Foro Global sobre Seguridad Alimentaria y Nutrición (Foro FSN)

Facilitator of

Este miembro contribuyó a:

    • My input based on the queries posed for the consultation:

      1. Different ways of defining resilience :
      • How do different groups define resilience (e.g. Indigenous Peoples’ Organizations, the scientific / peer reviewed literature, other key rights holders)? 

      Definitions adopted in the HLPE report will be key since resilience is a pretty generic concept that means different things to different people.

      In FAO’s SOFA 2021 report, the resilience of agrifood systems was defined in a compact manner as:

      “The capacity over time of  agri-food systems, in the face of any disruption, to sustainably ensure availability and access to sufficient safe and nutritious food for all, and sustain the livelihoods of agri-food system actors.”

      It was then broken down in practical terms into capacities to guarantee diversity in production, availability of food through multiple channels (including imports and stocks), physical access to food, and economic access to food. Indicators were then constructed to capture aspects of these capacities. 

      However different groups will define resilience in different ways, highlighting the multifaceted nature of resilience, encompassing anticipatory actions, economic stability, social protection, cultural preservation, and adaptive governance. Each group brings a unique perspective to the concept. Reconciling different definitions of resilience will involve integrating diverse perspectives into a cohesive framework., which can be challenging and will require choices about the scale of analysis (e.g. individuals, communities, value chains, national agrifood systems)

       

      • What are the main types of vulnerabilities facing food supply chains and what are the potential consequences for food system actors (including input suppliers, food producers, traders, food system workers and consumers), considering different kinds of potential shocks?

      Food supply chains face various vulnerabilities that can significantly impact actors from input suppliers to consumers. Environmental vulnerabilities, such as climate change, natural disasters, and pest outbreaks, can disrupt production, cascading through the supply chain, causing job insecurity, and higher food prices, ultimately leading to increased food insecurity for consumers. Economic vulnerabilities, including market fluctuations, recessions, and trade restrictions, result in revenue instability for input suppliers, income reductions for producers, and market uncertainties for traders, while consumers face reduced purchasing power and access to nutritious food.

      Social vulnerabilities, such as political instability, conflicts, and pandemics, further complicate the situation by causing operational disruptions, forced displacements, labor shortages, and exploitation risks for food system workers. Infrastructural vulnerabilities, including failures in transportation networks, storage facilities, and energy supplies, exacerbate these challenges by increasing logistical costs and causing delays in food delivery. 

      The final chapter of FAO’s SOFA 2021 report on resilient agrifood systems outlines potential ways to mitigate these impacts by diversifying supply sources, investing in resilient infrastructure, implementing adaptation practices, and strengthening social protection measures.

       

      • What kind of inequities and power imbalances are present in food systems and how do they affect resilient FSN and especially for those groups facing multidimensional and intersectional aspects of inequality and vulnerability?

      SOFA 2021, followed by an article published in Food Policy, highlighted how the greatest vulnerability for most countries is in economic access to food following a shock, even though availability and physical access to food could be important depending on the shock. 

      The paper in Food Policy highlighted how inequality in income is a driver of vulnerability in economic access to an energy-sufficient diet. We find that: 

      “… that for individuals struggling to afford an energy-sufficient diet, a one percent reduction in income inequality could provide a benefit 3 to 7 times that of a similar increase in mean income per capita.”

      The above applies to income inequality across all sectors; however, the most recent SOFA report (2023) on the hidden costs of agrifood systems highlights how the largest hidden cost in agrifood systems in low-income countries is associated with poverty due to power imbalances for actors within agrifood systems.

       

      • What resilience frameworks are there that should be explored? 

      The obvious that stands out is the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. However, while the Sendai Framework provides a comprehensive approach to DRR, it does not explicitly focus on food systems. There is a need for more detailed guidelines and strategies tailored specifically to the unique vulnerabilities and needs of agrifood systems. Also, based on SOFA 2021 on resilience, a stronger emphasis on the socio-economic dimensions of resilience in agrifood systems, such as addressing poverty, inequality, and the role of social protection (relative to the Sendai framework).

      FAO has several strands of work that are more agrifood systems focused, which taken together can be viewed as a comprehensive framework, focusing on risk management, early warning systems, anticipatory action, sustainable practices, livelihood support, governance, and investment. These are summarized in FAO’s SOFA 2021report, produced in collaboration across all FAO divisions working on resilience aspects.

       

      • What are the determinants, assets and skills that lead to resilience at different scales (household, community, national, regional)? 

      At the household and community level the Resilience Index Measurement and Analysis (RIMA) is probably the FAO work of reference. It includes dimensions such as access to basic services, livelihood strategies, social safety nets, and adaptive capacity.

      At the more aggregate level FAO’s SOFA 2021 is a good source.

       

      • How can resilience be evaluated and/or measured at different scales (household, community, national, regional)? 

      This is a challenging task. I advise to think through the definition of the components of resilience at each scale being analyzed so as to make sure that indicators are reflective of the definition being adopted. 

