Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition

Director-General’s Opening Remarks at the Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition: Foresight 2.0 Report Launch in Partnership with FAO

Virtual Meeting, Tuesday 29 September 2020, 14.00 – 16.00 CEST

As delivered

 

 

Honourable John Kufuor, Sir John Beddington and Professor Sandy Thomas, ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues, I am very delighted to join you today for the launch of the Global Panel’s Foresight 2.0 Report on Food Systems for the Future, protecting people, the planet and prosperity. This topic is very appropriate because our current food systems do not enable us to protect our health and the health of the planet.

The State of Food Security and Nutrition (SOFI) 2020 Report on Transforming Food Systems for Affordable Healthy Diets, clearly shows that 3 billion people in the world cannot afford a healthy diet. Launching the Foresight Report today 29 September, coincides with the first of the events of the International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste, proclaimed by the adoption of the UN General Assembly last year. We observe this day to raise awareness of the problem of food loss and waste, to highlight possible solutions and promote global efforts and collective action.

The SOFI 2020 comes with some harsh statistics. Chronic hunger continued to increase over the past four years and stood at 690 million in 2019. We have added 10 million more hungry people in just one year. Two billion people globally did not have access to safe nutritious and sufficient food in 2019. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic could result in between 83 and 132 million more food-insecure people. At the same time, data of overweight and obese people continue to rise, now affecting over 2 billion people. A critical factor driving this grim statistic is poor diet. What people eat depends on what is available, what they can afford and what they prefer. If we want people to eat healthy diets, we must make the nutritious foods they need, such as fruit, vegetables, legumes, animal-sourced food, affordable and accessible.

Both the SOFI 2020 Report and the Global Panel Report come to the same conclusion that a healthy diet is not affordable to a larger proportion of the world population. What can be done to make healthy diets affordable? We cannot discuss healthy diets without focusing on our food systems. Our food systems have succeeded in making staple foods and energy dense foods very cheaper, through the policy that supports increased investments, research and increased production. We produce enough staple foods such as cereals, to feed everyone, but we do not produce enough nutrient-rich foods, like fruits and vegetables, even fish. We need strong political commitment from the governments to implement policy and investment, gearing towards more production of nutritious foods and make them affordable and accessible.

We also need policies that increase household incomes and reduce inequality, especially for smallholder farmers who work so hard and produce these nutritious foods and yet, get so little income from their production. Targeted nutrition and sensitive social protection measures for vulnerable households can promote access to healthy diets. Food loss and waste measures are critical in our quest for the healthy diets. We cannot afford to produce all these nutritious foods only for the substantial amount not to be eaten.

We need to ensure that innovation, post-harvest treatment and digital technologies are shared for the wider use to increase efficiency, improve the marketable rates, and reduce both food loss and waste. Nutritious foods are too good to waste. We also need to bring sustainability into our food systems and into our consumption patterns to ensure that healthy diets lead to healthy people and a healthy planet.

For us at FAO, transforming agri-food systems for healthy diets is a major focus, captured in our 2020-2021 Biennial Theme: promoting healthy diets and preventing all forms of malnutrition. In line with this, we are revising the strategy of FAO working in nutrition. Our vision for nutrition is the world where all people are eating healthy diets from sustainable food systems. The Global Panel Report on Food Systems for the Future has come out in good time to ensure that its message informs the discussions leading to the UN Food Systems Summit in 2021. To achieve a better tomorrow, we need better production, better nutrition and a better environment for a better livelihood of all people.

Count on FAO in this journey as a reliable, motivated and determined partner. We are committed to do so and we will do so on our mission for Members and for the society.

Thank you.