C 47/160
EN
Official Journal of the European Union
7.2.2023
Wednesday 6 July 2022
24.
Stresses the importance of the protection and promotion of the right of local communities to access and control natural resources such as land and water; deplores the fact that land grabbing is rife in many developing countries; points out that it is a brutal practice that undermines food security and food sovereignty — and endangers rural communities; 25.
Notes that, for example, grazing rights and community pastures are traditional land use rights based on common law and not on securitised property rights; emphasises, however, the fundamental importance of protecting these common rights for rural populations; 26.
Calls for the social tensions between settled agricultural populations and nomadic pastoral communities to be addressed, notably in regions with overlapping ethnoreligious conflicts; 27.
Is deeply concerned about the high dependence of developing countries on food imports, especially from the European Union, particularly when these imports are made up of subsidised products whose low price represents harmful competition for local small-scale agriculture; 28.
Stresses the need to protect the rights of farmers to maintain genetic resources for purposes of food security and climate change adaptation; calls on the Commission, within the remit of its development aid and trade and investment policies, to support farming systems that are in line with the provisions of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA), which safeguards the rights of peasants to maintain, control, protect and develop their own seeds and traditional knowledge; 29.
Underlines the need to consistently work with countries, international and regional organizations private sector, farmers and smallholders as well as the local civil society and local communities to support the design, implementation and monitoring of context-specific, feasible and robust national nutrition targets; recognises the key role of civil society especially in reaching smallholder farmers by linking them to training, resources, markets and value chains; 30.
Is of the opinion that prioritizing maternal and infant nutrition needs is crucial to guarantee solid and resilient food security and calls on the Commission and Member States to support national authorities in developing countries in integrating nutrition services into health systems in order to address malnutrition in all its forms and ensure the continuity of nutrition services, particularly the early detection and community-based management of acute malnutrition and infant and young child feeding, as well as related maternal nutrition programmes; in this regard welcomes the achievements and work of the SUN movement; 31.
Calls on the EU to protect small-scale producers’ access to and control of land and other resources including farmers’ seeds, access to water as well as access to infrastructure to link rural communities to territorial markets, including urban areas; 32.
Calls on the EU to ensure appropriate financing and co-creation of knowledge and technical innovations through farmer-led research, including support for small-scale producers’ organisations and women’s associations and their collective processing and marketing activities; 33.
Calls on the Commission to establish close links with partner countries for the purpose of exchanging knowledge on agriculture; highlights the expertise of the European agricultural sector and stresses the need to prioritise partnerships in research and innovation in agriculture, including through Horizon Europe, and to boost responsible and ethical innovations to promote sustainable agricultural practices in order to increase yields and farm outputs; calls, in this regard, for a stronger reliance on the contributions of traditional local knowledge in the just transition, especially regarding agricultural practices, fisheries and forest protection, thereby empowering the local people and communities; 34.
Notes the positive results of budget support demonstrated by the 6th Progress report on the Action Plan on Nutrition as a mechanism for sustainable, impactful and country-relevant investment in nutrition; 35.
Calls for the EU to integrate the global and national nutrition targets into the relevant development programmes and country strategies; calls for the EU and its Member States to mobilise long-term financial investments in food and nutrition security and sustainable agriculture, fisheries and aquaculture and to encourage partner countries to invest more in these sectors through their national budgets;