ARA Co-Signed Letter to Vilsack, Blinken Applauding UN Food Systems Summit Participation

Sep 13 2021

ARA co-signed a letter to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsack to applaud their departments' participation in the UN Food Systems Summit (FSS) preparation, including the recently released paper "Background on the U.S. Approach to the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit" and U.S. leadership at the July Pre-Summit ministerial meeting in Rome.

As the Summit approaches, ARA and the undersigned organizations are eager to continue supporting the administration in shared objectives and welcome the focus on accelerating achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through investment in agricultural innovation to significantly improve sustainability and food systems resilience.

The UN FSS should also continue prioritizing outcomes that:

recognize that farmers, ranchers, and manufacturers are part of the solution and must have a voice in shaping the future of the global food system;
support science, innovation, and technology with flexibility to adopt new opportunities as discovers are made;
promote the benefits of rules-based international trade;
reflect existing international consensus established by member statements and respects prior domestic and international commitments;
recognize that all production systems should seek to minimize environmental impact without sacrificing economic sustainability, or overall diet quality and diversity; and
allow for flexibility to address national, cultural, personal, and other circumstances, avoiding overly-prescriptive or "one-size-fits-all" approaches.