 Excellencies, distinguished delegates, participants, and dear colleagues. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening. Depending on your time zone and welcome to the session of the FAO in Geneva, Agricultural Trade Talks. My name is Dominique Burgeon and I am the director of the FAO liaison office in Geneva and I will be monitoring moderating today's session. I would like to thank you all for taking the time to attend our webinar today. And it's clear that we appreciate your support and interest in FAO's work. Before starting our event, let me share some details regarding the logistics and asking things for this virtual session. This webinar will be in English only with no interpretation to be recorded and will later be available on our website as well as all the other webinars we have had along with the resources relevant of course to this session. This schedule to last for about one hour and a half, one hour 15 minutes provided of course our speakers keep within the time allocation. We have reserved some time towards the end of the webinar for a Q&A session. Please submit your Q&A, your question in the Q&A module. While posting your questions, please kindly state your name and organization or institution. We will try to accommodate as many requests as possible, either in writing or early during the webinar. I also encourage the speakers to really try to respond also in writing because it provides really an opportunity to exchange. If you have any problem or technical issue, please let us know. That's all for the housekeeping issues. And Excellencies, dear colleagues and participants, today we will focus on responsible sourcing with an emphasis on sustainability driven trade requirements. Access to market and the challenge faced by upstream actors in agricultural supply chains. Globalization as you know as revolutionized business and trade in the agriculture sector. From reduced trade barriers to advances in production and logistics, agriculture has been on the rise. While these dynamics allow for much needed jobs and economic growth, they are also placing greater stress on commodity production, trade and supply chains. Supply chain related development impacts continue to feature in commodity production and trade, ranging from social and environmental concerns to potential threats to food security. To address this concern, several governments have introduced legislation with a name to mitigate the adverse environmental and social impacts of agricultural supply chains by requiring companies to establish mandatory risk based due diligence. As a result, lead companies in agricultural supply chains are charged with ensuring that their suppliers are producing and trading within planetary boundaries. In order to continue business and trade with key import markets, upstream actors from low and middle income economies are required to demonstrate how they are managing social and environmental risk in their business operations. In this context, building capacity and awareness on sustainably driven, sustainability driven requirements can help advance opportunities for the market integration of key players, including agricultural cooperatives. In 2016 FAO and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD launched the OECD FAO guidance for responsible agricultural supply chains, a global standard for addressing risk and development in the agricultural sector. Understanding that suppliers in different countries have different needs, capacities and access to market and global value chains FAO launched in 2022 report on agricultural cooperatives responsible sourcing and risk based due diligence. The report aims to help cooperatives understand what they can do to meet sustainability requirements in global trade. The report was the first focused effort to discuss such issue. With this background, our session today will discuss our upstream actors in the agricultural sector, particularly agricultural cooperatives, small orders, farmers and small businesses can address development challenges to meet the changing market needs of global trade, business and sustainability. Before proceeding with our session today, I would like to introduce our speakers. Today we'll hear from Pascal Vue, senior economist in the market and trade division at FAO in Rome, Mr. Tomislas Ivancic, global advisor responsible sourcing and agricultural supply chain, also in the market and trade division of FAO, Ms. Claire Cask-Cook, director for policy advocacy and member mobilization at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, Mr. José Antonio Hidalgo Molina, executive director of the Association of Banana Exporters of Ecuador, Ms. Masha Metalbeck, program director of value chain transformation at the Sustainable Trade Initiative, Mr. Danilo Salerno, regional director at the International Cooperative Alliance, ICA Americas, Ms. Catherine Lund, this Lundquist economic affairs officer in the economic research and statistic division of WTO, and then Ms. Marjoraine Ennis, chair of the OECD advisory group on responsible agricultural supply chains. Thank you all for agreeing to be with us today. And without further delay, I would now like to start with our first speaker, Mr. Pascal Vue, who will now talk to us about the FAO's work on responsible business conduct and OECD FAO guidance for responsible agricultural supply chain. As I mentioned before, please do not hesitate to post any question you may have in the Q&A module. Thank you very much. Thank you very much Dominique and ladies and gentlemen. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening depending on where we are. I will now share my screen for the presentation. I managed to do this, and you see the presentation. Yes, you may however want to put it in full screen. Yes, I'm trying to do this. Okay, I think we should be able to see it. Okay, perfect. Okay, so thank you very much Dominique for your introduction. And I will now start with a presentation on responsible business conduct and agricultural supply chains, risk-based due diligence, responsible sourcing and development. So today in this presentation, I will address why there's been this now global demand for responsible business conduct and risk-based due diligence in agricultural supply chains. I will then mention and explain what is the OECD FAO guidance for responsible agricultural supply chains, which is one of the tools that companies and governments have to respond to this new demand. And explain also what risk-based due diligence means as a method to support producers and traders, especially in developing countries. And then I will conclude my presentation with some illustrations of concrete examples of FAO's activities on responsible sourcing and agricultural supply chains. So as Dominique has mentioned in his introduction, there's a rising number of laws and regulations, especially major importing markets, regarding the introduction of mandatory risk-based due diligence in agricultural supply chains, especially for large companies. And this type of legislation covers different topics, for example, corporate governance, transparency and anti-bribery, anti-corruption, environmental and social due diligence, sustainability reporting. And there are also some specific concerns regarding, you know, the development aspects and environmental aspects such as climate change and carbon emission, modern slavery and forced labor or child labor or decent work, etc. And you can see on this graph, you can't really see and you don't need to read what's in blue, but you can see the number of regulations and laws starting from 2010 over the last 12 years has been an amazing increase in the number of regulations, especially in major importing markets. So what are the drivers, what drives governments to adopt this type of legislation? There are several types of drivers. Some of them are political, you know, big groups of major economies like the G7, the G20, in their meetings they called for more importance given to responsible business conduct in global supply chains. And that was recently the case in the G7 agricultural ministers declaration last year, but also more recently just a month ago at the Global Forum for Food and Agriculture, the OECD AFL guidance was mentioned. Also the European Parliament Working Group on Responsible Business Conduct has called several times for more regulations and also even the EU Code of Conduct on Responsible Food Business and Marketing Practices has also referenced the OECD AFL guidance. But it's not only the political sphere, so industry and consumer organizations have called for more sustainable supply chains and responsible business conduct and due diligence. For example, the CEO of BlackRock several times has come up with some declaration, it's his annual declaration or annual statement to CEOs, he mentions several times the need for responsible business conduct. And then of course the regulatory developments, if we can cite just a few recent developments, for example the French, the Vigilance, the Australia Modern Salivary Act, or the EU draft directive on corporate sustainability due diligence are recent examples of these trials towards more regulations and more requirements for due diligence. So the key tool to address these requests from markets is the OECD AFL guidance for responsible agricultural supply chains that you can see on the screen. So this guidance was developed by the OECD and FAO starting in 2012, we had the first discussion, and then from 2013 to 2015, guided by a multi stakeholder advisory group. This guidance was developed and it is now a leading global standard for agribusinesses and investors on risk based due diligence in agricultural supply chain. The guidance is mainly meant for companies, it helps them observe the major standards for responsible business conduct, like the right principles, the principles