FAO welcoming remarks at STI Forum side event 'Youth Innovation: Bolstering climate action through agrifood systems transformation in the context of COVID-19 recovery'

STI Forum side event

'Youth Innovation: Bolstering climate action through agrifood systems transformation
in the context of COVID-19 recovery'  

Welcoming remarks by Máximo Torero Cullen - FAO Chief Economist

As prepared for delivery

Excellencies, colleagues, it is a great pleasure to have you here today at this World Food Forum side event held during the eighth annual Multi-Stakeholder Forum on Science, Technology, and Innovation for the SDGs (STI Forum).

Our global community is facing significant challenges to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which have been compounded by global, concurrent, and compounding crises – conflicts, climate change and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The younger generation today will inherit our world in whatever state we leave it, together with its problems and potential.

But it does not have to be this way. Youth are not just pawns, but rather active agents of change, and as such they should be placed at the center of the sustainable transformation that is needed to address the current challenges our world is facing.  

Youth, together with their passion, creativity and innovative capacities have the potential to be crucial drivers in creating catalytic and meaningful change.

Through investing in and fostering youth’s access to entrepreneurial, scientific, and technological knowledge, solutions can be found and implemented rapidly, challenging the status-quo and leap-frogging linear development steps towards achieving the SDGs.

This is why the World Food Forum (WFF) was created by the youth committee of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), in 2021, to empower youth to transform our agrifood systems and achieve the SDGs.

Transforming our agrifood system requires that youth take an active role, through science, technology and innovation.

Now in its third year, the World Food Forum continues to expand its reach, and in 2023 will rally around the theme: “Agrifood systems transformation accelerates climate action”

With this in mind, the Forum is moving from ideas to action and impact, including through many scientific, technological and innovative contributions from youth. Today, we are celebrating their contributions.

Science, technology, and innovation are at the heart of everything the World Food Forum does. This is why we established the Young Scientists Group (YSG) as a scientific approach to youth action. They represent the present and future generation of scientists who provide evidence-based and technical knowledge to various initiatives of the Forum and on specific policy issues of particular concern to youth, related to agrifood systems transformation.

I would like to use this opportunity to congratulate the first cohort of Young Scientists Group (YSG) for their 2 years of hard work. Today, they will be launching the first YSG Report - proposing science-based and action-oriented recommendations of particular concern to youth to develop and implement for agrifood systems transformation.

I would also like to welcome and congratulate the second cohort of the Young Scientists Group. This transition reflects the continuation of the WFF's scientific approach within the Forum.

In addition to this, the WFF is also going a few steps further by nurturing youth-led solutions from ideas into implementation through our Innovation Lab activities.

The WFF research competition, the Transformative Research Challenge (TRC) – now in its third edition – serves as a medium where global youth can pitch their research ideas to transform agrifood systems, end hunger, and accelerate climate action – with this year adding significant funding grants for winning solutions.

Together with Wageningen University and Research, the World Food Forum has also launched the Youth Food Lab incubator programme to guide and assist global youth in transforming those ideas into tangible projects. I would like to congratulate the first cohort of the pilot Youth Food Lab with 10 participant teams from across the world.

The World Food Forum also supports and empowers young, innovative entrepreneurs and start-ups with brilliant, groundbreaking projects of transforming agrifood systems through its startup competition, the Startup Innovation Awards, powered by the Extreme Tech Challenge.

Last but not least, I want to use this opportunity to congratulate all the youth leaders participating in the event. Your ideas and continued support empower the World Food Forum.

Finally, I want to encourage all young scientists and innovators to participate in the World Food Forum, – taking part in these competitions and to joining us in Rome for our Flagship event from 16 to 20 October 2023.

Thank you and I look forward to the session ahead.