A communiqué approved by agriculture ministers and officials from over 60 countries has declared that sustainable production is key to tackling hunger and malnutrition, while largely skirting controversies around trade affecting supply and demand for food, farm goods, and forestry. The ministers, who met in Berlin on 17 January at an annual event organised by the German government, proclaimed that “only resilient, diversified, and sustainable agrifood systems can provide the foundation for achieving the human right to adequate food.” Major farm exporting and importing countries attended the event. The conference organisers said that governments participating included Argentina, China, Egypt, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, and Vietnam, as well as officials from the European Commission, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the World Bank. No senior US participant joined the event, despite food and agriculture remaining a major sticking point in ongoing talks between the US and EU for a bilateral trade deal, known formally as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). (See Bridges Weekly, 15 January 2015 ) However, Russian and German agriculture ministers reportedly expressed satisfaction with separate bilateral talks on trade in farm goods, following Moscow’s imposition of sanctions on...