for responsible agricultural investment, and the VGGTs, the voluntary guidelines for the governance of the OECD guidelines on international enterprises, etc, etc. So it's a synthesis of these various standards and also an explanation of why these standards are useful and what they say on different challenges. The guidance has three main sections, a section on awards, so that is namely a modern enterprise policy that companies are free to adopt or adapt to suit their own needs and to derive design their own corporate policies on RBC. The how, which is probably the most important part of the guidance and the most value it adds, is this five step framework for risk based due diligence, where basically the different steps of what a company should do to identify, assess, mitigate risks and reports on them are highlighted. And also it has a third part, which is quite concrete on concrete and specific measures for risk prevention and mitigation in various areas of risk, which can be, for example, human rights, worker rights and labor rights, environmental risks, technology, corruption and bribery, and other aspects like food security and nutrition, which are quite important in the guidance. So FAO and OECD are now finalizing a new joint implementation plan for the next five years 2023 to 2028, which will succeed the plan that was, that just finished last year. Now, FAO's work on responsible business conduct in agriculture is very valid, the guidance is one pillar of this work, there are also others. The idea is that we want to encourage development through responsible value change by helping governments design better policies to guide responsible business conduct among companies and other stakeholder groups. And also to help companies reduce negative social and environmental impacts of their operations, especially in countries where the source of agricultural products, which are often developing countries, we will focus on this part of the agricultural supply chain, the developing country part. So the idea is to identify and prevent harm in global supply chains and work, you know, with a full value chain approach with all the value chain operators, you know, for better development outcomes. Now I will give a few examples of a few activities for responsible for supply chains because it can sound very abstract and general. I think it's important that we go into the details of the implementation. So for example, last at the end of 2021 FAO and OECD with support financial support from GIZ and BMZ, the German Ministry for International Development Corporation have launched a project to develop a business handbook on deforestation and due diligence in agricultural supply chains. So it's a handbook for businesses for companies, which is based on the FAO OECD guidance that I mentioned in its five step framework for risk based due diligence. And it explains to company how they can address deforestation upstream in their suppliers and also downstream along the supply chain. How they can implement due diligence to try to assess and mitigate risks, but also to have a positive effect on forests. How to troubleshoot bottlenecks considering different instances, different challenges and sensitive areas of work. And how to address current regulations or forthcoming regulations like for example the EU directive on corporate sustainability due diligence, which is expected to be adopted sometime this year. And how to engage with various stakeholders for doing this because this is a key point your companies cannot do everything on their own in terms of addressing environmental and social impacts. They really need to work hand in hand with government agencies, civil society organizations, local communities, unions of workers, etc. So we are now in the process of finalizing the handbook, we are also producing a short version with key messages, which will be translated in a few key language where deforestation issues are salient, and we expect to launch the guide to the handbook in June this year. Another concrete example of a field's work on responsible business conduct is in tropical fruit value chains. We have a project which focuses on sustainability in pineapple and avocado value chains. These are high growth commodities, which generates a lot of cash export earnings for developing countries. So the project had to help businesses and organizations of producers to understand how they can reduce adverse impacts on local development in their sectors. So it aims to provide technical guidance for producer organizations, small and medium enterprises, exporters, packers, and other actors upstream in the value chain. And it also introduces the OECD FAO guidance and the concept of risk based due diligence to producers and also the different operators around supply chains to advance sustainability in key commodity markets. Another example in another commodity sector, which is quite important to developing countries is the banana export sector, which generates about 10 billion US dollars every year for developing countries, you know, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs in the world, especially in rural areas. So the firm is a global multi stakeholder platform to facilitate collaboration between stakeholder groups and the dissemination of best practices on sustainable production and trade of bananas. It has more than 200 members representing retailers, importers, exporters, producer organizations, governments, trade unions, civil society organizations and research and development institutions. Among the exporter organizations we have IBA and we have here today, we have the pleasure to have Jose Nidalgo from the Ecuadorian Banana Exporter Association. The firm has different working groups working on each of the three dimensions of sustainability, economic, social environmental, and it also has task force on specific issues. And gather actors to facilitate development solutions for sustainable business in the banana value chain, working on topics like climate change mitigation, promoting living wages, promoting decent work, gender equity, fighting global diseases of concern like TR4, which is a big concern for the banana industry. Then finally, a last example of concrete work of FAO is the global agri-food climate initiative, which is an international multi stakeholder collaboration platform on measuring and reducing GHT emissions in agricultural supply chains. GHT is greenhouse gas. So the aim of this global agri-food initiative is to facilitate collaboration on climate action in agricultural supply chains, from downstream retailers to upstream suppliers and producers, to build consensus on common methods in the agri-food sector, to measure and to reduce GHT, to facilitate technical assistance and access to credit, especially for developing countries and small and medium enterprises. And to have a focus on scope three emissions, which are namely the emissions that companies do not control directly, but that come from their suppliers in their supply chain in globally traded agricultural commodities. The initiative was announced at the last COP, last November in Shamir Shid, and it's going to be launched this year. So I will stop here and give the screen to Thomas for the next presentation. Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you very much Pascal for your very insightful presentation, for presenting, I would say FAO normative work in the area, but also the very concrete example of what we do in support of a number of supply chains. So thank you very much. I know Pascal that you have to to leave us for the last minute called meeting, but I thank you very much for being with us even briefly, and I'm sure that Thomas will go on with a great presentation. So Thomas, the floor is yours. Thanks a lot Pascal. Thank you. Thank you very much everybody. Thank you very much Dominique and welcome ladies and gentlemen thank you very much for joining us here and learning a little bit more about what we're doing in terms of responsible sourcing. And some of the trends that we're seeing in terms of trade and sustainability criteria and how that affects different actors in different places in the supply chain. In my presentation here I'll run through four major areas that are really based around a report that we launched last year in October of last year on agricultural cooperatives and risk based due diligence right. And more or less the objective was that was to try to to bring agricultural cooperatives into the global discourse on trade and supply chains, because they're such an important development actor and I'll get to that in my presentation. But first I'll outline why trade in agricultural cooperatives thereafter I'll outline a little bit more about sustainability requirements, global trade and development right and illustrate how that has changed over time and really what risk based due diligence is in The fourth area I'll discuss is how do we apply a risk based due diligence model to agricultural cooperatives right if we're seeing that as becoming an increasing requirement by suppliers downstream in the supply chains how do cooperatives even adapt to these requirements considering the challenges that they face and you know likewise smaller economic actors in supply chains such as small and medium enterprises face similar challenges in low and middle income countries to address these these type of issues so it's very relevant for all actors upstream. And lastly I'll close with some key takeaways and recommendations that we've outlined specifically in our report. So really why trade in global, why trade in agricultural cooperatives well, we know that development is a very important part of this equation right agricultural cooperatives are what we've called frontline actors and reducing poverty and agricultural sourcing communities. So, you know around the world from Uganda