Global Forum for Food and Agriculture

The Global Forum for Food and Agriculture (GFFA) is an international conference on agri-food policy issues. It has taken place in Berlin at the beginning of the International Green Week for the past 14 years. The conference will be hosted virtually again next year due to the pandemic and will take place from Monday 24th January - to Friday 28th January 2022.

Global Forum for Food and Agriculture

The GFFA features approx. 3,000 international visitors from politics, industry, science and civil society discussing a key topic.

The world's largest informal conference of agriculture ministers also takes place on the final day of the conference. This is the highlight of the GFFA.

Approximately 70 ministers of agriculture from around the world and high-level representatives of more than ten international organisations adopt a joint political communiqué on the respective key topic.

High-level guests, such as Prince Charles, Ban Ki-moon, Angela Merkel and Josefa Sacko, have enriched the GFFA in recent years with keynote speeches.

One hundred and forty-six states have sent delegations to participate in the GFFA since its inception.

There will again be 20 different expert panel discussions at #2021 GFFA. They will facilitate an in-depth technical exchange. Experts from politics, academia, industry and civil society will participate.

Unfortunately, the world has yet to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. To be able to offer a global platform for international cooperation and multilateral solutions in the agricultural sector that is open to interested parties from all countries also in 2022, the GFFA 2022 will once again be held virtually.

The topic for 2022 is soil and land and the title of GFFA 2022 is "Sustainable land use: Food Security Starts with Soil". GFFA 2022 - "Sustainable Land Use: Food Security Starts with the Soil" © BMEL

More than 90 percent of global food production depends on soil. It provides habitats for soil organisms and is the most important terrestrial carbon sink on earth. However, the quality of soils is increasingly deteriorating and fertile land is becoming scarcer.

This development must be halted by using land resources sustainably and preserving existing agricultural land. Farmers must also be granted long-term and secure access to agricultural land through ownership, tenancy and use rights in order to enable them to use land sustainably. Only in doing so will we be able to feed the growing world population, stop climate change, and reduce the loss of biodiversity. There is an urgent need for the international community to develop and implement viable and practical solutions.

The 2022 GFFA is to provide key impetus to this end and promote international exchange. The four core questions will be:

How can we improve soil protection?

How can we restore degraded soils?

How can we make the use of finite land resources more sustainable?

How can farmers worldwide get fair access to land?

Find out more at www.gffa-berlin.de!

110 speakers have contributed their expertise to the virtual #2021 GFFA on the subject of “How to Feed the World in Times of Pandemics and Climate Change”.

2021 GFFA has featured many high-ranking guests. UN Secretary-General António Guterres gave a welcoming address. Besides around 78 agriculture ministers, the guests also included David Beasley, Executive Director at the World Food Programme (WFP), which was awarded the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. Qu Dongyu, Director-General of the FAO, and Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesusder, Director-General of the WHO.