If done right, agriculture, forestry and fisheries can provide nutritious food for all and generate decent incomes, while supporting people-centred rural development and protecting the environment. Right now, our soils, freshwater, oceans, forests and biodiversity are being rapidly degraded. Climate change is putting even more pressure on the resources we depend on, increasing risks associated with disasters such as droughts and floods.
Many rural women and men can no longer make ends meet on their land, forcing them to migrate to cities in search of opportunities. A profound change of the global food and agriculture system is needed if we are to nourish today’s 795 million hungry and the additional 2 billion people expected by 2050. The food and agriculture sector offers key solutions for development, and is central for hunger and poverty eradication.
By 2030, double the agricultural productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers, in particular women, indigenous peoples, family farmers, pastoralists and sheers, including through secure and equal access to land, other productive resources and inputs, knowledge, financial services, markets and opportunities for value addition and non-farm employment. Agricultural labour, especially in small family farms, attracts the greatest amount of child and adolescent labour. As a result, the desirable and necessary increase of productivity in those sectors resulting in more child workers must be avoided. The holistic vision of the 2030 Agenda seeks precisely to avoid these inconsistencies due to a lack of interlinkage and interdependence between fields of action and targets. Thus, attaining Target 8.7 on ending child labour places a limit on actions to reach Target 2.3.
