In the New Delhi Declaration of the 18th BRICS Summit, the leaders of this increasingly influential grouping underlined several critical initiatives for enhancing inter se cooperation in agriculture that could redefine the dynamics of food and nutrition security and improve sustainability of agriculture in their countries of the Global South. Leaders prioritised issues that are vital for ensuring food and nutritional security and agreed to take collaborative actions in three crucial areas. First, they underlined the special place of agrobiodiversity and farmers’ rights in agricultural systems. Protecting the rights of the traditional farmers over their knowledge and seeds, as well as safeguarding biodiversity in general and agrobiodiversity in particular, are both critical to improving the sustainability of agriculture. The second issue was the continued elaboration of the initiative to establish a BRICS Grain Exchange, a grain trading platform, the first step towards which was taken in the Kazan Summit in 2024. The BRICS Grain Exchange could enable the members to reduce and eventually eliminate their dependence on the global agribusiness. This institution could benefit both the exporters and importers of agricultural commodities, through better and more stable price realisation for the exporters and more favourable terms for importers, including stability of supplies. And finally, they agreed to advance the negotiations on agriculture in the WTO that remains mired in differences, especially between the advanced and developing countries.
Initiatives towards improving sustainability of agriculture that the BRICS took with India as the Chair include the establishment of a collaborative, non-binding, and farmer-centric BRICS AGRIN (Agro-Inputs, Genetic Resources, and Information Network), and the launch of a Global Forum on Farmers’ Rights in Seed Systems. The BRICS AGRIN should bring the much-needed focus on agrobiodiversity, a critical but often neglected element to ensure sustainable food systems. Four of the five original BRICS members and a few of the associate members of the grouping are mega-diverse countries, which are rich in biological diversity (holding at least 60-70% of the world’s biodiversity) and associated traditional knowledge. As irregular weather patterns caused by global warming have increasingly impacted agriculture, there has been a greater recognition of the importance of enhancing agrobiodiversity to improve crop reliance. It is by now well established that diverse agricultural systems, including the conservation of indigenous crop and livestock varieties, are essential for reducing weather-related food losses. But, for agrobiodiversity to be protected and promoted, it is imperative to protect the knowledge and practices of traditional farmers through assigning farmers’ rights. FAO’s International Treaty for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, ratified in 2004, formally recognised farmers’ rights at the international level, while India did it even earlier, having enacted the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers' Rights Act (PPV&FRA) in 2001.
Two and a half decades after the enactment of the PPV&FRA, the BRICS proposed Global Forum on Farmers' Rights in New Delhi. If nurtured effectively, the Forum could play a determining role to empower traditional farmers by supporting farmer-centric knowledge and seed systems.
Of most consequence for this 11-member grouping and for the countries of the South is progress that was made under India’s Chairmanship towards establishing a grain trading platform within BRICS, namely, the BRICS Grain Exchange. During its Presidency in 2024, Russia had proposed this grain trading platform as a unified digital trading platform where producers and buyers of agricultural commodities could deal directly without external intermediaries. The platform is expected to reflect the actual balance of supply and demand within BRICS, enabling the members countries to secure control over their commodity trade. Besides strengthening intra-BRICS trade, this institution would significantly reduce their reliance on existing commodity exchanges over which the global agribusiness has complete control. The US and the EU host the largest globally integrated commodities exchanges, such as the CME Group and Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) in the US and Euronext in the EU. These exchanges offer a variety of derivatives to help market participants manage risk.
The reduction and the eventual elimination of intermediaries resulting from a functioning BRICS Grain Exchange would benefit both producing and consuming countries. With the rent-seeking middlemen and out of the way, producer countries can hope to realise better prices for their produce, while the buyers should pay less through direct settlements. Russia has argued that the BRICS Grain Exchange is an opportunity for BRICS members “to determine the fair value of their products themselves.” Nearly eight decades ago, Raul Prebisch and Hans Singer has shown that the dependence of the commodity producing countries of the South on a trading system dominated by the North and their corporations, was the cause of impoverishment of the former set of countries. The South suffered long-term secular decline and volatility in commodity prices for considerably long periods, which resulting in secular decline in terms of trade. They were deprived of foreign exchange earnings vitally important for meeting their development aspirations and were forced to depend on foreign capital inflows, trapping them into dependent relationship with the North. Studies have shown that if commodity terms of trade had not declined, South would not have had to bear the yoke of dependence and could have pursued their independent pathway to developing their economies.
In the New Delhi Declaration, BRICS leaders emphasised “the importance of … mitigating the impacts of acute food price volatility …,” objectives that can be realised through an effectively functioning BRICS Grain Exchange. They also underlined the need to avoid “abrupt supply crises,’ which is a sine qua non for “ensuring food security and nutrition.” Two important decisions were taken at the end of the 16th Summit towards operationalising the Grains Exchange. First, on the modalities of its functioning and two, to consider extending the remit of this institution to other agricultural products (beyond grains) and non-agricultural commodities, which could significantly improve its viability. The BRICS Grain Exchange could also benefit from the decision of the leaders to hold discussions on facilitating intra-BRICS trade of agricultural products, and agricultural and food production inputs, including by promoting resilient and non-discriminatory supply chains, and improve value chains and sustainable agricultural practices.
In the New Delhi Summit, the BRICS members agreed to coordinate their efforts to revive the multilateral trading system, which has been rendered almost non-functional after the US President Donald Trump upended the WTO with his unilateral trade policies. They reaffirmed, in particular, their “commitment to advancing agriculture negotiations at the WTO, in accordance with existing Ministerial mandates”. The most significant of these mandates came from the Doha Ministerial Conference in 2001, which directed the WTO members review the Agreement on Agriculture “to enable developing countries to effectively take account of their development needs, including food security and rural development”.
The leaders emphasised the importance of “promoting a fair, balanced and development-oriented agricultural trading system” and recognised that the “evolving policy and regulatory developments increasingly affect agricultural production and trade, food security and the livelihoods of smallholders and family farmers”. This decision comes after the 14th Ministerial Conference of the WTO held earlier this year, did not include agriculture in its agenda, which was a serious omission. Thus, key issues, especially the Permanent Solution for Public Stockholding for Food Security Purposes (PSH) critical for implementing food security programmes of more than 30 countries including India was not discussed. PSH is directly supported by more than 40 countries belonging to the G33 grouping, and the political support the BRICS leaders have lent to discussing agriculture in the WTO should bring the focus back on PSH.