      SOFA 2021 is a good source for indicators of resilience at the national level: it has measure of resilience of agrifood systems transportation infrastructure for 90 countries (physical access to food), and for primary production, food availability and economic access to food for over 140 countries.

       

      • What indicators would measure that food systems are resilient across their different components (e.g. consumption, supply chains, retail and production)?

      Not sure that there is an indicator that is effective in measuring resilience across different components. In FAO’s SOFA 2021, we provided an indicator for producers (Primary Production Flexibility Index), one for supply chain infrastructure proxied through transport system robustness, one for supply chain diversification  (Dietary Sourcing Flexibility Index, scheduled to be included in FAOSTAT later this year), and one of economic access for consumers. Maybe these four indicators together can be used to assess the overall resilience agrifood systems. However, it should be noted that these are indicators of how vulnerable to disruption a specific part of an agrifood systems is, without providing any insight on how easily the component would recover from the disruption. This was a necessary choice to develop indicators that would be available for many countries.  

       

      • Which and where are the weak points in global food systems in terms of ensuring the resilience of food security and nutrition? 

      In a nutshell, according to FAO’s SOFA 2021 report, the most common vulnerability across countries is in economic access to food following a shock. This was seen during the Covid pandemic when there was concern about food supply, but in the end food was available but many did not have the income to purchase food, requiring social protection programs to be put in place to face the challenge.  

       

      2.            Understanding what we must be prepared for – the nature of shocks:

      • What types of shock are more relevant to food systems and which ones are more likely to affect FSN? What type of shocks have been under-researched, especially regarding their impact on FSN and food systems? 

      On the primary production side weather shocks, pests, and diseases are clearly extremely important. Here early warning systems and anticipatory actions are key.

      I feel the vulnerability in economic access due to shocks, and how to link it to social protection program design, are two aspects that are understudied. 

       

      • Are there ways of enhancing resilience to unknown and unforeseen shocks? 

      To me resilience is mostly about being able to face unknown and unforeseen shocks. This is the aspect of resilience that goes beyond risk management where events are known as is their likelihood.

      The only way to enhance that kind of resilience is to have structural properties of agrifood systems that enable it recover from disruptions. This means a diversified supply of food, with diversified supply chains, good infrastructure, as well as stable incomes for consumers to be able to purchase nutritious food (with social protection programs where needed).

       

      3.            Understanding and mitigating trade-offs:

      • Are there trade-offs between increasing adaptation to one type of shock and creating other types of fragility? 

      Building resilience into a system may involve tradeoffs. Diversity in supply chains may mean that efficiency is not being maximized. If markets are very competitive it may be difficult to sustain that diversity since the least efficient suppliers may go out of business. 

       

      • What is the impact on resilience programming of different understandings of food security and nutrition (e.g. focus on nutrition, the four pillars, the six dimensions of food security, etc)?

      When working on SOFA 2021 on resilience we found it very useful to think in terms of the different ways of framing FSN. SOFA 2021 developed indicators that try to capture element so food availability, physical access, and economic access. Also the distinction between energy-suffcient diets and healthy diets is a useful distinction to understand how shocks are affecting FSN, and what needs to be done. Our paper in Food Policy focused on the these two extremes when shocks occur. 

       

      4.            Existing programmes and policies to promote resilience – a gap analysis of current strategies and recommendations:

      • What types of policy changes are needed to enhance the resilience of local, regional and global food systems, including with respect to global trading rules and considering inclusive and equitable employment opportunities, environmental sustainability, access to healthy diets and human rights?

      The 2021 SOFA report recommends a comprehensive approach involving diverse strategies and stakeholder collaboration. In that report’s final chapter, a distinction is made between entry points tailored to coping with uncertainty (shocks difficult to foresee) and those adapted to managing specific risks (more predictable shocks). [see Table 5 in that chapter].

       

      • What is the role of states in building more resilient food systems, including with respect to providing infrastructure, regulatory measures, international policy coordination and policy coherence?

      This is an item that is covered in some detail in the last chapter of FAO’s 2021 SOFA report.

       

      • What measures are necessary to incentivize private sector strategies and investments that promote supply chain resilience?

      Public policies could focus, in some countries, on improving access to credit and financial services, particularly for small and medium agri-food enterprises (SMAEs). Facilitating access to financial services allows these businesses to invest in resilience-building measures such as diversification of supply sources and production redundancies.

      Also, facilitating the forming consortia or clusters can help SMAEs pool resources, overcome scale-related constraints, and improve access to markets and technologies. Ideally,  governments should promote inclusive governance and broad participation, ensuring that small-scale producers and vulnerable households are integrated into the broader agri-food systems. This approach helps in creating synergies between efficiency, inclusiveness, and resilience.

      That being said, including diversity & redundance in supply chains to increase resilience will lead in some cases to a trade-off in terms of overall efficiency. Addressing this trade-off will require creating an enabling environment that allows both shorter and longer supply chains to thrive, with a diverse mix of products sourced both locally and through international trade. 

