Revelations in an Interview with the United States of America

The journalist from the New York Times, sat down with the delegate of the United State from the G20 committee, which was discussing the topic of International Supply Chains and Food Security.

NYT: The New York Times is here with the delegate of the US in the G20 committee.

United States: Thank you for having me.

NYT: First question- what do you think the most pressing issue is in the committee?

United States: Well, what the committee is seeing as the most pressing issue is the small scale farmers and how we should protect them. What the United States believes the most pressing issue is- conflict [inside countries]. It’s better a topic because small scale farmers, well, [they] depend very much on the crop in the country and the way the economy is structured of what would be efficient. For example in the US we do not really have small scale farmers, that’s not the way we produce our agricultural goods. So, the United States sees a lot of issues with small scale farmers but we believe that the rest of the committee is very convinced that aiding these small scale farmers in several ways like increasing their technology, knowledge, their access to fertilizer, is going to help them. We believe that we should talk about conflict [inside conflicts] first because there are people starving at this very moment unnecessarily, people who would have access to food if it was not for the blockades they are being imposed on by other human beings which is a very large issue and for example the country of Iran is supporting this very much in Yemen and we should be discussing this because once we have eliminated unnecessary starvation- that is when we can start to talk about long term projects for the food security that is already happening.

NYT: So, you don’t think they talk enough about the conflict of people starving but not because of lack of food.

United States: We understand that it would be complicated to talk about the Ukraine conflict, we have also been instructed to stay away from these negotiations- we think it is a shame though, because what is happening in Ukraine is not only that the food cannot get out that is currently produced, it is also destroying the agriculture land of Ukraine which means we lose another country and their production which is what we are trying to avoid here- we are trying to diversify the countries that are producing food. But we do not want to have the entire focus on this debate to be on Ukraine, that would be counter-productive. We think we should also talk about Yemen and Syria and other parts of the world where starvation is used as a weapon. And it is a shame that not a lot of countries are focused on that and all they want to talk about are the details of GMOs. We believe the G20 committee is not in the right place to do so, because it’s a consensus based committee and every country has very different opinions on this- for example, Saudi Arabia has raised a cultural argument. [the US] benefits a lot from GMOs and most of the food that’s being fed to animals that we use for meat production is actually already GMO modified food. So, yeah it’s something that for every country it works differently. We recommend countries to use it because it can be an answer to sustainability- if we can use the available agricultural grounds more efficiently, then we can create more food; and also it has less damaging effects on the environment depending on the type of GMO we are talking about.

NYT: You talked about Yemen and other places like that which have humanitarian problems, if those will be mentioned inside the committee is the US ready to assist those countries and give supplies?

United States: The issue is not the supplies, because the supplies are already being provided by- i believe it’s the WFP- they have a set up projects, and of course the US is contributing to the WFP as much as we can but the issue is what humans are doing there and we should address the usage of starvation as a weapon because if we are talking about global food security- yes we are talking about supply chain and that should be a very large part of the topic, we do not deny that, however- we think that working together on avoiding unnecessary starvation is something very important.

NYT: Do you have anything you would like to add? A statement for the public of the US to know?

United States: Well, the delegation of the United States is working hard to protect the market of the United States when it comes to agriculture because [...] we are one of the largest exporters in the world. On the other hand, since we are a developed country with a strong economy, we must not only look at ourselves. It is our responsibility to aid those countries that are in need, people are starving. We are trying to find the correct balance between these two, we do not want our farmers to be impacted economically by the plans being made here today. On the other hand, we do want to avoid starvation as much as possible, and we are committed to this.

NYT: Thank you for this interview.