University of Naples “Federico II” Lectio Magistralis “Prospects of Global Food Security - Challenges and Opportunities: Agrifood Systems Transformation, From Strategy to Action”

University of Naples “Federico II”

Lectio Magistralis

“Prospects of Global Food Security - Challenges and Opportunities:

Agrifood Systems Transformation, From Strategy to Action”

By

Dr Qu Dongyu, FAO Director-General 

18 July 2023

 

Dear Professor Matteo Lorito, Rector of the University of Naples,

Dear Professor Danilo Ercolini, Director of the Department of Agriculture of the

  University of Naples,

Excellences,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Dear Colleagues,

Dear Students,

 

It is a great honour and pleasure for me to deliver this Lectio Magistralis on “The Prospects of Global Food Security - Challenges and Opportunities: Agrifood Systems Transformation, From Strategy to Action”.

 

I will like to start my lecture with a small historical recollection of FAO.

 

In 1905, David Lubin, a Californian of Polish origins, founded the International Institute of Agriculture (IIA) with its headquarters in Rome, Italy. The Institute’s mission was to help farmers share their knowledge, establish a system of rural credit unions and take control of their produce in trade.

 

At the first meeting, 44 countries were represented. The IIA ceased operations in 1945 when FAO took-over the mandate of international coordination in agriculture. The FAO Library was named after David Lubin, where Lubin’s personal archives are kept including his essays and treaties.

 

On the afternoon of 16 October 1945, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) was established with the signature of its Constitution by more than 20 nations.

 

By the end of this first Conference session, which was held at the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec, Canada, 42 nations had formally joined the Organization and two years of hard work of the Interim Commission, formed by President Roosevelt's Hot Springs Conference of May 1943, had matured into the first of the post-war United Nations Specialized Agencies.

 

The first Director-General of FAO was a renowned Nutrition Scientist, John Boyd Orr of the United Kingdom from October 1945 to April 1948. His research showed the link between poverty and malnutrition, and he also carried out research on diet quality.

 

By appointing a nutritionist as the first FAO Director-General speaks to the essential role on nutrition given to FAO from the very beginning. FAO was given a clear and very specific mandate on nutrition- to raise the levels of nutrition. This is also engraved in the FAO Constitution.

 

The first World Food Day Ceremony was held on 16 October 1981 in Rome, together with former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt who presented the keynote speech in his capacity as Chairperson of the Independent Commission on International Development Issues, at the headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

 

On 16 October 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, we celebrated World Food Day 2020 with FAO's first-ever video mapping show projected on the Colosseum, which attracted billions of social media viewers.

 

Let me now start the core of my presentation by starting on where we are and where we need to be by 2030.

 

We are at a critical moment in time. We are starting to see a convergence of factors that if ignored, threaten to prevent us from ending global hunger and malnutrition in all its forms.

 

Our agrifood systems are not only delivering the food security and nutrition outcomes we want to achieve, but at the same time they are suffering from pollution and are buffering from dangerous feedback loops that are harmful to our health, economy, and planet, thus threatening future food security and nutrition.

 

There are several overarching key drivers and megatrends that have shaped our agrifood systems:

• Population dynamics and urbanization
• Economic growth, structural transformation, and macro-economic stability
• Cross-country interdependencies
• Big data generation, control, use and ownership
• Geopolitical instability and increasing impacts of conflicts
• Uncertainties – including the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate crisis

 

We need to do things differently than in the past and it is evident that our agrifood systems require a transformation.

 

The number of hungry people in the world has increased over the past seven years, and in 2022 the number has settled at a very high level after COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine.  The number has increased by 119 million more people than in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic.   

 

This updated assessment is a snapshot of the world still recovering from a global pandemic and now grappling with the consequences of the war in Ukraine and repeated weather shocks.

 

This ‘new normal’ of multiple crisis has led global hunger and food insecurity to stabilize between 2021 and 2022 at a much higher level compared to pre-COVID-19-pandemic levels – and there are many places in the world facing serious and deepening food crises. The global stability hides significant increases in some regions and subregions.

 

Achieving SDG2 (Zero Hunger) is further away than ever with almost 600 million people who may still be facing hunger in 2030. Progresses to achieve global nutrition targets are also lagging.