to, you know, to Brazil to to Argentina to many other countries that trade globally. We have agricultural sourcing communities where there are farmers, small media enterprises many different actors that are dependent on the global dynamics of demand and supply, right. And as such agricultural cooperatives are imperative because they do reach those who are often forgotten including small holders and serve as the very good springboard to bring them into global trade and markets. They provide does they provide aggregated market access right in helping small small holders reach markets, agricultural cooperatives provide a platform for negotiating with different buyers right for aggregating services and distribution channels and importantly. They provide a capacity building function to their members right so they provide training services and allow for greater scale and uptake of sustainability and trade requirements including what we're focusing on here today. The global movement for risk based due diligence and you know cooperatives are a very, very powerful tool to be able to extend that message to their members and you know in turn reduce development impacts as a result. Now, what's really interesting about this discussion is that you know cooperatives have limited access to GVCs right so we're not only discussing. This discussion on how to help cooperatives address trade standards sustainability trade standards. We're also having a conversation of how we can enhance the access of agricultural cooperatives to trade and global markets, which is absolutely crucial for poverty reduction. Now, as we'll see here, you know this is a really kind of, you know quick overview of trade standards sustainability standards voluntary standards over the years right. From 1950 until 2023, we really see different types of movements that have helped create the evolution to where we are today with responsible sourcing and risk based due diligence standards right first. Early we started with food safety standards in the 1950s and 1960s right and, and you know, characteristic of that is the launch of the codex elementaries which is led by the FAO and the WHO to really regulate food safety standards right and to create a common thread across the board of what the expectations are for food production and the health standards that are associated to that. Now, with progress in the 1980s we see you know we've already have a growth of global agri-food trade right which has reached precedented levels that the world had never seen before. You know what was previously normal in terms of organic foods, we saw the growth of a new market trend and that's organic standards right and greater many buyers and lead companies in markets such as the United Kingdom the United States and in the European Union began to start requesting specific organic based standards from their suppliers upstream in developing countries right and there's some really great examples to that in the report that we've launched. Now you know moving up towards closer to 2023, we see the growth of fair trade standards which is really something that is much more ingrained in development right and looking at how development and different actors in the mainstream can be involved in responsible production right looking at everything from unit cost to decent work challenges. Now we as we move closer we see the development of multi stakeholder initiatives and retail standards right and multi stakeholder initiatives are really something that have been new, and you know since the 1990s. We've included the platforms such as the responsible soy platforms responsible palm oil, even responsible biofuels right which is something that we're working on separately at the FAO to create greater awareness and bring this discussion more closely to to that area. And multi stakeholder initiatives really sought to really designed to onboard different perspectives into the creation of standards right so different NGOs, workers organizations include in ensure that trade is more responsible and more reflective of different developmental challenges in production and trade. Now, as we move towards the end we see global source of responsible sourcing and management standards are responsible business contact and risk based due diligence, as we know it today Pascal mentioned that since you know the growth of through the introduction of legislation since 2011 excuse me, with the introduction of the OECD guidelines for multinational enterprises the UN guiding principles on business and human rights and many others including our own standard which is the OECD file guidance for responsible agricultural supply chains. Now, what what these standards really speak to and these expectations are you know Pascal mentioned the main areas here. In terms of thematics, but they would they all really seek to do is to curb environmental and social impacts and production and trade and ensure that sourcing takes place within the limits of development. We know that the demand for food will continue to grow, but we also know that the world could only produce and trade so much without impacting on on on communities and on the environment around the world right so the objective of this movement of responsible sourcing and risk based due diligence is to introduce a business model to help companies understand what they can do to proactively mitigate risks along the way. So get into the five steps specifically a frame to to a cooperative lens, but before that I'll speak to the main characteristics of what is risk based due diligence right and this wheel comes from the OECD file guidance for responsible agricultural supply chains. In effect, risk based due diligence is rooted in adapting business models to identify assess mitigate and prevent developmental impacts in the only business operations of a company, but also those of their suppliers namely the supply chain. All companies have risks right it's impossible to find a business that does not have a risk to development in one way or another, but the guidance in itself helps companies understand that along the spectrum. There are, there is a process of severity and likelihood of different risks taking place right so by understanding how a company can impact on development. So let's categorize the severity and the likelihood of these risks taking place. Importantly, risk based due diligence considers the leverage of the impacts cause and what companies can do to exercise their leverage in a supply chain so you know if you're a downstream supplier or an upstream buyer for instance in the United Kingdom or in the Netherlands or or in the United States or Finland. You know, if you are not satisfied with with the the sourcing activities or even maybe even risks identified with your suppliers downstream in the supply chain. You can use your leverage to try to enhance better business practices amongst those suppliers. Now importantly risk based due diligence is flexible and it's tailored to companies of different sizes, including cooperatives as we'll hear in a moment. It's dynamic and ongoing and informed by stakeholder engagement right so including the voices of different actors is absolutely crucial here so that companies know that their policies that their activities are actually reflective of the reality in in terms of development impacts and not only their perception of what those impacts may be. Now lastly and my most favorite point of this is that it views disengagement as the last resort right so if a company identifies a development risk be that child labor be that deforestation or many risks in terms of you know water use or overuse of freshwater resources in the supply chains instead of terminating a business relationship the OECD file guidance highlights how companies can work with those suppliers to address and remedy instead of terminating and ending that business relationship we know that in developing countries in particular these business relationships are often extremely important and they're often lifelines for many farmers and many who survive in agricultural sourcing communities so encouraging better business practices is really a core feature of the OECD file guidance. What does this mean for cooperatives right cooperatives are different there they have something in between, you know, an SME and something, you know, more complex than an SME in many ways because they have a membership framework to them, and they often struggle with severe funding issues as well here from our colleagues today in our panelists well you know, according to the five step framework of the OECD file guidance one can really see that there are excellent entry points for cooperatives to engage in in this discourse and market themselves better to hopefully integrate into GBCs if they're not already trading in global supply chains so number one is established company management systems right so within a cooperative they're creating policies that cooperatives can can can use to drive responsible business practices including amongst their members right helping their members understand and bring out common risks that could take place in the context of production including child labor and many others identification and assessment and prioritization of risks, helping members understand how they can, they can map these challenges and and and really pinpoint what the main issues are, are they possibly taking the context of undeclared work, can sourcing and production be irritating food security with a greater focus on export markets, if so, those are some of the issues that should be prioritized in cooperation with their members. So now step three is really designing and implementing a strategy to respond to those risks that that that have been identified right and cooperatives together with their members can design action plans to to remedy some of these