       

       

      5.           Share recent literature, case studies and data that could help answer the questions listed above.

      Besides SOFA 2021 on resilience and it’s dataset, a few other recent sources (in a rapidly expanding literature):

      Béné, C. and Devereux, S., 2023. Resilience and food security in a food systems context (p. 413). Springer Nature.

      Béné, C., Frankenberger, T.R., Nelson, S., Constas, M.A., Collins, G., Langworthy, M. and Fox, K., 2023. Food system resilience measurement: principles, framework and caveats. Food Security, 15(6), pp.1437-1458.

      Cattaneo, A., Sadiddin, A., Vaz, S., Conti, V., Holleman, C., Sánchez, M.V. and Torero, M., 2023. Ensuring affordability of diets in the face of shocks. Food Policy, 117, p.102470.

      Schneider, K.R., Fanzo, J., Haddad, L., Herrero, M., Moncayo, J.R., Herforth, A., Remans, R., Guarin, A., Resnick, D., Covic, N. and Béné, C., 2023. The state of food systems worldwide in the countdown to 2030. Nature Food, 4(12), pp.1090-1110.

      See the attachments:

    • Dear all,

      Thank you again to all the contributors for the valuable input. The feedback received is clearly based on a wealth of experiences that contributors have gathered around the world, providing different perspectives on the theme of migration, agriculture, and rural development.

      Some of the issues raised are very much in line with FAO’s approach to rural development as a way of providing a choice to people living in rural areas, on whether to migrate or not. This year’s State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA), launched on October 9th, focused on territorial approaches to rural development, and the role of the food system in lifting people out of poverty in rural areas. Based on contributors’ comments, for SOFA 2018 we will try to build on this territorial approach and link it more directly to the drivers and impacts of rural migration. Another aspect that emerged from the discussion is the role of urban areas in providing employment, services and amenities. The report will try to capture the differentials between rural and urban areas as drivers of migration and policy implications.   

      We also received contributions highlighting work of which we were not aware, or pointing in directions that we had not considered. For example, the issue of migrant fishers is one that was not part of our initial outline, but one that we believe should be included. Another aspect to be considered is the health and nutritional status of both migrants and those left behind.

      In the coming months we will be collecting further information and produce a report that is evidence-based, and hopefully provide new policy-relevant insights on the topic. Thank you to all of you for indicating ongoing empirical work of relevance to the publication, and the broader literature on migration dynamics, demography, and gender-related migration issues. The dialogue and input provided was very helpful in providing guidance to our team. I particularly appreciated the time taken by contributors on how to improve the report structure and provide a clearer rationale for the document.

      The 2018 edition of the State of Food and Agriculture is scheduled to be launched in mid-September 2018. This leaves only a few months to prepare the report since we have to allow time for translation in the other 5 official UN languages and for the production process. In the coming days we will be receiving commissioned background papers on country case studies that we hope will enrich the report with different regional perspectives. We will also be incorporating your suggestions on the outline and exploring some of the information resources that emerged in the forum.

      A big thank you to all who participated in this Forum!

      Andrea

    • Dear all,

      I want to thank again the contributors who have continued to ensure a lively and interesting discussion as well as really useful and important comments and suggestions. A special thank you to those of you who have suggested specific cases and sources of information. Please keep it up.

      I would also like to recognize the many suggestions for improvements to the contents that have continued to arrive. Let me just mention suggestions to look at conditions of migrants in locations of both origin and destination and to consider both the positive dimensions of migration and the risks involved. The suggestion to look more carefully at innovation and migration, especially in relation to youth, is also an interesting one. I have also taken note of the call to go beyond the push-pull framework and bring in additional elements from the demographic literature as well as de-emphasizing the rural-urban dichotomy and rather considering the rural-urban continuum.

      I look forward to a continued interesting discussion during the last days of this online consultation.

      Andrea

    • Dear all, 

      I want to thank all the contributors for the thoughtful and constructive interventions so far. They will certainly be of great help to us in preparing a better report.

      It is difficult to summarize and cover the richness and variety of the interventions received. I would like to just mention a few significant areas. Several contributions highlight the challenges involved in defining and empirically assessing rural migration due to heterogeneity in definitions and measurements. Others highlight the complexity of impacts of migration both on rural labour markets and livelihoods. Important insights were also presented concerning the challenge of structural transformation, in particular in relation to dwindling farm sizes and poor agricultural labour productivity resulting from demographic pressures in rural areas. Gender issues were also prominent, as well as reminders to go beyond mere economic impacts of migration and include broader social impacts.

      I would also like to thank those who have made specific suggestions for improvements to the contents and outline of our report, as well as those who have provided specific references to literature and ongoing work or concrete country examples from your own experience examples. We are very much interested in concrete country cases, and I would like to encourage further contributions in this direction.

      I look forward to the continuation of an interesting discussion.

      Andrea