 

Updates on the cost and affordability of a healthy diet presented in The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) 2023 Report show that a healthy diet was out of reach for more than 3.1 billion people in 2021.

 

Child stunting remains unacceptably high, and overweight and obesity continues to increase in rich and poor countries alike.  The number of people living with obesity exceeded that of people in hunger in 2012.  And more than 3 billion people in the world cannot afford even the cheapest healthy diet.

 

The SDG indicator used to monitor hunger is the prevalence of undernourishment.

 

The economic rebound from the pandemic produced a positive effect helping to stem the rising tide of hunger at the global level, but progress has been hindered by rising food and energy prices, conflicts, weather-related events, and deeply entrenched inequalities.

 

The COVID-19 pandemic caused a serious setback in the fight against hunger. 2022 has made things worse by hurting the speed of recovery and the growth prospects for the rest of the decade.

 

Almost 600 million people may still be facing hunger in 2030.

 

2022 alone will have long lasting consequences: last year alone has put us on a track with 23 million more people undernourished in 2030, making the achievement of SDG2 even more distant.

 

At the same time, current consumption patterns and our agrifood systems that support these are also leading to significant environmental impacts.  They are a contributor to high food waste and loss, air pollution, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, loss of biodiversity, and a growing source of inequality.

 

Our agrifood systems are generating severe human, economic and environmental costs that run into the trillions of dollars.

 

But we know where we need to be by 2030:

• Undernourishment has to be reduced everywhere to a maximum of 5 percent;
• Healthy diets have to be affordable for all;
• Overweight has to be reduced everywhere to levels of 15 percent, similar to what it was in the 1980s;
• Obesity needs to be reduced to no more than 5 percent in any country.
• Stunting among children need to significantly improve;
• We should recover the lost decade in rural poverty;
• Inequalities need to be reduced substantially if we want a sustainable reduction of rural poverty;
• And for the planet we need to achieve a number of neutrality (carbon, land degradation), increase water use efficiency for agriculture, and we need to hit the Paris Agreement target of reducing GHG emissions to limit global climate warming to between 1.5 and 2.0 degrees Celsius (°C).

 

To get to where we need to by 2030, we must understand the challenges facing us through an agrifood systems lens and act holistically.

 

This requires that we recognize the interconnected and compounding economic, social, and environmental impacts of our agrifood systems.

 

From a policy perspective, this has important implications providing crucial guidance on how to prioritize our actions and investments.

 

We also need to look for synergies and consequences in our pursuit of solutions. The pay-off of doing this can be great.  

 

For example, the greening of agrifood systems offers several win-win and even triple-win solutions for ending world hunger and tackling the impacts of the climate crisis. 

 

There is an array of portfolios of solutions that can reduce carbon food print, ensure environmental sustainability and at the same time tackle hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition by ensuring affordable healthy diets for all. 

 

Moreover, policy and solutions can be designed to be an engine of economic recovery, creating viable jobs and sustainable livelihoods, but importantly re-addressing inequality. 

 

We also need to manage the consequences. For example, some low- and lower-middle income countries may need to increase their carbon footprints in order to meet the dietary needs of their populations particularly to prevent malnutrition.

 

Holistic agrifood system solutions will be context specific and much needs to be done to identify these – but it is critical that we begin to do this and do this at scale. 

 

If we are to get where we need to be 2030 we must focus on transforming our agrifood systems.

 

They are not only the largest economic system, measured in terms of employment, livelihoods, planetary impact, but poverty and inequality are endemic in our agrifood systems.

 

If our agrifood systems are transformed sustainably and inclusively to deliver the food security and nutrition outcomes we need - they can become a powerful force contributing to ending hunger and malnutrition in all its forms in the world. 

 

There are several overarching key drivers and megatrends that have been changing and shaping our agrifood systems:

• Demographic changes, populations movements and urbanization
• Industrialization, rising incomes but widening inequality
• Climate change, carbon neutralization, and resource scarcity
• Evolving consumption preferences, nutrition and health
• Rapid technological change and innovation
• Digitalization, big data generation, control, use and ownership
• Geopolitical instability and increasing impacts of conflicts
• Uncertainties – including the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate crisis

 

We need to do things differently than in the past and our agrifood systems need to be transformed. 