risks or or reduce the likelihood of them taking place. Now, other actors such as NGOs can also be considered to be onboarded into these activities at the upstream level. Certification is extremely important as a step four so making sure that you know you just don't design an action plan that cooperatives have follow up and continuity with their members to ensure that this regularly fits in with their activities and also connects with their teams many cooperatives have already existing activities that are designed to to facilitate audits and you know voluntary certification standards. So really connecting that with ongoing activities is extremely important. So actually reporting on supply chain due diligence is absolutely crucial because the world needs to know what that cooperative is doing. And importantly, what's what's key here is to know that cooperatives can better market themselves to downstream suppliers as a responsible as a responsible actor in supply chains right and enhance their potential to be able to trade globally. Lastly, some things to consider and in terms of recommendations build the house ensure that when we're talking about risk based due diligence that we just don't jump in with integrating a five step framework but that a cooperatives really consider their existing management right including financial issues, staff issues and need gaps right without considering that you know the impact would be wouldn't be as efficient and sustainable setting the scene really communicating what this is in terms of market expectations and in terms of strengthening their own business models right moving beyond VSS and certification so introducing the five step framework and training and extension service tailored to the needs of all cooperative members. I'm considering the benefits right understanding that this is. This is an opportunity to reduce uncertainty in business and look for opportunities as a responsible supplier. Lastly, involving others integrating and embedding multi stakeholder cooperation throughout the process. So I'll end here, and I'll pass the floor back to Dominique thank you very much for your time. Thank you, thank you very much to miss last for really an excellent presentation and for also being again very concrete on our on our risk based due diligence is applied, particularly to to agriculture cooperative that kind of super interesting so thank you very much. And now I'd like to open the panel discussion during the during which our panelists will further elaborate on upstream actors in the agriculture sector, particularly agricultural cooperative small orders and small businesses can address development challenges to meet the changing market needs of export trade and sustainability. Today, our first speaker in the panel is miss clear cast cook miss cookies director for policy advocacy and member mobilization at the World Business Council for sustainable development, the World Business Council for sustainable development, so private sector led community of over 200 of the world's lead leading sustainable businesses working collectively to accelerate the system transformation needed for a net zero nature positive and more equitable future with such a bright agenda. Please. Thank you so much for the kind introduction I actually had written some of this just to explain where I work already but now I don't need to repeat it's a really helpful thank you and I'm honored to be here. I'm happy that this conversation is happening with such a focus on Geneva, which is also where WBC SD is based. We have offices and other places around the world, but based here and exciting to see the FAO taking a leadership in this space. And also in Geneva engaging with WTO and many other organizations. So what I wanted to focus on and I'll just make a few comments and really looking forward to dialogue and having a conversation is around the role of companies and business and collaboration with with cooperatives in particular, in order to improve supply agricultural and then also to share some examples and key themes that we have seen in the responsible sourcing and food and agriculture space in particular around a project that we have around the global agribusiness action on equitable livelihoods which has a strong focus on equity, which is a core priority for us as an organization. So practically speaking, what I can share on the cooperative side and I was really listening with a lot of attention to what Thomas love was sharing the results of the study. And a central theme is the value of collaboration and a particular example that we I can use is and this is input that we've also collected from a colleague leads our soft commodities forum, which has a lot of the world's leading agricultural companies as members so ADM, Bungie, Cargill, Coffco International, Viterra and Lewis Dreyfuss, and they're having a lot of focus on the Serato so supply chain. And what we are finding and what we're seeing from those examples when we're looking at how to improve that particular value chain is the importance about engaging in dialogue and action planning with indirect suppliers which includes cooperatives. So not just direct suppliers but indirect suppliers to promote traceability schemes and monitoring systems to ensure deforestation and conversion free soy supply chains. So it's really that big focus on traceability and collaboration across the value chain, and that we see cooperatives offering a gateway to a community of producers. Not just individual producers but really many different ones, and that they're really helpful in enabling collective investment in equity minded approaches. So that include farmers and make sure that farmers are part of the conversations when you have these large companies involved, having the role of having that role of a cooperative as a center center central anchoring point is really important. We also see that cooperatives can play an important role in helping prepare producers helping prepare farmers to upcoming market standards and regulations. And they can also help introduce kind of generate some thinking around market based solutions to encourage greater sustainable production. So that's a particular example to share about dialogue and action plan that gateway to farmers and also helping work with farmers and preparing them about upcoming market solutions and standards. That's the one example I wanted to highlight on and also had a bit of a brainstorming conversation with Thomas laugh as we're preparing for this and discussing so much about you know the importance of obviously public private partnerships the right incentives that need to be put into the key role of digitalization and transparency. There is so much to cover and there is limited time. So what I think would also be really important is to share work that we have done where we work with particular companies to create case studies about how large agri food companies can engage and strengthen small and medium sized agri food companies in their value chains to better enable market access. That's a specific example I wanted to share. So we worked with companies like buyer OCP group don known many others to look at how can they scale sustainable procurement practices and improve as a me supplier engagement. And some of the key themes that came out of this which some of this I've I've I've seen mentioned before and some I haven't is is obviously central is a stable resilient and transparent supply chain is essential in the agribusiness sector and we've seen a lot of challenges especially to SMEs and cooperatives because of climate change because of the impact of COVID-19 list goes on. So what does work with the big with the co with the corporations showed, which was a really interesting conclusion one number one is the benefits from empowering women, which is one of the most important conclusions and seeing women as agents of change. The other one was about we need a solid business case. So it cannot be seen as a charitable project we really need a solid business case, which links me to my third point, which about potential areas and opportunities around innovative funding mechanisms. For example, an initial grant or foundation, which can help unlock more sources of funding. And this is something that's why we are also so interested in engaging in these conversations and highlighting this there's obviously a lot of issues around and that was mentioned before and a lot of the work that's done, but there can be certain unlocks that can also lead to a solid business case and help maybe reduce some of that risk. And there can be interesting funding mechanisms from grants and foundations that can unlock more investment. The other one, and it's not a big surprise, but it's quite self evident but really important is to have effective communication with suppliers, really based on the trust and transparency themes but the communication aspect is key. And then and this is also mentioned a lot but it isn't. I can share more about the particular case studies that we published and the work that went there is to identify barriers and build capacity. It's not a big surprise but it came out loud and clear from the work that these companies were doing and some of the lessons learned. This kind of concludes my remarks. Happy to answer some questions. What I did want to highlight that we see an interesting future development and something to look at about the role of the voluntary carbon markets in strengthening farmer livelihoods through nature based solutions and regenerative agriculture. And obviously we also be looking at the central priority of having accountability and accountability for corporations corporate accountability frameworks and corporate guidance to best support farmers and local communities we see that growing need for harmonization and alignment so there is a key role obviously for farmers and cooperatives to play but also a key role for corporations to play in this and that's why I mentioned accountability. With that, thank you very much and happy to answer any questions later on. