Forum global sur la sécurité alimentaire et la nutrition (Forum FSN)

"What issues should be addressed by the Committee in the biennium 2016-2017?"

Focus on food losses and food waste. 

The debate on food losses and waste is beginning to replace the debate about climate change. The latest IPCC report recently launched in Yokohama, Japan, revealed some rather upsetting details about the future prospects of humanity. Not only the growing climate change, escalating world population growth and lack of resources, but also the growing food scarcity may rewrite the course of our civilization – unless we start acting now.

Dear Mr. Luca Fratini, dear members of the FSN-Forum,

thank you for the opportunity to participate in this process. Please find below and attached Greenpeace's contribution.

1. Food security and ecological agriculture

How does ecological agriculture contribute to global food security and nutrition and how could it best be scaled up and out for greater contribution to production increases, environmental sustainability, and building farmer/community resilience to climate change and other shocks?

Reasoning: There is overwhelming scientific evidence that nothing short of a paradigm shift away from high-input intensive monoculture agriculture towards agroecology is absolutely necessary for the agricultural sector to achieve the goals of poverty reduction, environmental sustainability, and resilience to climate and economic shocks. Policy remains dominated by an approach that focuses on specific techno-fixes and chemical inputs. However, there is huge potential for ecological farming techniques to raise yields, improve soil fertility, conserve natural resources and reduce farmer dependence on expensive inputs. Numerous experts have reviewed the evidence base and advocate these approaches (IAASTD, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, UNEP, UNCTAD, and FAO).

Mechanism: This should be a major work stream and could begin with an HLPE report.

2. Protecting and nurturing soil health for food security and nutrition

This would explore what agricultural practices protect and nurture soil health and how they can best be supported through policy and investment.

Reasoning: Soil health fundamentally underpins agricultural production and can remove the need for chemical inputs, yet roughly 24 per cent of the global vegetated land area has already been affected by human-induced soil degradation, particularly through erosion.

Mechanism: This should be a minor work stream but could begin with an HLPE report.

3. Impacts on food security of external input dependence

This would include macro and micro economic trends and risks of dependence on external inputs and opportunities ecological agriculture provides.

Reasoning: Dependence on expensive external chemical inputs often leaves small-scale farmers indebted and dependent, which has even led to farmer suicides in some parts of the world. This economic issue of dependence on external inputs warrants more thorough investigation.

Mechanism: This would be best served by an HLPE report.

4. The economic and environmental sustainability of small-scale farming and its contribution to global food security

This work could gather examples of small-scale farming systems that ensure both environmental and economic sustainability and how these systems can be supported through investment and policy.

Reasoning: Small-scale farming is varied across the globe, yet there is no doubt that the contribution of small-scale farmers to global food security is immense – 500 small-scale farmers support two billion people on the planet. Yet, small-scale farmers often receive the least support while bearing the majority of risk.

Mechanism: This would be an HLPE report. This one could also fit as a sub-set of #1.

5. The impact on food security and farmers of market concentration

This should span across the food and agriculture system from inputs to retail.

Reasoning: Excessive market concentration is a flaw of our current global food and agriculture system, yet it continues unabated. The four biggest seed companies control more than half of the commercial seed market; the biggest ten corporations (four of them among the top 10 seed companies) control 82 per cent of the world pesticides business; and the top four grain traders control almost all of the global grain trade.

Mechanism: This can be done by an HLPE report.

Thank you for the opportunity to respond.

Couple of additions to the agenda might be worthwhile.

1)Work streams  on : 

• Supporting the set-up /scale up of the national knowledge and agriculture innovation systems in order that the technologies/knowledge can reach  a wider audience for better impact,
• Technical, funding, collaboration  assistance to national hunger and malnutrition alliances and scaling up nutrition  initiatives, supporting innovative public-    private-civil  society partnerships
• Revival and support of traditional agriculture knowledge systems
• Ag-carbon projects methodological/ tools developments
• Unpacking the agriculture - health/nutrition, development,  land use change, and ecosystem nexus priorities 

• Sustainability Impact Assessment Rapid Tools on National Food Security Programs
• Clearing House Repositories on CGIAR, Global Research Alliances, Climate Adaptation/Mitigation Programme Evaluation Lessons , research outputs     dissemination
• CBA and other decision support  tools/approaches on climate adaptation/mitigation programmes
• Ag knowledge/innovation learning alliances formation support 
• Climate Information Service Application Models
• Case studies of  successful food cluster/innovation programmes worldwide

I would like to propose the following topic:

On-line Plant Nutrient Recommendation.

Rationale: The farmers, especially for developing countries, urgently require timely and reliable information for taking decision on plant nutrition. At present, the farmers depend on trickling down of decision inputs from conventional sources, which are slow and often ambiguous, if not unreliable. The changing agricultural scenario that the farmers are facing today information not merely useful but necessary to remain competitive. Use of on-line fertiliser recommendation will ensure timely application of plant nutrients and thereby ensure profits and livelihood promotion in rural areas. It is possible to effectively integrate the system with GIS application. This will help in planning, advising and monitoring the status of crop stress conditions.

