Mr. Chairman,

I have the honour to deliver this statement on behalf of the Group of 77 and China.

At the outset, I would like to thank the Secretary-General for his report on this agenda item document A/69/279. This report examined the progress and challenges of the agriculture development, food security and nutrition, likewise the report A/69/91-E/2014/84 on the main decisions and policy recommendations of the Committee on World Food Security. The reports' conclusions and recommendations provide a good reference point for our debate today.

Mr. Chairman,

The Group of 77 and China recalls that agriculture development, food security and nutrition are essential elements for eradicating poverty and achieving sustainable development and express concern that developing countries are vulnerable to, among others, the adverse impacts of climate change, and food security threats.

As we are approaching the juncture of the MDGs, it is of great concern that despite the progress, a total of 805 million people are chronically undernourished. In the period of 2012-2014, the prevalence of undernourishment still consists of 13.5 percent for developing countries.

State Of Food Insecurity (SoFI) 2014 shows that advances in reducing world hunger require political commitment expressed through appropriate policies, programmes, legal frameworks and sufficient resources. These challenges have further accentuated the urgent need for a 'people-centered' approach to agricultural development, food security and nutrition, a call that the Group of 77 and China would like to reiterate. Increasing agricultural production to meet the nutritional needs of a growing world population in a sustainable manner is central to ensure poverty eradication efforts.

We reaffirm that hunger is a violation of human dignity and call for urgent measures to be taken at the national, regional and international levels to eliminate it. We also reaffirm the right of everyone to have access to safe and nutritious food in accordance with their right to adequate food and the fundamental right to be free from hunger, in order to develop and maintain their full physical and mental capacities.

Mr. Chairman,

The Group of 77 and China recognizes that achieving food security would require strengthening and revitalizing the agriculture sector in developing countries, including through the empowerment of indigenous peoples, rural communities, small scale farmers and fishermen, providing technical and financial assistance, access to and transfer of technology, capacity building and exchange of knowledge and experience.

We also recognize the positive role of small-scale and family farmers, in particular in developing countries, and their knowledge and practices, in the conservation and sustainable use of seeds, agrobiodiversity and biodiversity associated with food production of present and future generations.

In this regard the Group of 77 and China welcomes the implementation of the International Year of Family Farming this year by recognising the important contribution that family farming and smallholder farming can play in providing food security, reducing malnutrition and eradicating poverty.

We call for the creation of conditions for the development of economic opportunities for the benefit of small-scale and family farmers, fishermen, peasant and indigenous peoples and communities, and the creation of options for connecting them with consumers, as part of the national strategies for the realization of the right to food.

We emphasize the need to strengthen the capacity of our countries, especially through international cooperation, to safeguard and enhance our people's nutrition through the promotion of their productive cultural and environmental practices. We also emphasize the urgent need to increase efforts at the national, regional and international levels to address food security and agriculture development as an integral part of the international development agenda. We demand sustained funding and increased targeted investment to enhance world food production and call for new and additional financial resources from all sources to achieve sustainable agriculture development and food security.

We stress the importance of international trade as a catalyst to development. We pointed out the importance of providing market access to developing countries under the multilateral trading system. This market access includes agricultural products. In this regard, we stress the necessity of a timely conclusion of the Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations and calls for the outcome of the Bali Ministerial Conference to fully respect the development mandate and take into account the needs and priorities of developing countries.

We further emphasize the need to strengthen the agricultural sector as part of the efforts to accelerate the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals by 2015, in particular in meeting the target of halving the percentage of people suffering from hunger by 2015. We would also like to emphasize the importance of continued deliberations of the issue of the agriculture development, food security and nutrition in the context of the post-2015 development agenda with its means of implementation.

In this regard the Group welcomes the adoption of the report of the OWG on SDGs as the main basis of integrating the SDGs into the post-2015 development agenda. It is our fervent hope that the goal and targets reflected in the context of agriculture development, food security and nutrition as well as its means of implementation can be further elaborated in the post-2015 development agenda deliberations and its related processes, including the third International Conference on Financing for Development and the technology facilitation mechanism.
 
Mr. Chairman,
 
The Group of 77 and China stresses the need to address the root causes of excessive food price volatility, including its structural causes, at all levels, and the need to manage the risks linked to excessively volatile prices in agricultural commodities and their consequences for global food security and nutrition, as well as for small-scale farmers and poor urban dwellers.
  
We believe that the increasing involvement of non-commercial actors in the market of food and food-related commodities, or the so-called financialisation of the sector, has played a major role in the emergence of the problem of the excessive food price volatility. This large inflow of speculative capital to commodities, particularly food and other agricultural commodities, contributed to a large extent to the worsening of food insecurity. In this regard, the Group of 77 strongly believes that commodity markets should operate in a properly regulated manner and serve the real needs of both producers and consumers.

The Group of 77 and China expresses that subsidies and other market distortions driven by developed countries have seriously affected the agricultural sector of developing countries, limiting the ability of this key sector to significantly contribute to the eradication of poverty and to sustained, inclusive economic growth and equitable, sustainable development, food security and rural development. We call for the immediate elimination of all forms of agricultural subsidies and other market-distorting measures taken by developed countries that are not in compliance with WTO rules. We urge developed countries to show flexibility and political will to adequately address these fundamental concerns of developing countries in the Doha Round of trade negotiations. Elimination of such subsidies is a fundamental part of the global effort to promote agriculture, rural development and eradicate poverty and hunger.

We call for the prioritization of development agenda in the WTO Doha Round of negotiations in accordance with the Doha Development Agenda, including agriculture and food security. We call for the promotion of the livelihoods of small-scale farmers and rural development in developing countries. In this context, we urge WTO members to adopt a permanent solution to the issue of public stock holding and food security for developing countries, as agreed by the WTO Ministerial Decision adopted in Bali, Indonesia, in 2013, as soon as possible.

Finally, the Group of 77 and China is of the view that public financing and transfer of technology by developed countries are needed not only for the adoption of sustainable agriculture but also to put in place the required infrastructure, communications and other enabling conditions.

Thank you.