ISIS Director Dr. Mae-Wan Ho, a member of Independent Science Panel, berated governments and political leaders for their overwhelming commitment to the prevailing neo-liberal economic model that underlies social equity, environmental destruction, and global warming and emphasized that there is a wealth of existing knowledge that can both provide sufficient food for everyone and ameliorate climate change.
The need to move away from large-scale high input industrial monocultures has long been accepted by many people as being essential for providing livelihoods to the many millions small farmers in the South and the relatively few farmers remaining in the North who are also responsible for conserving our plant and animal genetic diversity that have been decimated by decades of industrial monocultures.
There is now an added sense of urgency as the industrial model is showing all the signs of failing under global warming, and water and oil, on which industrial are heavily dependent are both rapidly depleting.
Policies that promote food export and contravene human rights in the South also exacerbate global warming by adding food miles, or worse, encouraging "food swaps" – shipment of the same food commodities such as milk and meat – across the globe. World cereal yields from conventional industrial agriculture have been decreasing for four years in a row. So it was highly significant that speakers shared their experience of sustainable agriculture systems from around the world which outperform the industrial in productivity while restoring autonomy and responsibility to farmers, and result in greater social participation within the local community.