Farmers Welcomed as “Game-Changers” of Agrifood Systems

Jun 19, 2024

Director-General QU Dongyu today welcomed farmers from around the globe to FAO headquarters for the 2024 Annual Meeting of the World Farmers’ Organisation (WFO).

“You are the game changers of agrifood systems,” he said, noting that precisely those systems need to be urgently transformed to address hunger and other global challenges.

Most of the worlds 608 million farms are run by an individual or a family and rely primarily on family labor, operating at a small scale yet producing the vast majority of the world’s food in value terms. Those farmers also fulfil key environmental, social and cultural roles and have a “unique understanding and ability to protect local ecologies, knowledge and heritage,” Qu added.

Qu hailed the WFO as a “great example of effective collaboration” with more than 80 national farmers’ organizations from all over the world under its umbrella. Such organizations can serve a host of functions regarding scale, knowledge sharing and policy change, the Director-General said, emphasizing that effective partnerships are at the core of FAO’s work.

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Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.