FAO Director-General participates in Bold Actions for Food event
Rome/Davos – Agrifood systems have great potential to help reduce humanity’s carbon footprint, QU Dongyu, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), said Tuesday.
“We need to do more climate smart agriculture,” he said, adding that means acting on both the innovation and policy fronts.
The Director-General spoke at the “Bold Actions for Food” event organized by the World Economic Forum, which featured a panel including Yasmine Fouad, Egypt’s Environment Minister, along with senior officials from the World Bank and large agrifood companies. Qu closed the event together with Tom Vilsack, Secretary of Agriculture of the United States of America, who in his remarks endorsed the idea that agriculture has the “opportunity to make significant strides in the process” of reaching a net-zero world in terms of carbon emissions, perhaps faster than other economic sectors.
Qu agreed and emphasized several key themes, all pointing to the importance of holistic framing of how to move towards a net-zero world.
Innovation is required to transform the way people, including in agrifood systems, use energy, he noted. Harnessing and channelling the use and impact of by-products of human processes are a key part of that, he said.
Transforming agrifood systems is more complex than the changes to be carried out in other sectors, Qu said, pointing out that “one set of mountains is different than another.”
Science needs to have more of an input role in pragmatic approaches to issues, he added.
When designing initiatives aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions from agrifood systems, it is important to consider whole value chains, Qu emphasized.
That includes components such as food processing, packaging and transportation, as well as the production of agricultural inputs and retail-side factors such as refrigeration. Recent FAO analysis has revealed that off-farm activities account for a growing share of agrifood system greenhouse gas emissions, which are around a third of all anthropogenic emissions today. Emissions from energy used both before, during and after agricultural production processes have grown significantly in recent decades even as net on-farm emissions have been stable.
The Director-General touched on the issue of livestock, one of the largest agrifood sectors in terms of GHG emissions. Techniques exist so that “cattle can be carbon neutral,” he said. Other panellists also praised the prospects for regenerative agriculture, which often relies on animals to catalyze nutrient cycles and foster soil health.
Food loss and waste also has a major role in agrifood system transformation. “Globally I think there is a consensus on how to tackle food loss and waste,” Qu said, noting that it is one area where consumers need to take responsibility.
He concluded by supporting the UN Secretary-General’s call to end the war and protect people’s lives in the Ukraine crisis. “Peace is critical” he said, noting the importance of agricultural production and supply from the Black Sea region for the world.
The event
The Bold Actions for Food event was held to explore the need – made more urgent by conflicts and by the COVID-19 pandemic – to transition the world’s agrifood systems to a net-zero, nature-positive infrastructure that nourishes and feeds everyone.
Earlier in the day, Qu participated in the first meeting of 2022 of the World Economic Forum Food Systems Stewardship Board, a key pillar of the World Economic Forum’s Food Systems Initiative, a multi-stakeholder coalition set up to establish the conditions for collective leadership action through systems thinking, institutional leadership alignment, and catalyzing and supporting an international consensus and collective agenda and a series of leadership milestones that can accelerate those actions.