Showcasing IPPC ePhyto at FAO event on digital technology, trade and sustainable food chains

Rome, 5 March 2020. The Embassy of Australia and FAO hosted a Skype conference on “Public-private sector collaboration: The link between digital technology, trade and sustainable food chains”. The presentations discussed public-private partnerships and their role in promoting economic growth, particularly in the agri-food sector.

The digital revolution is vital to providing the sector with the appropriate tools to face the most urgent challenges of our times: ensuring a good diet for all, tackling climate change, protecting the quality of products and protecting biodiversity. “Digital technologies can contribute to improving food security, generating decent jobs and managing natural resources sustainably, but if we are not careful enough we could have some risks in social, ethical, economic and environmental fields” said Maximo Torero, Assistant Director-General for Economic and Social Development at FAO.

“We believe in profit but we think it is not only important how much profit, we care about how, in which way, profit is achieved” said John W.H. Denton, Secretary General, International Chamber of Commerce “As a leading and neutral voice in the agri-food industry ICC can play a key role in supporting the evolution from traditional trade to digital trade in order to secure peace and prosperity to everyone”. ICC has launched the Digital Trade Standards Initiative (DSI) – a collaborative cross industry effort to enable the standardization of digital trade and promote greater economic inclusion through the development of open trade standards.

“Australian producers are embracing digital technologies such as apps for pest identification, drones for crop monitoring, robotic dairies and virtual fences for remote stock movements and health monitoring” said H.E. Dr Greg French, Ambassador of Australia.

“ePhyto – the electronic equivalent of a paper phytosanitary certificate –reduces trade costs/time, improves security, simplifies information flow between traders and government” said Craig Fedchock, ePhyto Group Lead, IPPC Secretariat.

The event was moderated by Maria Beatrice Deli, Secretary General of ICC Italia, who highlighted the importance of literacy in digital technologies and noted three dimensions on which we all have to focus: Inclusion, Efficiency and Innovation.