The role of agricultural biotechnologies in sustainable food systems and nutrition - International FAO Symposium 15-17 January 2016

The international symposium brought together more than 400 participants, including FAO member states and representatives of civil society, research and the private sector, to discuss the potential of biotechnology to eradicate hunger and malnutrition and promote sustainable agriculture. Attention was focused on a broad range of agricultural biotechnologies covering relatively simple applications such as fermentation, bio-fertilizers, disease diagnostics, bio-pesticides, and marker-assisted crop breeding. Parallel sessions were concerned with various aspects of agricultural biotechnologies such as climate change, resource use, social and economic impacts, etc. Despite the controversy on GMOs, there seemed to be an emerging awareness that biotechnologies are broader than GMOs and that biotechnologies and agroecology have to live together and be more integrated if agriculture is to be more sustainable particularly for smallholder farmers. FAO is ready to play a role as a platform for further developing this integration”