Future of food systems will define our future and trade should play a crucial role

2 December 2020, Rome/Geneva - Agri-food systems transformation is a global priority that will define humanity’s future and trade should play a crucial role in that change, the Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), QU Dongyu, said today.

He was speaking at the opening session of the World Trade Organization’s virtual Agriculture Symposium on Agricultural Trade in Food System Transformation entitled “Food Systems of the Future”. Nutrition, food safety and environmental sustainability are among the issues being considered at the two-day symposium.

“We need our agri-food systems to deliver food security and better nutrition for all, to be economically sustainable, to be inclusive and to have a positive impact on climate and environment,” Qu stressed.  “Unfortunately, we all know that our contemporary agri-food systems are not fulfilling this aspiration,” he added.

The Director-General emphasized there were many challenges facing agri-food systems, emphasizing nearly 690 million people were suffering from chronic hunger, an increase of 60 million in the past five years. The global downturn caused by COVID-19 had made the situation worse, he noted.

Qu pointed out that trade was critical for boosting farmers’ productivity and income and reducing seasonal food scarcities, as well as climate change adaptation and mitigation. 

“We all need to work harder to address these challenges and to move towards sustainable food systems, we need to better understand and minimize the trade-offs that exist between competing policy objectives,” the Director-General said.

Qu elaborated by alluding to the necessity to invest in research, development and infrastructure, harness the power of digital technology to achieve transformative change, and strengthen international governance mechanisms.

Underlining key priorities, the Director-General stressed the need to speed up the availability of digital data in rural areas, to remodel food systems from the field to the supermarket and to reduce food loss and waste.

Qu also noted that partnerships with the private sector, governments and other partners were essential and added that the UN Food Systems Summit 2021 would be an important occasion to address the many challenges affecting agri-food systems.

“The 2030 deadline for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals is rapidly approaching,” he explained. “We need to intensify addressing the challenges facing food systems, using all the means, tools and mechanisms available to us.  There is no time to waste.”

Qu also pointed out that the WTO played an important role in promoting a universal and equitable multilateral trading system. 

Alan Wolff, the Deputy Director-General of the WTO, opened the symposium saying that COVID-19 was a wake-up call that had led many countries to reduce import tariffs to promote trade during the health crisis.  Michael Fakhri, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, called for a multilateral forum to look at food security and the implications of trade. 

Agnes Kalibata, Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General for the UN Food Systems Summit 2021, said the COVID-19 pandemic had exposed the fragility of the agri-food system and too many people were being denied affordable food. She encouraged greater dialogue ahead of the Food Systems Summit.

At a subsequent session at the symposium, Máximo Torero, FAO’s Chief Economist, stressed: “We should make every effort to avoid export restrictions and to ensure food can move across borders in emergencies."