We wish to point out some issues that will be in next year's agenda, in order to ensure the inclusion of gender issues in the inter-sessional period ahead. Agriculture will be one of the most important issues to be analyzed. Women have always been, and still are, the world's primary food producers. Therefore agricultural sustainability cannot be achieved without their active participation in setting and implementing policy. Agriculture is essential to both rural and urban development, and food security is a basic human right, inextricably tied to sustainable agriculture.
Food security is the access by all people at all times to the food needed for a healthy life.
Food security emphasizes food for domestic consumption over agricultural products for trade. In much of the world, sustainable agriculture is in the hands of women, literally and figuratively. However, the knowledge, skills and labour of women often remains invisible, undervalued, largely unpaid and not reflected in national economic statistics. In their role as primary food producers, women have necessarily been custodians of biodiversity in all its forms and have maintained a relationship with nature that is based on respect and regeneration rather than ownership and degradation. As food producers and gatherers of medicinal plants and herbs, rural women, especially in developing countries, have an extensive knowledge of plant and animal life, much of which is facing extinction.