HIGH-LEVEL COMMITTEE ON MANAGEMENT (HLCM) Opening Remarks

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Dear Colleagues, 

I am so delighted to welcome all of you to FAO Headquarters in Rome. For some of you maybe it may be the first time here and you may have thought that we were living in the countryside, but as you can see FAO is in the heart of Rome. Across the street is the Circo Massimo and if you go upstairs to the terrace on the 8th floor you can observe all the most important spots in just one shot.

It is very cost-effective, and that is also the significance of the High-Level Committee on Management.

I welcome Madame Chair of the Committee and other colleagues because the purpose of the High-Level Committee on Management is critical for ensuring efficient, effective, coherent and fraternal collaboration across the UN system.

This would not be possible without the guidance of the Committee’s coordination and leadership, and the contributions of all our colleagues across the UN system, who are here today to engage in constructive dialogue that will help us achieve even greater coordination in our work.

It is timely also to do the right thing at the right time.

FAO is pleased to host this 49th session of the Committee, it is a great honour for me, especially since I came to FAO. I was not a UN staff member before I joined FAO as Director-General. I was the responsible Minister to monitor and support the UN, and to control the budget related to agriculture at large, not only FAO.

So, I feel we need some change, to be honest. Otherwise, you cannot do business as usual, without looking at the other side of the street, the people in the field, people at the grassroots, and of course some politicians in the capitals are also very important because they are ones who control our budget.

It is quite a long time ago that the last session was held here at FAO - it seems like it was the last generation – because it is about 20 years ago.

When I was with the Three Gorges Dam, they invested ÙSD 40 billion, and they produced 1.4 billion kilowatts a day. It means that each Chinese has benefitted 1 kilowatt from our project. So, it is renewable energy from the hydropower.  When I arrived FAO in 2019, we only had 14 000 employees, with more than 3 000 included in the FAO Programme of Work and Budget (PWB), and now, in the past five years, it has increased from 14 000 to 16 000. This is quite a big increase that I had not realized, so when we started preparing the budget proposal for the next biennium, I asked my colleague Assistant Director-General, Beth Crawford, and other core leaders to follow my guidance and to proactively reduce by 10 percent staff. I am sharing this with you because we need development, but also sometimes we need to take a breath to retreat and reset. When I started in 2019, my first year was the Year of Efficiency; the second year was the Year of Effectiveness; the third year was the Year of the Extraordinary because it was after the pandemic, and we needed an extraordinary effort.

My colleagues did really well across FAO globally, and the overall volunteer contribution had almost a 50 percent increase during the past five years. We are still really happy with our donors, partners and investors. We will keep on track to improve efficiency and be fit for purpose; then in the fourth year, we say it is the Year of Excellency. Excellency never ends, but we say it is version 1.0.

And now, we come to my second term, which started last year, and for which we set the 4 Rs: Recovery, Reform, Rebuild, and, when I will be about to leave in August 2027, we will have reached Renaissance - because we are in Italy! When I talk about renaissance, they fully understand what the real meaning is.

This year we are going to celebrate FAO’s 80th anniversary on 16 October. A lot of people know that it is World Food Day, but they do not know why that day was chosen. It was a Hungarian professor at that time who was the Minister of Agriculture who proposed we should have a World Food Day – some 44 years ago. During World War II, FAO was established by President Franklin Roosevelt of the United States, starting in 1943 from 18 May to 3 June in Hot Springs, West Virginia. The first name was the United Nations Conference on Food and Agriculture.

I am telling you all this because we must not forget history. They said we want freedom of speech, we want freedom of religion, but he added it to “we want freedom from want”. Because food is a basic human right. That was 82 years ago.

So that is why, upon entering FAO headquarters you will see the FAO Constitution wall, established on 3 June 1963.

FAO has its own independent Constitution and our own Basic Texts because FAO is the first UN agency  to directly elect the Director-General. From the first Director-General, it has always been one country one vote. That makes the FAO Directors-General fully empowered by its Members. That is why I have always said that FAO is Member-owned, Member-driven, Member-governed.

