trade dialogues
Trade Dialogues on Food
As part of its Trade Dialogues initiative, the WTO is launching Trade Dialogues on Food, with the aim of encouraging a debate on the role of international trade in food security. Experts from governments, non-governmental organizations, businesses, academia, think tanks and foundations will be invited to discuss the most topical issues in food trade. Each discussion can be watched live on this page. If you wish to participate in the debate, please email us your questions in real time at Dialogues@WTO.org. A recording will be made available after the event.
Introduction
The aim of the WTO Trade Dialogues on Food is to create a conversation around the role of international trade in food security. The Trade Dialogues on Food invite experts from governments, non-governmental organizations, businesses, academia, think tanks and foundations, to debate the most topical issues in food trade. Each year the international trading system moves enough wheat, maize, rice and soybean to feed approximately three billion people around the globe. Meanwhile, 190 million tons of fertilizer applied to farmland annually play a key role in helping us grow enough food to sustain our expanding population, with much of it traded on the international stage. Climate change will make international trade even more central to food security, acting as a vital conduit for food from food-surplus to food-deficit nations in the wake of natural calamities. The Trade Dialogues on Food are designed to shed greater light on the complexity of the food trade nexus, creating a safe space for public policy debate.
Thursday 1 April, 2-4 pm CET
Enabling Agricultural Trade; An Independent United Nations Food Systems Summit Dialogue by the WTO Secretariat
Live streaming
Speakers
Marion Jansen
Director, Trade and Agriculture Directorate, OECD
Geeta Sethi
Advisor and Global Lead for Food Systems, World Bank
Arianna Giuliodori
Secretary-General, World Farmers' Organisation
Boubaker Ben-Belhassen
Director, Markets and Trade Division, FAO
Robbert de Vreede
Executive Vice-President Global Foods, Unilever
Berry Marttin
Member of Managing Board, Rabobank (responsible for International Rural and Retail Banking, Leasing, Sustainability)
WTO Representatives on Episode
Michael Roberts
Head, Aid-for-Trade Unit, WTO
Melvin Spreij
Head, Standards and Trade Development Facility
Moderator
Doaa Abdel-Motaal
Senior Counsellor, WTO Agriculture and Commodities Division
Thursday 25 February, 2-3.30 pm CET
The Africa Agriculture Trade Monitor; What Next for the African Continent?
A joint event by WTO-IFPRI-IISD
For the Background Documents for the Dialogue click below:
Live streaming
Speakers
Chahir Zaki
Associate Professor of Economics (and Co-Editor of the Trade Monitor), Cairo University
Halima Noor
Senior Trade Advisor at the African Union
Elizabeth Nsimadala
President of the Pan-African Farmers Organization and the Eastern Africa Farmers Federation
Xolelwa Mlumbi-Peter
Ambassador of South Africa to the WTO
Edwini Kessie
Director, Agriculture and Commodities Division, WTO
Moderators
Doaa Abdel-Motaal
Senior Counsellor, WTO Agriculture and Commodities Division
Jonathan Hepburn
Senior Policy Advisor, International Institute for Sustainable Development
Thursday 19 November, 2-3.30 pm CET
The AOA@25, Teaser for WTO Agriculture Symposium 2020
Live streaming
Speakers
Sunanta Kangvalkulkij
Ambassador of Thailand to the WTO
Xolelwa Mlumbi-Peter
Ambassador of South Africa to the WTO
Eugenio Diaz-Bonilla
Head of Latin American and Caribbean Program, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
Robert Koopman
Director, Economic Research and Statistics Division, WTO
Edwini Kessie
Director, Agriculture and Commodities Division, WTO
Moderator
Doaa Abdel-Motaal
Senior Counsellor, WTO Agriculture and Commodities Division
5 November, 2-3.30 pm CET
The Future of Food, Digitalization, Automation and COVID-19
Live streaming
Speakers
Maximo Torero
Chief Economist, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
Sean de Cleene
Head of the Future of Food, World Economic Forum
Emma Weston
CEO & Co-Founder, AgriDigital
Oswaldo Loor
Founder and CEO, Shenzhen Drones
Ulla Kask
Counsellor, Agriculture and Commodities Division, WTO
Moderator
Doaa Abdel-Motaal
Senior Counsellor, WTO Agriculture and Commodities Division
1 October, 2-3.30 pm CET
Food Trade Policy, the G20, and COVID-19
Live streaming
Opening Remarks
Alan Wolff
Deputy Director-General of the WTO
Speakers
Saad Abdullah Khalil Esa
Economic Advisor, Ministry of Environment, Water, Agriculture (MEWA) of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Randal Giroux
Chair of The Grain and Feed Trade Association (GAFTA) Global Trade Policy Committee, and Vice President - Global Regulatory Leader at Cargill
Maximo Torero
Chief Economist and Assistant Director-General of the Economic and Social Development Department of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Edwini Kessie
Director, WTO Agriculture and Commodities Division
Moderator
Doaa Abdel-Motaal
Senior Counsellor, WTO Agriculture and Commodities Division
25 June 2020, 2.00 - 3.30 pm CET
The Disruptors: A Conversation with the Technology Giants Revolutionizing African Agriculture
Live streaming
Speakers
WTO participants
Emmanuelle Ganne
cAnalyst, WTO Economic Research and Statistics Division
“Blockchain, Small and Medium Sized Enterprises and the WTO”
Gabrielle Marceau
Senior Counsellor, WTO Economic Research and Statistics Division
“Innovation and the WTO Rule-Book”
Moderator
Doaa Abdel-Motaal
Senior Counsellor, WTO Agriculture and Commodities Division
Bolaji Akinboro, CO-Founder and CO-CEO, Cellulant Corporation
Bolaji Akinboro & Ken Njoroge have built a pan-African tech company providing a one-stop digital marketplace. Cellulant tackles high market fragmentation and low financial inclusion in Africa by organizing marketplaces with an underlying digital payment infrastructure that solves the problems often faced in Africa by businesses, retailers and consumers. Cellulant now works in 33 African countries, with 94% of its customer base never having used banking before. Its technology is being used as far away as Afghanistan. It relies on distributed ledger technology to create trust throughout the agricultural value chain, from banks, agribusiness, exporters, government agencies, input-sellers, all the way to the farmers themselves.
