'BRICS Can Lead' in Sustainable Farming: Indian Agricultural Company CEO
© AFP 2023 LUCA SOLA
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Jai Shroff, chairman and CEO of Indian multinational agricultural company UPS, participated in the BRICS Business Forum held in South Africa's Johannesburg.
A reward system for farmers should be introduced in the agricultural sphere in order to stimulate global decarbonization, with BRICS taking the lead in that sphere, chairman and CEO of Indian multinational agricultural company UPL, Jai Shroff, told Sputnik Africa.
"Agriculture […] is actually one of the key tools to decarbonize the world. Soil is the biggest sink for carbon and we need to create a reward system for farmers, for sustainable agriculture and if BRICS can take the lead in developing a system to reward farmers for sustainable behavior, we can see a massive change and that will really help to improve soil, to help decarbonize the world and also create a revenue system," the UPL CEO stated.
He also stressed that the BRICS bloc makes about half of world’s annual agriculture production.
"The whole agribusiness or the agriculture production is about 4.3 billion (tonnes) annually. About half of that is in the BRICS countries. China is over 1 trillion, India is over half a billion, Brazil and South Africa also contribute substantially," the CEO said.
According to him, the agricultural sphere should gain resilience against climate change.
"Climate change impacts agriculture the most. More than any other industry, farmers get most impacted by climate change. We need to create a system by which we can create some kind of resilience for farmers because food security is such a big issue, and climate change and impact on farmers can be a huge impact," he outlined.
Moreover, according to Shroff, developing nations should be vigilant in relation to European Union (EU) policies that may affect food availability.
"There are non-tariff barriers that are going to hugely impact agriculture productivity, particularly in developing countries where farmers are very, very poor and we need to be really watchful about some of the policies of the EU which are going to really massively impact food availability and food security for the world," he stressed.