With warm regards,

Sincerely yours,

Pradip Dey

Firstly the International Dairy Federation (IDF) would like to thank the CFS Secretariat for opening this important topic for discussion. Since 1903, IDF is the pre-eminent source of scientific and technical expertise for all stakeholders of the dairy chain. IDF commits to help nourish the world with safe and sustainable dairy.

1.       What issues should be addressed by the Committee in the biennium 2016-2017?

Discussion on the role and importance of a diverse diet to support growth and development, including pregnancy.

2.       Explain the issue and describe why you are proposing it;

FAO states that “the only sustainable means of addressing malnutrition is through the consumption of a high-quality, diverse diet that provides adequate but not excessive energy.”1 Access to better and more diversified diets is key for combating problems of micronutrient malnutrition or “hidden hunger”2. Research on the consumption of animal-based foods by children has convincingly demonstrated improved growth, micronutrient status, cognitive performance and  level of physical activity3. Animal foods are often disregarded in discussions of food security due to cost, however their role should be considered in a wider context of nutrient richness, protein/energy balance, and overall cost effectiveness to complement poorer quality protein and energy sources. Policy-makers should consider the protection of the nutritional quality of diets, not only the adequacy of staple foods1.    

1 FAO 2013. The state of food and agriculture. Food systems for better nutrition. http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3300e/i3300e00.htm (Accessed on 6 May 2014)

2 FAO.2013. Milk and Dairy Products in Human Nutrition. http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3396e/i3396e.pdf (Accessed on 6 May 2014)

3 Dror DK, Allen LH. The importance of milk and other animal-source foods for children in low-income countries. Food & Nutrition Bulletin. 2011; 32:227-43.

Dear Friends,

I believe that the “new” CFS is now sufficiently mature to begin to look objectively at what type of institution is needed to provide for the fair and equitable management of food in the world, especially if and when global shortages occur.

This is not an abstract issue, because the absence of institutions endowed with the necessary powers and competence to take timely decisions and actions led to 258,000 people dying of hunger and related causes in Somalia just 3 years ago. Good early warnings were given and specific interventions were proposed that would have saved many lives and prevented millions of people from abandoning their farms – but the institutional arrangements were not in place internationally to ensure a timely follow up.

The Somalia incident is small and quite isolated in relation to the possible scale and complexity of a global food shortage. We have got used to maintaining a reasonable balance between global food supplies and demand and therefore may have become dangerously complacent. But there is a real and, I personally believe, growing, danger that such a shortage could occur and the global community would be totally unprepared to prevent it and, still less, to ensure that it was managed in ways that would minimize the number of casualties.

I would hope that, in the coming biennium, the HLPE could be tasked with completing a wide-ranging study on “Threats to Global Food Security and Possible Response Strategies”. The work could involve:

• Developing an understanding of the nature, origins, extent and probability of possible threats (especially covariant threats) to the continuing availability of adequate food supplies at the global level;
• Identifying measures to forestall or reduce risks of potentially catastrophic events;
• Outlining the scope of contingency plans to be activated in the event of emerging crises,
• Proposing institutional arrangements, endowed with the necessary powers of intervention to take measures to cut risks of emerging crises and to intervene in the event of serious shortages to ensure fairness in access to food and the minimisation of casualties.

The findings of the HLPE study would be presented to the CFS and hopefully be taken up as a major workstream in the following biennium, leading to agreements on the required coping arrangements.

Early action on this is important, given the growing risks to global food security posed by the accelerated spread of pests and diseases, by the probable speeding up of climate change processes, and by the growing concentration of ownership in international trade in food commodities and farm inputs. I would go as far as suggesting that it would be irresponsible for the CFS not to start work soon on this theme which, though potentially contentious, is of fundamental to the safeguarding of global food security and hence central to its mandate.

Andrew MacMillan

Thank you for this opportunity to share my suggestion for this discussion.

There is a growing link that adolescents especially girls and young women who are food insecure are vulnerable to commercial sexual expliotation and trafficking. I would suggest that adolescent nutrition and food security become a focus for the  Committee in the biennium 2016-2017.

Thank you

Explore the possibility of including some of the basic nutritional variables in the drugs for TB and/or HIV patients, since most of these patients are nutritionally poor and cannot afford recommended daily requirements.

Advice Governments to wave some of the taxes for agricultural inputs to enable more farmers to produce enough food to address food insecurity/shortage. 

1) Create a framework of sufficiency (i.e. what resources and products are actually needed for humankind to feed themselves - gobally as well as locally and per person) for which there are chances of global agreement.

2) Add a priority list for land use ("the following needs must be satisfied before..." in the order of its importance)

3) Operationalize the necessary steps to achieve the food related SDGs at the onset.

Dear moderators,

Here is a contribution of Bread for the World – Protestant Development Service in Germany:

Closing of gender gaps in agriculture, achieving  food and nutrition security and realizing  the right to food for women and girls are issues the CFS should address in the biennium 2016 – 2017. Women need access to and control over agricultural and productive resources as well as equal opportunities than men for political control and decision making. Women have  to strengthen the capacities which are necessary to participate at all levels  in policy development and decision making regarding agriculture and food and nutrition security in order to abolish gender discrimination in the agriculture and nutrition sector.  

Best regards,

Carsta Neuenroth

Policy Adviser Gender

Bread for the World – Protestant Development Service

Protestant Agency for Diakonia and Development