Many thanks for this opportunity to engage in this process and provide input.
With reference e-consultation to set the track for the study of the HLPE Report on Sustainable agricultural development for Food Security and Nutrition, including the role of Livestock.
The structure proposed for the report is clear, logical and poses useful headlines and sub points to investigate the aims and question for investigation by the report.
Within the critical overview and discussion of the current projections, including underlying assumptions, focus on practices and their potential roles in pathways towards sustainable agricultural development; whilst the main points are highly relevant there are a few that could be further highlighted:
Regarding improving nutrition; this cannot be achieved by increasing food availability and quality alone; synergy is needed with water safety and public health. It is important to note that simply increasing the nutrition by ensuring a healthy and nutritious diet is not enough. It must be coupled with improved drinking water and sanitation. It is key that improving nutrition and providing safe drinking water are principles that are run in parallel; since for example to singularly increase the nutritive value of the child’s diet is unlikely to achieve the expected impact; as waterborne diseases usually accompanied by diarrhea will counter the positive impact.
With reference to A) 2 a) Gender is highlighted; the role of Livestock, particularly when coupled with Zerograzing, can provide empowerment to the women within the house hold. Not only providing additional income and supplementing family nutrition, it also can reduce the need for women to be engaged in much more labour intensive tasks taking them away from the home for large of parts of the day.
The outcomes from the International Symposium on Agroecology for Food Security and Nutrition held in September 2014 at FAO, as well as the International Assessment on Agricultural Knowledge, Science, and Technology for Development (IAASTD) and One Health would provide valuable sources of supporting documentation for the overall scope of the report.
Within section B) 5 c) under barriers to change, there should be a clear reference to policy harmonisation, incorporation of globally agreed enabling policies and enabling environments necessary to support trade and food systems, supporting the overall goal of sustainable agricultural development for Food Security and nutrition. A set of recommended global and harmonized regional guidelines for regulatory processes; including new innovations, duty and tax exemptions for imports of positively impacting solutions and tools could be further evaluated and recommended. As implied, best practices should be investigated to assist/ support market assess/ entry of key (new) tools/ innovations supporting the Food Security agenda.
Scaling of solutions also requires a renewed fresh focus and level of support, and an enabling environment with backstopping from the public sector. New innovative funding initiatives and models to support new/ relevant tools to go to scale sustainably should be investigated/ suggested.
A key aspect of addressing food security through sustainable development is through encouraging smallholders to invest more of their resources in agricultural production and also postharvest handling and storage to maintain the high quality produce and reap the rewards of higher value markets. Such innovative initiatives and models must have “incentivisation” of producers/ actors at their core as it is a key constraint within many value chains/ food systems within developing regions. This can in turn support/ build capacity long term in country, to provide sustainable improvements in productivity.
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Kind Regards
Georgina
Georgina Bingham PhD FRES
Senior Technical Specialist & Global Partnerships
Food Security
Vestergaard Frandsen SA
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Georgina Bingham