Speaking at a special event in New York on "Farmers of the future: Building resilience in rural areas" , Cogeca President Thomas Magnusson said “Agricultural cooperatives play a key role in improving the lives of millions of smallholder farmers and their families, boosting growth and jobs in rural areas. They give farmers better access to markets and secure a higher return for farmers for their produce. They also help farmers to be resilient in times of crisis. They currently process and trade around half the total output of the agricultural sector. We are ensuring competiveness, by adding value and improving rural resilience. With our efforts we are moving European agriculture, collectively to a level of “anti-fragility” for the next generation”.
He highlighted the importance of cooperatives in improving farmers positioning in the food chain and in helping farmers to adopt digital solutions to save on input costs and to tackle the increasing challenges they face. “Demand-driven research and innovation, training and advisory services, financial support to invest in new technologies are crucial for this”, he said.
Mr Magnusson concluded by underlining the important role of cooperatives in achieving many of the Sustainable Development Goals, with 13 out of the 17 SDGs dependent or at least linked to the farming and forestry sectors .
The move came at the 56th session of the Commission for Social Development (CSocD56) which took place today at the UN Headquarters in New York.
