President of the UN General Assembly urges to adopt a “more for less” strategy to eradicate hunger in his lecture at FAO headquarters

Rome - The President of the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly, Ambassador Dennis Francis, highlighted today the critical role of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and other UN Rome-based Agencies in addressing food crisis –currently one of the most pressing global issues –and advocated for a “more for less” strategy to confront the challenging times.

Ambassador Dennis Francis paid an official visit to Rome at the invitation of the FAO Director-General, QU Dongyu, and delivered a lecture on “Accelerating progress towards Zero Hunger for the current and future generation” at the FAO headquarters.

In his welcoming remarks to Ambassador Francis, the FAO Director-General said: “Ambassador Francis‘ visit today is an important moment on our collective journey towards sustainable development and a world without hunger. It provides us with an opportunity to take stock of where we are along our path, and how to best move forward.”

The UNGA President started his lecture by highlighting that the world is facing “a food crisis of monumental proportions” fueled by conflicts, wars and escalating climate crisis, calling on international community to respond to these global challenges with focus, urgency and determination while noting that he had made food security a key priority of his presidency. He cited grim statistics, such as the fact that hunger and related diseases claim the lives of 9 million people every year.

“These are not just spontaneous incidents and numbers – as each statistic represents individual lives, families, and communities enduring profound hardships. It is a moral stain on our collective conscience for this to continue,” he said.

Producing more with less

To achieve the global goal of ending hunger, the UNGA President urged to adopt a “more for less” strategy.

Firstly, the strategy entails producing more sustainably, using less resources. It can be achieved through robust governance paired with technological innovation. According to Francis, nations are already embracing sustainable practices like soil analytics, smart irrigation, and artificial intelligence in the agriculture sector.

To this end, he commended FAO for its role in reducing food loss and waste through science and technology innovation, which could feed an additional 1.26 billion people annually, as well as for its Hand-in-Hand Initiative, which supports vulnerable regions through advanced geospatial modeling and analytics. The UNGA President urged Member States and all stakeholders to prioritize land and water governance and share best practices to ensure that the resources are extracted sustainably.

Secondly, he highlighted the need to provide enough food for everyone leaving no-one behind, noting that 70 percent of those who are hungry live in rural areas while at the same time women who produce over 50 percent of our food constitute 70 percent of the hungry. Francis urged Member States to enact and implement policies that ensure access to food to all while also addressing gender discrepancies, and the vulnerabilities of the most disadvantaged in our societies and communities.

Third, we must invest more and ensure less bottlenecks, he said. Noting a disappointing decline in humanitarian funding—the first since 2010-2011 - with a shortfall of over $35 billion, and the fact that only 3 percent of development funding in crisis regions is channelled to food sectors, Francis underscored the need to bolster financing to save lives, eradicate poverty, address inequality, and transform the agrifood systems.

Fourth, the UNGA President referred to the need to initiate transformative actions with fewer adverse impacts.

“We must ‘Choose Sustainability’ to break a vicious cycle in which our agricultural practices are exacerbating the climate crisis, which in turn adversely affects our agriculture,” he said emphasizing that agriculture accounts for a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions while climate-induced disasters devastate food production.

Stressing that the hidden costs of our agrifood systems surpass $10 trillion annually, Francis called upon Member States to account for these hidden costs in policymaking, enhancing resilience from farm to table, which includes growing, processing, transportation, and disposal of food. It is also of utmost importance to encourage individuals to act responsibly and live sustainably, reducing personal carbon footprints, protecting biodiversity, and minimizing waste, he added.

The UNGA President concluded on an optimistic note, saying that although the road ahead is challenging, “with the requisite political will and through our joint strategic efforts, we still can – and must – achieve Zero Hunger by 2030.”

Ambassador Francis corroborated the remarks of the FAO Director-General, who noted that despite the bleak picture, there are some encouraging signs, pointing to the progress achieved in South America and in sub-regions of Southern Asia. “This is the progress that can be replicated in other regions of the world, with the appropriate enabling policies, and by ensuring access to adequate, innovative and affordable financing,” the Director-General said underscoring the critical need for transformative action.

This year’s State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report showed that around 733 million people faced hunger worldwide in 2023.