They have three Council Committees: Committee on Constitutional and Legal Matters, Programme Committee and Finance Committee, and these provide suggestions to me and then to the Council.

Council makes decisions and asks me to implement them, and then every two years we have the Ministerial Conference of all Members here in Rome, and in between we hold Regional Ministerial Conferences. Last year we had all the Regional Ministerial Conferences, and in late June this year we will have the Ministerial Conference in Rome.

I said FAO deals with global agrifood systems, but we have to respect the different regions because the natural environments are different from one region to another.

This session is a good reminder of our shared history and the continued relevance of our collective work.

FAO must always be on the ground, because we have 196 Members, and we have to offer our services to all our Members, our farmers, and our consumers.

A lot of people think that FAO is about food production. But it is also about nutrition. That is why we introduced the new FAO Strategic Framework 2022-31, endorsed by the Ministerial Conference, founded on the Four Betters: better production, better nutrition, a better environment and a better life. Not ‘better livelihood’. A better life includes a better quality of life at different stages of development. At the child level, you have to stop child wasting, at the senior level you have to be healthy through healthy food.

Ninety-five percent of people do not eat medicine, but 100 percent of people eat food every day, including people who are ill. That is why I said we should offer a service to the consumers; we work for the eight billion people, not only farmers or commercial producers or private sectors.

I also wish to take this opportunity to tell you that this year, jointly with President Mattarella of Italy, we will launch the FAO Museum and Network through which we will connect all the traditional villages, new technologies and food cultures and indigenous communities. That is something very special because on the one hand we will promote innovation and the new business model, and on the other hand we also want to connect with our traditional food and technology. That is the balance we want to reach.

I hope that your principals support this High-Level Management Committee, and that you are well equipped to carry out your work. I always give my support to Management because it is always the most cost-effective way. The UN system has a big potential. I come from a poor country, so I know how money, how just one dollar or one yuan, can lead to a big change.

For example, I started by changing the cafeteria here at FAO. I hope you have had the opportunity to visit it. After the renovation, the food prices remained the similar to that in 2019, with the same high Italian quality at affordable prices. The cost is about EUR 2.5 - 7.5. I am the first Director-General to eat with staff, sitting around with them. And we have the cheapest good coffee in Headquarters of the whole UN System – only 99 cents for a cup of Espresso!

When Ministers and leaders come to FAO, I often invite them for a coffee to promote FAO, the UN food culture, and also the Italian food culture. We appreciate that the Italian government has made a long-term commitment to support changes.

Now, the last thing I am going to change – after the cafeteria, the meeting rooms, and the public areas – is the garden and the parking place. So, I hope some of you will come back in October to celebrate with us and see all the changes.

And also, I am proud of my colleagues (core leaders, directors and employees) such as Rodrigo de Lapuerta, Director of Logistics Services. He joined FAO when he was very young and we had the chance to change and make the people feel hope, feel willing to invest. And for this I really appreciate them.

So, I encourage all of you try to make your host country willing to invest in your organizations.

I will stop here. I wish all of you a good stay, I hope your discussions will be meaningful, and that you will offer the recommendations and guidance for us to work better together. We need more solidarity. We need more action. We need more changes.

If we do not change, you will be changed. That is what I learnt from the late top leader Deng Xiaoping: “If you do not change, I will change you.” But I say, “I will be changed”. 

We live in a competitive world. I am a biologist, and I know that through evolution Dinosaurs disappeared, they became extinct, but the small worms are still here on this planet. So, be adaptive, be involved in the long-term evolution and be strong and smart, and be agile to all kinds of challenges.

I can tell you FAO is in good hands. I really appreciate all the supporters - from the number one brother, to the small island nations.

I said many times that elephant meat is meat, and ant meat is also meat.

So, we appreciated all the support, big and small. Let us do it!

Thank you so much.