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for such a great presentation and from presenting the perspective from the private sector, and highlighting so many important aspects. The role of equity equity in mind that approaches traceability and cooperation across the value chain incentive digitalization, effective communication importance of capacity building I mean all very important aspects that itself would deserve a lot of conversation, and a very important discussion was also the impact in terms of for example women empowerment which I think is very, very important. So, thank you very much for that. And our next speaker today will be Mr. Mr Molina and Mr Molina is the executive director of the association of banana exporters of Ecuador, which represents more than 70% of banana exporters from Ecuador, and which promotes the competitiveness and sustainability of the banana industry. Mr. Mr Molina and welcome. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you, first of all for the invitation to participate and speak at this webinar. My name is, you mentioned is Jose Antonio Dalgo I'm the executive director of I have the association of banana exporters of Ecuador. As you might know, Ecuador is the biggest exporter of bananas accounting for about one third of global banana shipments. 30% of our plantations in Ecuador's are in hands of around 5000 small holders, some who sell the production through cooperative systems. Agriculture cooperatives have an important role in supporting small scale farmers by giving them access to the inputs they need, like seats and development funds, sharing new and more sustainable ways of production and understanding key statistics about their farms. In fact, cooperatives promote sustainable agriculture practices and contribute to rural development within IAV we have dedicated a commission responsible for supporting small producers and promoting the development of cooperatives. Currently, we work with more than 1200 small producers. In particular, we organize trainings aiming to teach producers how to collect record and the review of value from data, we with regards to the management of their farms, such as application of agrochemicals purchasing of materials water usage, among others. Based on that, we are able to provide them with recommendations on how better use of resources, adopt more sustainable practice, improve productivity and scale up. In the same vein, other banana producers associations such that our partners with us such as Agroban foster co-ops through training and workshop explaining how cooperatives work and how is this process to follow up to get group certifications. Last but not least, work with small producers and cooperatives focus on the implementation of fair labor practices in compliance with the Ecuadorian law, aiming to ensure workers are paid a fair wage and provide with safe working conditions. I would like to work, walk you through the success story and share with you some lessons learned from our small holders, in particular from the angle of the dynamic between the national and international dimension of our industry. From a national perspective, you should know that the banana industry is the backbone of Ecuador's economy, and it contributes significantly to the country's overall economic development. It represents 35% of the agriculture GDP. It employs about 250,000 people and supports an additional 400,000 jobs in related industries such as packaging, transportation and logistics to name just a few. The industry provides jobs at all level from farm laborers to export professionals and is a crucial source of income for many rural communities in Ecuador. From an international perspective, the banana industry is the driver of Ecuadorian businesses abroad, serving as a flagship of other of our country entrepreneurship in new markets. Where banana arrives, other products such as shrimp, cocoa, flowers and coffee are full. For that reason, we are firm supporters of the opportunities enabled by globalization and international trade, as proof by the several free trade agreements Ecuador has with other countries and regions. We have a long built solid reputation of being reliable suppliers, thanks to the sustainability of our businesses models that produces banana of the highest quality to feed all families around the world at an affordable price. And this has been recognized by our business partners all around the world. And this national and international dimensions interacts in a free market dynamic where hundreds of Ecuadorian producers and exporters every day negotiate the prices of our products with importers and retailers of other countries. This dynamic has fostered competition among the sector and it has, and is what allowed us to position our country as the regional leader with examples of excellence like the first certified carbon neutral port of Latin America in why I kill. However, this dynamic come with some challenges, and I believe that properly analyze this could inform modern public policy, which should develop keeping small holders as a point of reference. The first one is that in balance and power and concentration of value on one side of the value chain, in particular the retailing sector. This has been demonstrated by several reports elaborated board, both from private and public organizations FAO included that this indicates that barely 20% of the shelf price remains in the country in the country of origin, which is later distributed between workers producers and exporters. 80% is concentrated in the other side of the value chain, the downstream. My first goal to downstream actors is very simple. You should pay more for your bananas. You should not play at who's who has the cheapest banana and rather educate and empower the consumer to be part of this sustainability journey. This is the only way to recognize the effort of small holders that build the social and economic fabric of our rural areas. The second is the technical barriers from certain jurisdictions that do not recognize the principle of different regions and different needs are producers fight every day to ensure that the quality standards of our bananas are in the line with the national phytosanitary guidelines, while protecting the plantations from the plague and pests, like Sega black sega toka and fusarium tier four, native of the tropics, and that require a specific plan protection when these products are not recognized by importing markets simply because they do not have to fight the same place and pasts are producers needs to either find alternatives of or or lose their harvest. There is no alternative to not access, or are not viable, or are more expensive. Often, these technical buyers change several times in a short period, being a challenge in terms of adaptation, particularly for small holders that do not have the capacity to monitor the changing regulatory situation and means to test viable solutions. My second call in this regard will be, as I said before, different regions different needs. This reality has motivated our government to pass a specific laws aimed to regulating the banana industry in Ecuador. In this instance, la ley del banana or banana law, developing response to the challenges faced by the industry, including low prices and production costs. We have as well, a living wage for all workers recognized by our constitutions, by our constitution since 2008. And minimum wage is specific for the banana sector, periodically adjusted based on the changes in the cost of living and other factors. However, given the international character of our industry, upstream actors, like ourselves, cannot address the development challenges alone. Without the effective participation of the downstream part of the value chain. In this regard, we welcome initiative like the upcoming European due diligence directive, and the more recent German supply chain act. However, we are concerned about the unintended consequences this provisions might have. While we do support transparent and mandatory mechanisms of due diligence. We are concerned that this might create a new burden to producers, in particular small holders. This has been the case with private certification schemes. Despite being voluntarily, this in theory, in practice they are mandatory, because retailers imposed them, transferring the associated costs to the producer, which is particularly burdensome to some small holders. My third goal in this regard will be to policy makers, ensure that a system of share responsibility is coupled with that with any due diligence to ensure that the cost related to sustainability standards are equal and fairly distributed, all along the supply chain. For producers to consume, passing through the rest of the chain, including supermarkets, all of them contributing to the common goal of sustainability proportionated to their participation in the value chain. I hope this examples help to illustrate the challenges being faced by the Ecuadorian banana industry in the global agri food market. And I look forward for any question. Thank you for the opportunity of being here with you. