this and this amount of gigatons.’ And that means to reduce the whole emissions from agriculture by half or even more. So that’s one little aspect in a way. Not carbon alone will count for the future of our planet, but it’s one aspect you should take into consideration when we talk about sustainability.”