Open consultation on the V0 draft of the report “Building resilient food systems”

During its 51st plenary session (23-27 October 2023), the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) adopted its four-year Programme of Work (MYPOW 2024-2027), which includes a request to its High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE-FSN) to produce a report on “Building resilient food systems” to be presented at the 53rd plenary session of the CFS in October 2025.

CFS request

The text of the CFS request, as included in the MYPOW, is as follows: 

Global challenges to food security and nutrition, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, conflicts, extreme weather events due to climate change, natural disasters, loss of biodiversity and land degradation, reveal structural vulnerabilities of agriculture and food systems. These shocks and stresses may disrupt food value chains and, when combined with other factors such as financial or economic crises, may lead to unaffordability and/or unavailability of healthy food. There are also deep inequalities and unsustainable practices in the current food distribution and marketing systems. There is wide recognition of the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of agriculture and food systems, and growing calls to improve their functioning so that they are able to respond to current and future challenges, seeking to diversify sources of inputs, production, markets, supply chain and actors, supporting the creation of small and medium-sized companies, cooperatives, consortiums and other groups to maintain diversity in the agriculture and food value chains. Given the increased frequency of shocks to agriculture and food systems in recent years and the growing risks from a range of sources, it is imperative to explore more deeply how they can be made more resilient – that is, more capable of recovering, adapting and transforming in the face of shocks – as well as more equitable and sustainable, so that they are able to support all dimensions of food security. Understanding the different types of vulnerabilities of agriculture and food systems, and their implications for the different actors involved, will enable CFS to provide a space for exchange and convergence on the policy measures needed to enhance the resilience of local, regional and global food supply chains, including consideration of inclusive and equitable employment opportunities, the role of trade, environmental sustainability, access to healthy diets and human rights. 

Objectives and expected outcomes: The objective of the workstream is to create a set of focused, action-oriented policy recommendations on “Building resilient food systems” as a key means of achieving the CFS vision, SDG2, and an array of other SDGs, including SDGs SDG 8, 10, 12, 14 and 15, as a result of the contribution that agriculture and food systems make to livelihoods and natural systems. The workstream will benefit from the findings and recommendations of an HLPE-FSN report on the topic.

As part of the report development process, the HLPE-FSN invites the public to provide inputs, suggestions, and comments through an e-consultation on version 0 (V0 draft) of the report👇

HLPE-FSN V0 drafts of reports are deliberately presented early enough in the process – as work in progress, with their range of imperfections – to allow sufficient time to properly consider the feedback received in the elaboration of the report. E-consultations are a key part of the inclusive and knowledge-based dialogue between the HLPE-FSN Steering Committee, the drafting team, and the scientific and knowledge community at large.

Questions to guide the e-consultation on the V0 draft of the report

This V0 draft identifies areas for recommendations and contributions on which the HLPE-FSN of the CFS welcomes suggestions or proposals, in particular addressing the following questions:

1. Do you have examples from across the food system that illustrate the resilience spectrum (detailed in chapter 3) in practice - from bouncing back, to bouncing forward, to equitably bouncing forward interventions?
2. Are the trends/variables/elements identified in the draft report the essential ones to understand and strengthen the resilience of food systems? Which other elements should be considered?
3. Are there any additional trends/variables/elements that should be analyzed in the report to understand and strengthen the resilience of food systems?
4. How should resilience and the process of building resilience in food systems be evaluated? Which indicators, frameworks, or methodologies do you consider most effective in capturing the ability of food systems to withstand and adapt to shocks and stresses and bounce forward? How can equitably transformative resilience be evaluated?
5. Are there other references, publications, or other kinds of knowledges, which should be considered?
6. Please provide additional examples that support equitably transformative resilient food systems for food security and nutrition. In particular examples of integrated participatory processes, actions and policies at multiple scales, such as household, ecosystem, community, regional, national, global and from countries and regions less represented in the current draft, including:  

• Six dimensions of food security: access, availability, utilization stability, sustainability, and agency.
• Food systems: systems supporting food production (ecosystems, human, health, energy, economics); food supply chains (production, storage, processing, distribution, markets/ retail, promotion and advertising; food loss and waste); circular economies and flows of resources; private sector considerations, in particular, small and medium-sized enterprises; food environments: availability; access; affordability of healthy diets; policy; consumer behaviours and preferences.
• Governance: smallholders, harvesters, food producers, fisherfolk rights; labour and workers' rights; natural resources, including land (access, tenure) and water; strategy and action; sustainable livelihoods; multi-scale government-led policy; funding; negotiations; action and advocacy; policy sequencing knowledge creation spaces that legitimize, value and empower experimental knowledge and the ways of knowing.
• Rights policy frameworks that recognize interdependencies between human and nature's rights in food systems.
• Social protection programmes.
• Grassroots social innovations (that can be supported by or enhanced by state-led resourcing).
• Women’s empowerment.
• Scale-appropriate technology.
• Data: publicly available, innovative data (e.g. soil mapping; census data) for decision-making, indicators and metrics (qualitative and quantitative).
• Finance and fiscal space.
• Regionalized and localized trade, equitable global trade, and managing food price volatility.
• Supporting equitably transformative food systems resilience in the face of (protracted and emerging) conflict.
• Managing climate risks/shocks/stresses through early warning, early action systems, anticipatory actions, contingent financing, among others.

Share your views by using the form👇

Proceedings of the contributions received will be made publicly available on this consultation webpage.

The results of this consultation will be used by the HLPE-FSN to elaborate further the report, which will then be submitted to peer review, before finalization and approval by the HLPE-FSN drafting team and the Steering Committee (more details on the different steps of the process, are available here).

⏰ This consultation is open until 11 March 2025.

If you wish to submit additional documentation to support your contribution, you can write to the HLPE-FSN Secretariat, at cfs-hlpe(at)fao.org, copying silvia.meiattini(at)fao.org.

We thank in advance all the contributors for reading, commenting and providing inputs on this V0 draft of the report. Comments can be submitted in English, French and Spanish.

The HLPE-FSN looks forward to a rich and fruitful consultation!

Meet the drafting team

Contributions

Contributions received are available here.