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed, Mr. Molina, for those very particular points in relation to your thoughts to promote the competitiveness and sustainability of the banana industry in Ecuador, which as you record is one of the leading countries in the export of banana worldwide. Thank you very much for that. And now we'll hear from Miss Machin, Middle Bake, and Miss Middle Bake is the program director of volume chain transformation at the Sustainable Trade Initiative. IDH aims to accelerate and scale up sustainable trade by building impact-oriented coalition of front-running companies, civil society governments, knowledge institutions, and other stakeholders in several sectors. Miss Middle Bake, the floor is yours and I would like to ask you to try to stay within the allocated time because the previous speakers were a bit talkative, I must say. Very interesting. Let's try to give that a shot. Thanks Dominique. Hello everybody, my name is Marsha Middle Bake, indeed working at IDH. Pleased to be here and happy also to share some insights with you on how we work on professionalizing cooperatives through the private sector. I believe, is there a presentation shared or I think NAR is about to share that. Is that correct? Yes, there it's coming. And then you can directly go to the second slide. Go already mentioned what IDH is the Sustainable Trade Initiative, maybe a few additional words for the ones that are not familiar with it. Headquartered in the Netherlands around 300 employees globally and operated in 2020 landscapes and 12 commodity and sourcing regions worldwide. As mentioned that we seek to transform markets and change back business practices, business practices on pharma level, business level as well as sectoral level and we seek to do that through convening locally and globally by bringing food system coalitions together sector initiatives stakeholder platforms, as well as co-creation together with the private sector designing projects and programs that drive changes in markets and the food systems we operate in. Then in turn co-invest in these project programs value chains and business models that we seek to change and based on the work we do we generate insights and well and look for further finance to scale our efforts. That's about IDH. Let's move to the subject matter of today in the next slide. And well, as we are talking about seeking our downstream suppliers, which are often corporates, pharma organizations had to help reducing environmental risk and social risk like child labor that's all degradation. And that and but also make them more meaningful players in global trade that journey starts by structurally investing and making corporate is more professional commercially viable and investable. So, so those words, Tommy's love was referring to build a house these really resonate. But these pharma led business entities are not managed well government, governed well that's actually the key risk right and we can then not expect them to have mature extension systems service system in place through which they can train their members and reduce all kind of supply chain risk we would like them to reduce. In practice what we often observe is that the step of the professionalizing corporates on governance business business management financial management, having strong human resources in place is often skipped or doesn't get enough attention so we directly kind of move to the next step. And therefore the efforts which we are making in that corporates to adopt trade and sustainability standards and requirements are not going to be effective or stick if that house is not in order. And as we all acknowledge it that that the more professional corporates are the more likely there also to adopt these trade and sustainability requirements more optimally. And apart from that they have other benefits already mentioned by by a few and more efficient aggregation improve productivity quality traceability, but also better value distribution in the value chain, where we have data that that based of working with corporations and cooperatives that substantially reduced cost to source, but also the cost of servicing farmers. And apart from that, as mentioned as well right corporates deliver better services and inputs to them to their members so that there is a business case for investing in professionalizing cooperatives that's evident the question is who and how should that be done, and can all these costs have be bear by the private sector alone. At the age we take a private sector approach in driving sort of professionalism through the business models of the processors and the aggregators of takers we work with and these can be corporates like Cargill Nestle but also Agri SMEs in Africa. We assess how the sourcing and the service models of these companies can professionalize cooperatives and support graduation. For example, when it's through sourcing we reflect on how to set the procurement practices in such a way like contracting Liza price setting mechanism payment mechanisms premiums to really set the right business incentives also for these cooperatives to scale, grow and professionalize. On the other hand we reflect on the service model that so the services companies provide like access to inputs training markets access to finance and to tailor these services to different segments of cooperatives that are out there, for example, more advanced companies receive more specialized services and technologies or pre finance or links to financial institutions, whereas more immature farmer organizations corporatives might receive more support on how to aggregate manage their group, or how to register their entity. So far from perfect yet, but what we are see featuring in our portfolio is that we increasingly observe that that companies include and dealer services supporting cooperatives to professionalize. Not surprisingly also that farmer segmentation or farm organization segmentation is more prevalent in larger companies and mostly based on performance indicators or sourcing potential. So it's positive that companies adapt their sourcing and service models to allow for corporatives to professionalize but also work towards the sustainability requirements etc. We also acknowledge that this approach that that companies will typically only invest in the graduation to meet basically their needs not necessarily the needs of the farm organizations or the sector at large right. And that they're also more inclined to invest in the upper segments of the farmer organizations less so in those lower level segments. You can move to the next slide and that's also my final slide. So it could better integrate also that operative and sector needs and work more holistically on graduation and professionalizing farmer organizations and cooperatives but also unlock investments in that cooperative landscape. We're also testing a more holistic approach under the name aggregate, where we join hands with a set of organizations you've featured here to improve cooperative performance in certain value chains, countries and food systems. And that starts basically with us step one, assessing the cooperative landscape gathering the data on gaps strengths weaknesses. And based on on that analysis that data segments that that cooperative landscape in different levels and design a targeted business developments approach for each segment. And here business development providers like like agritera can come in but also other business development providers or service providers can come in. Here we also seek to leverage the service delivery models of companies that are working with with cooperatives to graduate them. And then step three, not necessarily sequential but also partly in parallel with step two is really improving the service delivery and the value chain performance so optimize the effectiveness of the value chain and the business is working with cooperatives, but also optimizing the service delivery of these value chain actors towards farmer organizations and cooperatives. Then step four, have the more advanced cooperatives we seek to link to finance inputs and markets and here financial service providers like Oracle credit but also the farm fit fund and local financial institutions may come in. And then the space where we seek to test different funding mechanisms to get more finance in that cooperative landscape. Then after these steps we seek to reassess once more. These assessments are done by scope insight they have developed an assessment tool to really measure the level of professionalism and performance of farmer organizations. To reassess to really see if that's what level of professionalism and performance has increased, whether business development services were effective and cost efficient, but also whether more markets and finance were locked. And we can also test had the hypothesis or assumptions that if you see more professional landscape of cooperatives do we also see the absorption for better sustainable practices in that landscape. Obviously aggregate partners are not going to do this job alone this this approach seeks to be embedded in the local context and will collaborate with the local governments companies and financial institutions in that landscape. Far more to tell about this obviously and but if interested please reach out and happy to receive any questions reflections from your end. Thank you for your attention. Well, thank you very much miss middle back and obviously as you say much more could be said on that but thank you for describing the private sector approach you you used to make in the cooperative more professional. And I like when you when you mentioned that the more you make them professional the more likely they are to adopt sustainability sustainability standard, which is very important thank you also for highlighting the importance of data data driven approaches. Thank you very much for that. So our next speaker is Mr Danilo Salerno Mr Salerno is the regional director at the International Cooperative Alliance ICA is a non government organization which unites represent and serves cooperative worldwide. Mr Salerno the floor is yours and welcome. Thank you very much. Good afternoon. Good morning afternoon or evening at all of you. Thank you very much. It's really an honor to me and being here. Thank you very much for to follow colleagues, both head quarters or