Youth Forum Recommendations: Working Group on Environment, trade and sustainable development

Recommendations

1. We, this Youth Forum, proposed that governments reimburse or subsidize growth processes in both industrial and less developed countries.
2. We proposed that a marketing component is essential to reaching out to the general public.
3. We proposed that education is the key to creating a new way of thinking about biological agriculture.
4. We proposed that the UN would be a vehicle for pressuring states to adopt this proposal.

Current state of organic foods consumption

Industrialized countries (the United States)

1. Hegemony of genetically engineered produce.
2. Most of American society has a preference for processed foods.
3. Organic foods are expensive and they are reserved for a small elite.
4. The assumption is that the prettier and sweeter the food, the healthier and tastier it is.
5. There is a quest for perfection and aesthetic quality.

Less developed countries (Haiti)

1. Aid has been handed out in such a way that local farmers cannot compete with the low, attractive prices determined by the governments of industrialized countries, which provide cheaper produce.
2. Consequently, local farming suffers tremendously and the population is subject to famine and disease.
3. Fields have become infertile.
4. Dependence on industrialized countries such as the US is increasing.
5. Today Haitians are trying to obtain and control the last portions of fertile land to practice biological agriculture. This is contrary to industrial agriculture supported by the US, that is destroying the environment and depleting the water supply.