المنتدى العالمي المعني بالأمن الغذائي والتغذية

My comments relate to improving the coherence of the sustainability arguement by addressing issues of food losses, waste and inequalities in consumption and the role of livestock industries in this report. There are significant environmental risks associated with agricultural intensification if the production system leaks water, nutrients and genetic material. Bringing consumption physically closed to production, increasing the amount of crop production waste used as livestock feed and the amount of livestock waste used as fertilizer in soil based crop production systems would address the critical issue of integrity in agricultural production and marketing systems. I think the document is too long and is drafted with the clear intention of making a case for agricultural intensification, without carefully conceptualising current agricultural produciton, and food security and nutrition. An accurate conceptual framework is needed. 

p17 line 10, "adequate, safe, diversified and nutrient-rich food for all that contributes to healthy diets and pointed to resource scarcity, environmental degradation, unsustainable production and consumption patterns, food losses and waste and unbalanced distribution as root causes."

This is the critical issue that I think the case for integrated livestock and crop production systems addresses. 

p21, line 8, "Transition to more sustainable food systems involves both qualitative and quantitative changes in the 8 relationships between society, nature, energy and material flows within the food system. Sustainable  agricultural development encompasses crop cultivation and livestock production, with links to forestry, fisheries and aquaculture, practised across a wide diversity of ecosystems and landscapes."

Aquaculture receives no further mention in the document despite its capacity to use lower quality feed sources, accelerating demand, higher and more efficient meat production rates than terrestrial livestock systems, and much higher rates of return on investment. 

p22, line 8, Figure 1 Conceptual framework showing linkages between sustainable agricultural 8 development and food security and nutrition

Where is livestock production in this diagram? It should be linking between waste & losses from consumption to production systems. This diagram does not conceptually represent the integration that is needed in global, sustainable production systems, stresses such as geographically localised over consumption, losses and waste and needs to be revised. 

p25, line 50, "In conclusion, several pathways are possible to feed the global population of over 9 billion people in 2050. These pathways can be seen as changes in diet (including fish), increases in agricultural productivity, changes in land use, greater reliance on trade, reduction in food losses and waste, and reduction of inequalities. Among these pathways, livestock has a key role to play and is part of the solution (Erb et al., 2009)."

p41, line 38, Food losses and waste - A figure of 1/3 of food production lost as waste is quoted, "this appears to hold for all regions, although losses are somewhat higher in sub-saharan Africa". The losses are apparently difficult to measure accurately. 

p65, line 49, Food losses and waste are an identifed response under economic challanges

p81, line 31 Food losses and waste and unhealthy overconsumption of animal-based produces are supply stresses that are overlooked and not adequately addressed in favour of increasing agricultural intensification. 

p85, line 11 Refers to actions to reduce food losses in developing countries and waste in developed countries. 

p85, line 14, Recommends that food losses and waste are disaggregated according to each livestock product. 

Reasonable, but identifying where one livestock waste is another livestock feed is critical to more sustainable production.