Geneva, or also the Americas, our colleague from the Americas FI original office, we see someone of them are connected, because we are working very well original as well. The intervention will focus on three areas, and mainly we are international cooperative alliance. Few data and figures, just to start from the latter point. Just touched by the previous colleague. Then with regards to the event in this due diligence model and and all the studies that were mentioned. Maybe we need to perform to fit better. Not just in general in a general sense but also in order to attract those investments that were mentioned. So, the International Cooperative Alliance, as it was said, was funded in 1895. So we are very long, let's say, tradition. Our day at International Cooperative Alliance represents more than 315 again, cooperative organization from 112 countries. The International Cooperative Organization represents more than 1.2 billion direct members and employ more than 100 million people. That most roughly the 10% of the world employed population. This ICA nowadays is structured into four regional offices. I'm the regional director for the Americas, but also the liaison person for cooperation with FIO with the UN from based agencies. We have eight sectorial organization, the one for as we are talking about agriculture today, the one for agriculture is the ICA, International Cooperative Agriculture Organization. Then we have a development platform we have a youth committee agenda committee. We have the International Cooperative Law Committee and the Cooperative Research Committee. And last but not the least, the ISET International Cooperative Entrepreneurial think tank, made by big cooperative groups with particular focus like that. So going to the data, the last edition of the World Cooperative Monitor, which is the index we released at the ICA releases every year, showcasing the impact that the 300 biggest cooperative of the world have. Those information are very important to us, not just to set and represent cooperative organization from policy at policy level, but also to understand to have a better understanding of the impact we have at national level in terms of sustainable growth and development. This index released last December, the last edition showcases the 300 biggest cooperative in terms of turnover. But at the same time, which is, which makes more sense to me showcase the 300 biggest corporate in terms of turnover over GDP per capita. So the impact they have a national level in terms of personal purchasing power. So if we have a look at it, and I will copy afterwards the link in the chat. We see that the among those 300 biggest cooperative worldwide, the big part of them are from the agriculture sector 100 out of 300 of the biggest one are active in the agriculture sector while the 59 are active of the biggest are active from in the consumers and retail sector. So roughly merging this first two sectors, we have we see that the 53% of the half part of the 300 big cooperative of the world. They cover the agriculture or food systems play chain so production plus distribution when we say production or agriculture also fishery is including and it is crucial to keep in mind as part of the food system. And then if we go to the type of cooperatives, the top 300 per type of organization. Again, we see that 126 corporate are from the agricultural sector and plus 70 from the consumers and retail sector. Looking at the geographical distribution. We have amongst the 300 we have 90 corporate from the Americas plus roughly, I will say 50 from Asia Pacific and 160 more or less from Europe. This to say, data are important and we've also the same time to improve our data collection, because most of these data comes from desk research desk analysis where, while just a short percentage percentage comes from data directly submitted by our members so in this sense, cooperation and partnership with international organization and research centers is crucial to us not just identify those policies we need in terms of representation but also which financial technical tools are needed in order to improve our action both at national international level. Focusing on agriculture. We have the top 10. In terms of to over top 10 cooperatives coming from Japan, Korea, the US, Germany, and again the US, while analyzing the top 10. If we turn over over GDP per capita will we have India with if go and another milk marketing federation, plus Korea with NFC, then we have cooperative from Brazil, Argentina, again US and again Germany, and so on. So the importance of data as was already mentioned. I mean, how we fit with regards this due diligence and the other studies where which were mentioned and look at the risk analysis. I'm happy to say that mainly for or or five areas of this due diligence risk analysis from my point of view are already covered, especially referred to human rights, liberal rights, healthy safety, as well as food security and nutrition standard. Let me just give you a sharing example. I'm very familiar with coming from the country where the original office from of the Americas is set up. We are executing an interesting very interesting project called the House of Happiness, funded by the U delegation in Costa Rica, and what we do is to provide education and health services to those migrants. From Panama or Nicaragua during the coffee season to pick up coffee from the production and to process those coffee via some cooperatives like we are working with. We set up this project exactly to avoid that the, the, the, the, the adults can work in safe condition, certificated, safe condition with access to health services, while their children are the group that the cooperative is taking care of the children giving them education and education services during the whole day. And this is enhancing the both the label standards of the cooperative, as well as the production, the market production of the cooperatives, because everyone works, let's say in better condition, and can perform more in a safe, safe, safe, safe, safe, safe, safe, safe, safe, safe, safe in a, in a, in a broader sense, from the respective point of view. It's important. Can I, can I please ask you to wrap up. Yeah, for sure. I'm sorry, but we know. What's where, how we fit. We want to stress the importance to set up partnership enable us to demonstrate our impact at local community, putting in action the seventh principle of cooperative the concern of community as well as try to making the sector the different sectors working together or improving cop to cop cooperation. What we need, we need those investments we need this technical assistance and training that was mentioned, but above all, let me say that we show what we need is to pass from the analysis to action and why. And that's why I'm calling to a more concrete and more stable and permanent partnership with FIO and the other intergovernmental organization investing in cooperatives on our organization with pilot process process and project in order to go to more concrete and have this in best practices to be showcased, also contributing to the further analysis. Thank you very much. Okay, thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. Salie. I'm sorry for pushing you a bit towards the end but thank you indeed for providing us with your perspective from the cooperatives and the importance of, indeed, you referred to importance of data data collection but also the importance to transfer this data into into action but and also think you're providing the very concrete example of what you are doing today. Our last speaker in the panel is Miss Catherine Longvist. Miss Longvist is economic affairs officer in the economic research and statistics division of WTO and Miss Longvist, you have the floor. Thank you very much for the kind introduction and for inviting me to being here. I'll just try to keep my remarks very brief. I think it's wonderful that the WTO Miss me Informal Working Group is invited to participate in this conversation. So this group is a group of 97 members of the WTO, they cover all regions of the world and all levels of development, and they try to really produce concrete outcomes and act as a an area where members can discuss new ideas and try to brainstorm about possible solutions. There have been a lot of different topics that have been raised and they've, they've ranged from digitalization to trade facilitation, and one topic that has also been raised has been smallholder farmers. This is a huge, very big part of many economies of the world up to 50% of certain economies, and it's important to try to facilitate trade by these actors. The group itself has looked into this issue, we've received one presentation from the Brazil Ministry on food supply on the agriculture innovation agenda in that economy. And the group also holds annual conversations with small businesses, and during those conversations the issue of sustainability standards which I've heard over and over in this conversation have been brought to the group's attention. So it's something that's on our radar. So let's just end quickly with tomorrow we're going to release our third small business champions and this is for this is, this is for chambers of commerce, industry associations, small businesses and non governmental organizations to submit proposals. The next meeting is going to be helping smallholder farmers go global. So it's very in line with this discussion today. The winners will be announced on miss me days 27th of June 2023. And we're looking forward to see what proposals there are so thank you again for having me today and I will turn it over to you. Thank you very much. And indeed, for getting a brief overview of the work of the working group on MSMEs, and which is very active and we look forward to definitely engage more with you. Unfortunately, as you as you