FAO and Seeds&Chips join forces to promote youth’s active engagement in sustainable development

13 June 2019, Rome – FAO and the Italian innovation global platform Seeds and Chips have joined forces to promote food innovation and education, with a strong focus on strengthening youth engagement and awareness-raising initiatives to fight hunger and malnutrition and achieve sustainable development.

FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva and Seeds and Chips Founder and Chairman Marco Gualtieri today signed an agreement that culminates years of close cooperation and aims at redoubling efforts to build the Zero Hunger Generation.

“We are long-standing partners in many activities and share common concerns, particularly promoting youth’s engagement and active participation in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) using modern technology and ICTs to build a true Zero Hunger Generation,” the FAO Director-General said. “We are also working together closely to promote better and healthier food and diets, like the Mediterranean diet”.

To that end, Graziano da Silva stressed that in order to succeed in achieving sustainable food systems that provide healthy and nutritious food for everyone, it is key to engage the private sector.

For his part, Seeds and Chips’ Gualtieri said at the signature event: “We are very honoured for this agreement. Our common objective is to ground the solutions that can solve the great challenges we are facing nowadays”.

He explained the Seeds and Chips “recipe”, which has “three small but important ingredients: inclusion of all stakeholders, youth’s engagement and implementing concrete solutions”. “These are part of a bigger change recipe to fix all the things that are not working in the food systems, and contribute to mitigate the effects of climate change,” he added.

Agricultural innovation for Zero Hunger

Seeds and Chips is the organizer of one of the most prominent innovation events worldwide dedicated to highlighting young talents and cutting edge innovative solutions from around the world.

At the 5th edition of the Seeds and Chips Summit last May, FAO’s Deputy Director-General Maria Helena Semedo highlighted that agricultural innovation can have a pivotal role in creating a world free of hunger.

The UN agency also showcased some of its innovative solutions for sustainable agriculture, from Blockchain technology used in coffee supply chains; a mobile app (FAWEWS) that helps farmers identify, monitor and manage Fall Armyworm (FAW) -a devastating crop-eating pest; to a sterile insect nuclear technique that prevents insect pests from reproducing.

Other initiatives developed by FAO to boost food security, sustainable development and rural development include low-tech hydrophonics that enable growing plants in arid environments; drones used for crop production, and turning seaweed and fish skin into clothes and fashion accessories.

FAO to support the Goals on Tour initiative

FAO, together with the other Rome-based UN food agencies, IFAD and WFP, is also part of Seeds&Chips’ traveling exhibition Goals on Tour - a global campaign aimed at creating greater public awareness and support for the UN Sustainable Development Goals, including SDG2, which focuses on ending hunger.