Onyeka Akumah, Founder and CEO, Farmcrowdy
What if you could invest in Nigerian agriculture from the relative comfort of your own sitting room in Lagos? Onyeka Akumah is making that possible and reshaping agricultural value chains as he does so. The technology entrepreneur is the Founder and CEO of Farmcrowdy, an agricultural platform connecting small-scale farmers to investors with the goal of boosting local food production. The company took off fast, receiving its first investment of $60,000 just a month after launching, but went on to raise $2,000,000 in equity funds over the past three years for its daily operations. Farmcrowdy and the Oyo State government announced a partnership in August 2019 that will involve 50,000 farmers and the company has now crowdfunded over $15,000,000 to work with 116,000 small holder farmers across 17 states in Nigeria, with plans to expand its model across Africa.
Kikonde Mwatela , Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer, Twiga Foods
Kikonde Mwatela is Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Twiga Foods, a technology enabled business-to-business food distribution platform that builds fair and reliable markets for agricultural producers, food manufacturers and retailers based on transparency and efficiency. The company sources products from 17,000 plus farmers across Kenya and delivers them directly to 5,000 vendors per day in Nairobi and its environs. As part of its expansion plan, Twiga Foods is set to build a new state of the art distribution center that will have custom-made cold rooms, conveyors and sorting equipment, enabling Twiga Foods to widen its supply-chain services in Kenya and beyond.
Kamal Yacub, CEO, Trotro Tractor Ltd.
Like most good business ideas, the Uber for tractor hire seems incredibly obvious, but it took Kamal Yakub to make it happen. Like many African countries, Ghana has a majority of smallholder farmers who cannot afford to buy a tractor, but for whom a couple of days of ploughing make a huge difference to agricultural productivity. More than enough to pay for hiring a tractor. Connecting tractors to farmholders via mobile phone is Trotro Tractor’s raison d’être. Yakub has enabled a great leap forward in rural incomes, allowing farmers to make more investments in their land, pay for children’s education, and slow the drift of children to the cities in search of work. He is a great advocate of getting young people into agriculture, saying that this technology makes it far more profitable now to grow crops. “If you used to do two days on an acre with four people, now you use 45 minutes to finish that acre so it allows you to do more,” Yakub told reporters. He is now expanding to Zimbabwe, with other markets in sight.
11 June 2020, 2.00 – 4.00 pm CET
Food Trade Logistics, Navigating the Risks of COVID-19
Joint WTO - World Economic Forum (WEF) Webinar
Speakers
Siddharth Adya
Vice President, Group Cargo Solutions and Platform Development, PSA International
Ertharin Cousin
CEO and President, Food Systems for the Future (former Executive Director of the World Food Programme)
Allan Lerberg Jørgensen
Head of Sustainable Trade, Maersk
Arnaud Petit
Executive Director, International Grains Council
Sheri Rosenow
Counsellor, Market Access Division, WTO Trade Facilitation Section
Lisa Sweet
Head of Future of Protein, COVID Response, and Food Health of the World Economic Forum
Moderator
Doaa Abdel-Motaal
Counsellor, WTO Agriculture and Commodities Division
Webcast
28 May 2020, 2.00 - 3.30 pm CET
COVID-19, Flattening the Food Insecurity Curve in Africa
Speakers
Trudi Hartzenberg
Executive Director TRALAC (Trade Law Center, South Africa)
Theo de Jager
President, World Farmers Organization
Junior Davis
Head of Policy Analysis and Research Branch, Division for Africa and LDCs at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)
Edwini Kessie
Director, WTO Agriculture and Commodities Division
Halima Noor
Senior Trade Advisor, African Union
Moderator
Doaa Abdel-Motaal
Counsellor, WTO Agriculture and Commodities Division
Webcast
14 May 2020, 2.00 - 3.30 pm CET
Global Value Chains in Agriculture and Food, in an Era of COVID-19
Speakers
Caroline Emond
Director-General, International Dairy Federation
Paolo Giordano
Principal Economist, Inter-American Development Bank
Charlotte Hebebrand
Executive Vice-President and Chief Sustainability Officer at Nutrien, and former Director General of the International Fertilizer Association
Edwini Kessie
Director, WTO Agriculture and Commodities Division
Matt Kovac
CEO of Food Industry Asia
Daniel Njiwa
Head of Regional Food Trade, Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa
Moderator
Doaa Abdel-Motaal
Counsellor, WTO Agriculture and Commodities Division
Webcast
30 April 2020, starting time 2 pm CET
International Trade and Food Security in the Era of
COVID-19
Speakers
Shenggen Fan
Senior Chair Professor, College of Economics and Management, China Agriculture University, and former Director General of International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
Andrea Gruber
Head Special Cargo, International Air Transportation Association (IATA)
Maximo Torero
Chief Economist and Assistant Director-General of the Economic and Social Development Department of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Alan Wolff
Deputy Director-General of the WTO
Virtual Remarks
Moderator
Doaa Abdel-Motaal
Counsellor, WTO Agriculture and Commodities Division
Webcast
Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in the Trade Dialogues on Food do not in any way reflect the official position of the WTO or its members.
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