The head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation has called on policy makers around the world to support an overhaul of global food systems, making them healthier and more sustainable. Speaking on Tuesday, José Graziano da Silva said it is time for leaders to recognise that "We cannot rely on an input intensive model to increase production and that the solutions of the past have shown their limits."

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Delivering his opening remarks to the 24^th session of the Committee on Agriculture (COAG), Graziano da Silva repeated earlier calls for a "Paradigm shift" in agriculture, stating that the main challenge facing world farming is to lower the use of agricultural inputs, especially water and chemicals, to make food production viable in the long-term.

The FAO's Director-general touted solutions from schools such as Agro-ecology and climate-smart agriculture as having the potential to reframe farming in a more sustainable way. Last week, the Rome-based Organisation unveiled a Global Alliance for Climate Smart Agriculture at the Climate Summit in New York. A week previously, FAO hosted its first international symposium on agroecology at its headquarters.

However, the impact of FAO's high-profile unveiling of the Climate-Smart Agriculture alliance has been dented somewhat by a large number of civil society groups who have expressed grave misgivings.

What's new about climate-smart Agriculture?

FAO and the World Bank developed the Climate-Smart Agriculture concept in 2009; they claimed 'triple wins' can be achieved in world agriculture through mitigation (reducing greenhouse gas emissions), adaptation (ensuring crops can grow in changing climate conditions), and increasing crop yields. However, as the concept's profile grows, countries and NGOs have begun to ask "what the term really means, what it can achieve, [and] what is new about it?"

The plan has been criticised as vague at best and 'greenwashing,' masking business as usual for problematic practices and actors, at worst.

The most recent concerns have been raised by anti-poverty charity Action Aid in a report released this month. Major issues raised by Action Aid include the lack of a social dimension to 'Climate-Smart' thinking. "There are no social safeguards to prevent so-called 'Climate Smart' activities from carrying out land grabbing, undermining farmers' livelihoods, pulling farmers into debt, or even suing them for seed saving," according to the international NGO.

The report also claims there "are no meaningful criteria for what can – or cannot – be called 'Climate Smart,'" meaning "Practices or corporations that are destructive to the climate, the environment, and to farmers, are free to use the term."

The FAO Director General added in his address on Tuesday that biotechnology and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) should also feature in efforts to ramp up food production to meet the needs of a growing global population. In a statement which paralleled industry's stance on the food debate, he added, "We need to explore these alternatives using an inclusive approach based on science and evidences, not on ideologies."

The inclusion of contested practices such as GM has led farming, environment and civil society groups to reject FAO's Alliance in an open letter posted online this month. Over 100 farmers' associations, environment organisations and civil society groups from around the world have signed the letter denouncing the Alliance as "corporate-smart greenwash" that "misses the mark" and could potentially be hijacked as "A new space for promoting agribusiness and industrial agriculture."

The open letter laments the programme launched in New York as "One more step by a small percentage of the UN's total membership to promote industrial agriculture against all the evidence of its destructive impacts on people, biodiversity, seed, water, soils, and climate," adding, "It is merely one more attempt to block the real change needed to fix our broken food systems and our broken climate."

FAO support for family farming and right to food

However, FAO chief Graziano da Silva also spoke of the importance of family farming and the 'right to food' on Tuesday. The UN has recently appointed its second rapporteur on the Right to Food; Hilal Elver has been tasked with investigating the human right not just to be fed, but to have the means to grow adequate nutritionally and culturally acceptable food.

In Rome, at the biennial meeting of the FAO's advisors, delegates from FAO and its advisory group COAG heard from Danilo Medina, president of the Dominican Republic, where the percentage of the population classed as 'hungry' has been more than halved in the past two decades. President Medina said his government was a strong supporter of the principle that "food is a universal right" and that "the only viable strategy to fight hunger is to revitalize the countryside and rural incomes."

Medina said that the budgetary costs of his country's efforts had proven surprisingly modest. "It is not a question of committing resources, but of taking decisions - even small amounts of money, well-targeted, can make an impact," he explained.

"Surprise visits" to farming communities have played a major role in catalysing an agricultural boom, according to the President. The visits offer an opportunity for officials to listen and better understand local concerns, and also to encourage smallholders to establish cooperatives and other organizations to scale up their competence.

"The countryside in the Dominican Republic is undergoing a real revolution," he said.

"Subsistence agriculture on small plots of land perpetuates the vicious cycle of poverty. The only way that our producers can be competitive is to join forces," the president added. "We see that by working together toward a common objective, they are producing as never before."

COAG's meeting this year will last for a week and focus on issues of water governance, livestock diseases (in particular the effort to replicate the successful eradication of Rinderpeste), soil management and food safety

In their open letter rejecting FAO's Alliance to drive change in global agriculture, NGOS and farmers' groups appeared to agree on many of the same points raised in Rome, but they demand more concrete action and deeper commitments to the environment and to citizens in farming communities. In their letter, the groups back agroecology – which has gained the backing of the UN's Rapporteurs on the Right to Food as well as the most comprehensive study of agriculture and food security ever undertaken, the World Bank-funded IAASTD Report.

The open letter reads, "We know that urgent action must be taken to cool the planet, to help farming systems – and particularly small-scale farmers – adapt to a changing climate, and to revive and reclaim the agroecological systems on which future sustainable food production depends."