Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum)

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    • Dear FNS Moderator,

      Thank you for giving us the opportunity to share our thoughts on barriers and opportunities for helping to guide agri-food system policies

      It will not be possible to invest in all the Sustainable Development Goals, and this is especially true today given the multiple crises we are experiencing globally. Inflation and declining growth in many countries will undoubtedly limit our ability to invest in achieving the SDGs in time.

      It is therefore extremely important for the scientific community to show how it is possible to work in an interdisciplinary way for sustainability in order to gain efficiency.

      By investing and taking action in one sustainable development goal, it is possible to have impacts in the targeted area but also, in a related way, in other sustainable development goals. There are solutions that can be win-win in several areas. It is therefore extremely important that scientists highlight these solutions to guide policy makers in their investment choices. This will allow economies of scale to be made to better address the other SDGs more quickly.

       

      Two examples with this perspective :

      - Investing in school meal has an impact on children's food security, schooling (and learning capacity) and well-being. This strategy can also help transform local food systems if the food brought into schools is sourced from small-scale producers. Acting for children can therefore impact on the human capital of tomorrow and contribute to the transformation of food systems.

      - In the same way, when we invest in agro-ecology, we can achieve several objectives related to climate, biodiversity, health, soil vitality, water quality, etc.



      Our institution provides training and conducts research on agriculture, food and the environment. We integrate sustainable development objectives in the formulation of the competences we aim to achieve for our students at master's and doctoral level. We involve development actors (donors, development agencies), non-governmental organisations, the private sector and other academic partners from the South in the design of our programmes. It is important to open up the universities and to hear the needs of the stakeholders in society.

      I have the feeling that the scientific community is more eager than ever to be useful, but that this is not always easy for researchers who have been trained by one discipline.



      However, the stakeholders themselves are not always aware of the advances and solutions identified by the scientific community. It is very important to engage in mass dissemination processes. We participated in the creation of a mooc on food systems and nutrition with the FAO e-learning platform. This kind of action allows recent knowledge to be disseminated free of charge and on a large scale.



      In addition, we are participating with the International Research Consortium on Nutrition and Health in the development of country narratives to describe good school feeding practices and promote exchange between nations. Best practices are being identified and dialogue with government and policy makers is planned to encourage decision makers to invest in these areas.

      Working in such a consortium is extremely interesting and effective and this kind of collaborative organisation should be organised more frequently to foster synergies between the scientists themselves and allow them to come together in dialogue with policy makers.

      Universities and research institutions can interact with governments and ministries to influence policy but these processes are still infrequent. This should be explicitly written into the mandate of universities.



      I would like to thank the organisers of this consultation for the opportunity to discuss these important issues.