 

Let me focus on four of these transformative megatrends: digitalization, urbanization, industrialization and carbon neutralization.

 

On Urbanization, we need to look at how the relationship between the share of urban population in total population and the share of agriculture, including forestry and fishing, in total gross domestic product (GDP) evolved between 1970 and 2019 in different regions.

 

At the global level, the share of urban population grew from 37 percent in 1970 to an estimated 56 percent in 2019, while the share of agriculture in global GDP decreased from 5.3 to 4.2 percent.

 

A more detailed analysis shows very diverse trends in different regions. HICs, ECA, and to a lesser extent LAC and NNA, had already largely been through structural transformation before 1970, with agricultural GDP being around or below ten percent of total GDP, while urbanization was quite advanced, with urban population representing more than 50 percent of total population (more than 70 percent in the case of HICs).

 

In all parts of the world, urbanization is foreseen to continue, with population in rural areas being projected to account only for little less than one-third of the total population by 2050.

 

By then, South Asia would be the region with the highest proportion of rural people, in part as a result of the specific type of in situ urbanization occurring there, followed by South Saharan Africa, both with more than 40 percent of their populations living in rural areas. In contrast, rural population would be reduced to hardly more than 10 percent in HICs and in Latin America and the Caribbean.

 

We have learned that in addition to building resilience against multiple crisis, a megatrend such as urbanization has to be factored in all of our efforts for transformation.

 

This implies that the growing connectivity across the rural–urban continuum must be considered, and the fact that actions, policies and investments need to be targeted across this continuum.

 

If you approximate industrialization by using the share of agricultural value added in GDP and the share of agricultural employment, then depending on the region we can observed different dynamics.

 

While in the last thirty years, proportionally, labour has left the agricultural sector for manufacturing and services almost everywhere, in low middle income countries labour productivity in these sectors has remained almost constant, while it expanded during the structural transformation in high income countries.

Indeed, labour productivity in the rest of the economy has almost stagnated in South Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, East Asia and the Pacific, while it has barely increased in South Asia and Near East and North Africa. In those regions, in contrast, agricultural labour productivity increased compared to the rest of the economy.

 

While this may not be an issue as such since development processes may entail faster productivity growth in one sector compared to another, the question is what sector can deliver sustained productivity growth while absorbing labour.

 

The agrifood system - unless a significant transformation is done - may not be suitable for that in the long run.

 

We are facing immense challenges.

 

More than 30 percent of total global land is degraded, more than 20 percent of the world’s acquirers are overexploited, and our agrobiodiversity is under threat.

 

There are circular, interconnected impacts across agrifood systems and other systems, including environmental and health systems. 

 

Our agrifood systems are not only victims in this interconnected and circular loop, but are also the generators of degradation of natural resources and health, including pandemics and other diseases.    

 

Our agrifood systems are contributing to global greenhouse emissions - this is one of the many challenges!

 

Agriculture uses about 40 percent of the earth’s land, and along with energy and transportation, it contributes significantly to GHG.

 

Not only livestock and fisheries, but also the way we produce crops, using fertilizers. Many different aspects of agrifood systems are contributing to the global GHG emissions, and contributing to the climate disruptions we see all around. But we must look at it more in detail to find out the potential subsectors to work with and how to improve it.

 

Therefore, a piecemeal approach has proven unable to address the interconnected nature of these challenges.  

 

We must urgently work holistically, across sectors to transform our agrifood systems to become a positive force. A force that protects our planet, our health, and that ensures food security and nutrition to all. 

 

The agrifood system emitted 16 billion tonnes CO2eq in 2020. This is 31 percent of global emission.

 

Of these, nearly 50 percent were non-CO2 gases generated within the farm by crop and livestock production activities; 20 percent by land use change processes—mainly deforestation and tropical (and boreal) peatland degradation; and 30 percent by the supply chain (all processes past the farm gate such as food transport, processing, retail, household consumption and waste disposal), plus emissions from energy use for the production of fertilizers and pesticides.

 

Our agrifood systems needs to be transformed to achieve carbon neutralization and for this we need to improve governance of natural resources, improve productivity (produce more with less inputs), improve production practices, improve consumption patterns and behavior, and use cleaner energy.