can figure out colleagues will not have time for a Q&A session, but there was a very rich exchange the Q&A modules with the questions being up directly to the families which has been responded to and will make sure this is documented in the meetings of this meeting. So, and now it is my pleasure to give the floor to Marjolem, and this for concluding remarks. And this is the chair of the OECD FAO advisory group on responsible agriculture supply chains, led by the OECD and FAO she's also a counselor at the permanent presentation of the kingdom of the Netherlands to the OECD working on responsible business products, social affairs, employment policies, migration and digitalization. Thank you very much. And hello to all of you. I hope you are you still have some time to just listen to some my concluding remarks about this extremely interesting panel and whole discussion on on development trade and a responsible business conduct. So, as announced, I am indeed speaking in my capacity of chair of the OECD FAO advisory group, which is part of this rather unique and successful cooperation between the OECD and the FAO around the implementation of the OECD FAO guidance on responsible agriculture supply chains on which Mr. Liu from FAO explained what what this is all about. So actually this guidance helps businesses in carrying out their due diligence, and it also promotes or aims to promote a common understanding on due diligence. And so this advisory group I will not go into this right now just two words on it, it's, it's a multi stakeholder body representing more than 60 members from government business civil society, academia trade unions and certification bodies, including some of the speakers today. For example, the speaker Ms. Middle Bake from IDH and Ms. Clea Casca cut from World Business Council and Sustainable Development they are members of the advisory group. And so this advisory group tries to contribute and gives advice to the OECD and FAO on their work to implementing or promoting the implementation of this guidance. So let me just go quickly to the interesting discussion of today, which is also actually at the heart of what we do at the OECD FAO advisory group that means discuss difficult challenges and consider how responsible business conduct and due diligence can help to overcome them. So my, my, my takeaways from the discussion are well first of all, we are discussing a very important topic global trade in food and agricultural commodities is worldwide, huge, not only from an economic point of view, but also from a perspective. Agriculture contributes up to two thirds of GDP and some low income countries and supports the livelihoods of over one billion people. So this is also what Mr. Idelgo showed from his specific case and what it means for for GDP the banana production and export means for his specific country. So today's trade policy environment in food and agriculture supported by actors such as the FAO and WTO have made enormous progress in discouraging unfair trading practices, reducing market uncertainty and facilitating coordination between countries. So this this multilateral framework has expanded global trade and has helped many countries progress and and and grow. And the OECD FAO guidance on responsible agriculture supply chains has actually contribute that as we saw also from Mr. Yu's presentation on the OECD guidance, which actually had his it's anniversary this week it was seven years since it was was launched in Paris. So since that launch it has become the leading global reference as Mr. Yu also pointed out for responsible business conduct in agriculture supply chains. So today's discussion was so interesting. I think because it made this clear link between trade development and the importance of doing RBC. It made this very visible and responsible business conduct in agriculture supply chains can help business and governments transform global markets into more inclusive sustainable and resilient food systems. Likewise, it can arm trade and development actors to better cope with supply chain shocks caused by diseases changing trade trade requirements natural disasters and climate change. Maybe needless to say making trade relate relations more resilient and sustainable for the actors and the resources in producing countries. Now and in the future is of course in the interest of all we have talked about food security, we have talked about the environment related climate change effects, and the livelihood of farmers in low and male income countries. So this discussion underlined the role of agricultural cooperatives and the role they can play in agriculture supply chains as frontline actors in development in those low and male income countries, as was pointed out very well by the presentation of Mr. Thomas love events teach from the FL. And he pointed also out that those cooperatives struggle to have access to export markets and trade in global value chains, even with food and commodities for which demand is high such as food. Nevertheless, cooperatives remain a good option in terms of the coordination of efforts in making agriculture production more sustainable, which also Mr Salerno showed from ICA. In addition, it seems that if they succeed in making their production more sustainable by implementing due diligence, they have higher chances to access the global supply chains because they respond to the requirements in terms of sustainability by buyers and traders. So the central question that we have dealt with today was, how can we make sure then that those cooperatives in practice can deal with the challenges in implementing RBC standards and have have access to global supply chains, and what is needed for that. So this was of course the question, which, which is not only for the cooperatives but for all the actors in the global supply chains involved. And so there were many suggestions I heard today. For example, we should start by making a greater effort to listen to the different actors in agriculture supply chains and consider that there are economic social and environmental needs. The dialogue and action plans were meant, were mentioned, and informing cooperatives about RBC where we're pointed out is important. For example, our colleague clear from WBC the CSD and Mr Salerno from ICA pointed this out. Another important action point is to build capacity and Tommy's I've also mentioned this and it's also clear in from the, from the, the report. So it's, it's, it's, there are many recommendations in this report on how to build the capacity of co-operatives and create a better understanding of how to integrate risk based, and how to gain then a competitive advantage in global value and Mr Ida go has underlined with respect to that also the need for a balanced value chain that ensures a living income for all the actors also in the upstream part. So maybe this leaves us with the challenge between the limited resources for entering the market and the possibility of doing due diligence according to the five step framework in the guidance. This this risk, or this, this, this challenge risks to be a vicious circle, because access to the market. Hence, to more resources, maybe a first step to, to doing RBC so you first you need the money to do RBC and RBC can help you enter the global market. So how to exit from this vicious circle. Some, some solutions were mentioned there as well. A greater role maybe for public private partnerships is a solution to open sources for funding for cooperatives. Make a solid business case for RBC and make it possible for example, through training as miss middle big from IDH pointed out. We also mentioned the role that exporting organizations can play in promoting RBC among small farmers. And we saw also that these efforts, then we should pay attention that these efforts are not done in the narrow interest of the organization that promotes them, but also in the interest then of small farmers. We saw this systemic data driven approach as proposed by IDH, which could be a solution to that. So finally, this discussion we we are having with the trade community about RBC and how to drive better development outcomes through global agri food trade has been has been very valuable for building our common understanding of the challenges and their solutions, and it will be hopefully followed by many other discussions and maybe with also with the group mentioned by WTO, maybe we could have more common discussions of this type. So I want to stop here and thank FAO very much for this great webinar and thank all the speakers for their great presentations and technical expertise and for all the people listening for your attention until the end. So hopefully until the next time. Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much, Miss Ennis for those closing remarks. Indeed, I join you in thanking all the speakers and but also the participants for joining the session and also the colleagues in the FAO market and trade division and my own colleagues here in Rome. As you know FAO in Geneva will continue to organize these dialogues on the topics of agriculture and fisheries, our next ones will be on fisheries in collaboration with the market and trade division in FAO quarter as well as the fisheries and aquaculture division. So we will be announcing the themes and dates for the upcoming dialogues in the very near future and we look forward to that level of attendance and that quality of dialogue which was really a very impressive today from the very beginning to the concluding remark by you Miss Ennis. So thank you. Thank you so much everyone and we look forward to having you again. This is an important topic that we will keep that we need to keep on our agenda. So thanks again and have a great rest of the day wherever you are. Bye bye. Thank you everyone. Thank you very much. Bye bye. Thank you. Bye. Thanks a lot. Bye bye.