Глобальный форум по продовольственной безопасности и питанию (Форум FSN)

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Г-н Arun Baral

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Организация: HarvestPlus
Страна: Соединенные Штаты Америки
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Catalyzing the scale up of biofortification to reach 1 billion consumers globally by 2030

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    • Dear CFS,

      So many thanks for undertaking this important and transparent policy process for the development of Voluntary Guidelines on Food Systems and Nutrition, and for providing us with this forum for feedback.

      I would like to commend you on this excellent Zero Draft which not only highlights the urgency of tackling malnutrition in all its forms, but also provides several solutions for doing so along the whole “production to consumption” supply chain for food systems. Your inclusion of key issues such as equity and climate change challenges, and the need to conserve agrobiodiversity makes the guidelines relevant not just today but for many years to come.

      As the CEO of HarvestPlus (https://www.harvestplus.org/), the global leader in biofortification technology and policy, and the convener of CGIAR breeding centers and 400+ other global partners working on biofortification, I was especially pleased to see your inclusion of biofortification in Part I, under (1) Production Systems paragraph (h) as one of the technologies that could result in “improvements in productivity enabling better access to healthy diets and nutrition outcomes while minimizing environmental impact.”

      Biofortification is now a proven solution for improving food systems through their backbones, i.e., through the key staple(s) from which the majority of the calories consumed come – regardless of age, gender and socio-economic status of the consumer. You can see the latest evidence on the health and nutritional impact of biofortification here: https://www.harvestplus.org/evidence-document, and the availability of all of the released and about to be released, conventionally-bred (i.e., non-GMO), high-yielding, climate-smart and nutritious biofortified crops globally here: https://www.harvestplus.org/sites/default/files/publications/HP_2019_CropMap_update_v5_0515.pdf . To date 21 countries have included biofortification in their national policies, and biofortified crops are benefiting almost 40 million people globally (see our latest annual report here: https://www.harvestplus.org/knowledge-market/in-the-news/catalyzing-biofortified-food-systems-2018-annual-report ). Biofortification is an equitable intervention, since unlike other nutrient rich foods – such as animal sourced foods – which are often reserved for male members of a household – biofortification targets the staple crops consumed by all household members. Finally biofortified crops are not only bred to be climate smart/climate adaptive, but also to provide higher levels of micronutrients, which is a much needed intervention as the recent evidence (see, e.g., https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/food/high-co2-emissions-reducing-nutrients-in-rice-wheat-66143) shows that nutrient content of our staple crops are eroding due to increasing CO2 concentrations.

      Given all this evidence, I would recommend you to consider including biofortification in other sections of the guidelines, such as Part I, section(1) Production Systems (a), (b), (f), (i), (g), (k); (3) Processing and Packaging (a); (4) Retail and Markets (a) and (b); in Part II, section on Availability and Physical Access (b) and (c); Economic access/affordability (c), and under Food Quality and Safety (b).

      If you have any follow up questions, please do not hesitate to contact me. We would also be delighted to participate in the forum mentioned in Paragraph 59 and to share with other stakeholders our various resources (such as the Biofortification Priority Index [ https://bpi.harvestplus.org] for identifying high impact target countries for each biofortified crop) and our know-how and lessons learned in introducing and scaling of biofortified crops and foods along the staple crop supply chains.

      Sincerely yours,

      Arun Baral