 

The FAO Strategic Framework 2022-31 clearly focuses on these through the Four Betters: better production, better nutrition, a better environment and a better life.

 

Emerging technologies are already changing the agrifood systems, yet most governments or agrifood systems actors have yet to harness their powerful potential.

 

Helping farmers take full advantage of new technologies such as digital agriculture, ranging from e-commerce and blockchain transaction ledgers to the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for improved pest control and crop genetics, as well as tools allowing optimized management of natural resources and early warning of food security threats, will enormously help in the needed transformation. 

 

The latest International Telecommunication Union (ITU) data shows that uptake of the Internet has accelerated during the pandemic. In 2019, 4.1 billion people (or 54 percent of the world’s population) were using the Internet. Since then, the number of users has surged by 782 million to reach 4.9 billion people in 2021, or 63 percent of the population.

 

Nonetheless, this means that some 2.9 billion people remain offline, 96 percent of whom live in developing countries. Those who remain unconnected face multiple barriers, including a lack of access: some 390 million people are not even covered by a mobile broadband signal.

 

This growth differential has contributed to a modest narrowing of the divide between the world’s most and least-connected countries: for example, the divide between developed economies and the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) went from 66 percentage points in 2017 to 63 percentage points in 2021. This again opens a new opportunity for digital agriculture.

 

But to achieve this there are investments to be made and actions to be taken both in the soft and hardware side of the digital transformation. Development needed in the soft side is critically important to make efficient and effective use of hard infrastructure and other technological advancement, and bring the positive impact of such digital innovations in reducing poverty and hunger.

 

Infrastructure and policy provide the foundation of a digital system, the enabling environment. Different countries have their own unique infrastructure and policy solutions, but effective digital systems for agriculture and rural development will have some common characteristics.

 

Data and content platforms need to be interoperable. Relevant data will always be collected and disseminated in various ways, but information and services are most valuable when the different data supporting them are combined to provide fuller and more granular insights. Some important elements are Natural Resources Maps (Soil, Water, and Climate), Pest and Disease Monitoring, Farmer Profiles, Localized Weather Forecasts, Market Price Information, Credit Scoring Algorithms.

 

The three “Cs” are essential:

 

Capacity: developing countries, those most in need of digital transformation, are also those with the least capacity to manage the process. And the agricultural sector in particular lags behind in the process. Capacity development in all levels horizontally and vertically is the key.

 

Content: co-creation, customization, adaptation, and use - relevance to small holders, local appropriation – digital tools should not be used to dump information on rural producers, but rather facilitate co-creation of knowledge and innovation, integration of local and indigenous knowledge.

 

Tools and applications offer direct benefits to farmers. Farmers need information to make good decisions about everything from which crops to plants, how to care for them, and how to optimize market opportunities for their agricultural products. Digital tools can provide real-time, relevant information that can improve outcomes for farmers.

 

Focus on small holder adaptation: the challenge is that transformative innovations and modern tools for making agricultural systems more efficient and sustainable are often not designed for smallholder use. Adaptation to smaller scales is a major challenge for smallholder farmers in developing countries

 

Context: no one size fits all, we must consider local context in terms of infrastructure, connectivity, local capacity, farming practices, market dynamics, etc. in investment and business decisions in order to offer solutions that are locally applicable, accessible, and affordable.

 

We also need the three “Ss”:

 

Keep is SIMPLE. Currently, the adoption of digital technologies among small producers is low, so they are often excluded.

 

Solutions does not need to be complicated to be impactful.  Simpler the better, and more inclusive. A Harvard study shows that by integrating simple SMS texting in the extension and advisory service has made significant changed the farmers’ behaviour and motivates people significantly to use new information and technologies to improve their farming practices and yield by 4 percent.  

 

Sustainability. The digitalization of agriculture and agrifood systems can have positive impacts in economic, social, environmental and institutional terms.

 

The digital transformation of the agrifood sector should take an inclusive, efficient and sustainable approach. This approach requires significant action by governments to establish enabling policy frameworks and right incentives. Also digital solutions should be integrated in the existing institutions and structures, so that it is not a burden on the government. 

 

System approach to addressing challenges and supporting small holder rural producers that are integrated and holistic across disciplines and sectors - digitalization benefits all actors in agrifood systems.

 

In short, digitalization is an important advance for the agrifood system.

 

So what is the agrifood system strategy we need to put in place?

 

A world facing escalating threats demands that we act immediately to safeguard livelihoods, future-proof our planet and lock in sustainable outcomes. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is there to guide us, but the historic consensus surrounding its adoption must be matched by political determination to deliver it.

 

With many of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) off-track, the need to engage all actors at all levels becomes all the more pressing.

 

Today’s challenges require cooperation, not only across borders, but across the whole of society.

 

FAO’s Strategic Framework puts at its centre the strategic narrative of leaving no one behind through more efficient, more inclusive, more resilient and more sustainable agrifood systems, for better production, better nutrition, a better environment, and a better life.

 

The Four Betters represent an organising principle for how FAO intends to contribute directly, but not limited to, SDG 1 (No poverty), SDG 2 (Zero hunger), and SDG 10 (Reduced inequalities), as well as to supporting achievement of the broader SDG agenda, which is crucial for achieving FAO’s overall vision.

 

The Four Betters reflect the interconnected economic, social and environmental dimensions of agrifood systems.  As such, they also encourage a strategic and systems-oriented approach within all FAO interventions.

 

In order to accelerate progress and maximize our efforts in meeting the SDGs and to realize our aspirations, FAO will apply four cross-cutting/cross-sectional “accelerators”: technology, innovation, data and complements (governance, human capital, and institutions) across all our programme of work.

 

Sustainably feeding close to 10 billion people by 2050 is an unprecedented challenge. And it speaks to the paramount importance of accelerating the impact of our programmatic interventions, while minimizing trade-offs. The four accelerators can help achieve both objectives. It is critical that technology, innovations and data are inclusive and gender-sensitive, and are used to spur development.

 

We have prioritized 20 Programme Priority Areas (PPAs) of work that are framed around the Four Betters of our new strategic narrative and will be progressively elaborated.

 

Key priority areas under Better Production include: green innovation, blue transformation, one health, small-scale producers’ equitable access to resources and digital agriculture.

 

Priorities around Better Nutrition include: healthy diets for all, nutrition for the most vulnerable, safe food for everyone, reducing food loss and waste and transparent markets and trade.

 

Priorities under a Better Environment include: less pollution, restoring ecosystem and improving the agri-environment will be the roadmap to all. Agriculture at large will be the contributor to the One Health of our planet. Climate mitigating and adapted agrifood systems, bio-economy, and biodiversity and ecosystem services for food and agriculture.

 

All of these contribute to a Better Life. The related PPAs include gender equality and rural women’s empowerment, inclusive rural transformation, sustainable urban food systems, agriculture and food emergencies, resilient agrifood systems, as well as special programmes and initiatives around scaling-up investment and FAO’s Hand-in-Hand Initiative, which focus specifically on ensuring that collective action towards SDG achievement can be brought to scale to trigger transformational change in agrifood systems. 

 

Cross-cutting themes around gender, youth and inclusion will ensure that we do not lose sight of vulnerable and marginalized groups across all our work, in order to leave no one behind and contribute to the achievement of SDG's 1, 2 and 10.

 

Dear Friends,

 

The COVID-19 pandemic, conflicts around the world, including the war in Ukraine, and the impacts of the climate crisis, provide us with an astonishing wake-up call on the fragility of hunger. 

 

But they also provide us with the opportunity to re-evaluate how we tackle the root causes of hunger and build resilience against threats to start-anew before it is too late, and before we are hit with another global disaster of the same or greater magnitude.

 

This “pause” requires that we look frankly and honestly at our current agrifood systems.

 

Let science speak first.  

 

Not only at the facts on hunger, but also at the drivers behind the trends and the inequalities in access to food that lie at the heart of the problem. 

 

It requires that we understand the interconnected nature of the factors driving food insecurity, and the shortcomings of our agrifood systems.

 

We have succeeded in the past and we have to succeed now.

 

All we have still to accomplish and what we have already accomplished, we have done together with our partners, and especially with the support from our host country Italy.

 

So let me conclude by thanking Italy and all our Members for the trust they have placed and continue to place in FAO.

 

We will continue to do everything we can to live up to global expectations, in support of the world’s farmers.

 

I thank you.