UN Expert Group Meeting on SDG2 Opening Remarks

Good morning,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Dear Colleagues,

It is an important moment to look and take stock, to review what progress we have made and what are the real challenges for us ahead, and what are the solutions.

I expect solutions because you are an expert group. We need data and evidence-based suggestions – not long documents! We need concise and precise evidence-based suggestions - even just one or two, maximum three.

I am from China, I don’t just want to give speeches, I want to listen to your concerns, and your suggestions on how to address them. This is the same approach I followed for developing my manifesto, through a broad consultation process.

We need real engagement and a participatory approach – this is true international multilateralism.

SDG2 aims to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture.

Feeding a growing global population by producing more with less is a great challenge. Because we must not only produce more, but we should also improve the quality of life, as well as urbanization, industrialization, and digitalization.

It’s about the chain of demand. The demand determines the supply. Not the supply determines the demand. When the civilization improves, the demand is more and more, and is more diversified and of higher quality. That is the three-dimensional demand.

A lot of economists talk about the quantitative increase. Yet, food security has increased. Economic hardship, disruption of supply chain and conflict lead to obstacles to food availability, food accessibility and food affordability.

These are the three major aspects of food security: food availability, food accessibility and food affordability.

We should breakdown the three aspects because some countries face a bigger challenge of food availability, while others face more on food accessibility, and still others on food affordability, which does not only affect developing countries.

Since I came here five years ago, the price of food, major food such as rice and wheat and even spaghetti, has increased by at least 20 percent – in fact, between 20 to 40 percent.

This affects the most vulnerable people even here in Italy. Especially poor families who earn less than EUR 800 per month.

But not so many people care about these poor people, people in developing countries. In these countries, it is not always about food availability and food accessibility, but at least 20 percent of people lack food affordability.

Please understand SDG2 more scientifically, more professionally, do not only use big data to scare people, to scare politicians, to scare society. Scare tactics do not lead to good solutions, at most it can only lead to raising public awareness. For this reason, I never use scary data to scare the politicians.

Politicians have different sources of information. It’s not about releasing scary data and enabling access to it, as a professional UN agency we should be offering solutions. What is the alternative holistic solution? What is the integrative solution? What is the coherent solution?

It’s not about one single solution. No one SDG has a single solution.

Weather extreme events, such as heavy rains, storms, cyclones, floods, and droughts are also significant drivers of food insecurity across all regions. People only talk about droughts, but they forget floods. We need to understand the weather carefully and professionally. Floods are more destructive than any drought in the world.

The price rise in food, fuel, feed, and field fertilizers, as a well as a deterioration in the purchase power, must be added to the challenges of transforming agrifood systems to be more efficient, more inclusive, more resilient, and more sustainable.

We need to accelerate and intensify actions and boost investments in science and technology in agrifood systems and rural development.

It’s not only about sustainability. Sustainability is a goal. We need efficiency, inclusivity, and resilience. Otherwise, we cannot reach the goal of sustainability.

The first summit on sustainability was held in 1991. Now, 33 years later we still talk about sustainability because we have not found the solution. We have not found the tools to reach that goal.

We cannot and we must not allow food insecurity to get worse and worse.

You cannot complain about the natural biotic reason – pandemic and others. We are human beings. We are the most intelligent animal on this planet. We should find a deliverable solution.

A lot of people, politicians say “due to the pandemic, due to economy, due to inflation…”. I don’t think that in the next four or five years it is going to be better than now, if you take a negative approach.

But if you look positively at the past five years, we have made so much progress on technology, on digitalization in any economy. When I arrived here five years ago, e-commerce was hardly seen. Now, it has become more and more popular.

People always talk about the worst. I never talk about the worst. FAO used the pandemic and lockdown as an opportunity. There were only about 20 people working in the building, mostly from security and cleaning services, and we started with the clean up and started the renovation of the entrance and the cafeteria. Now it is impossible because every day with more than 3000 people moving around the building it is impossible to start a renovation!

So, any crisis should be used as an opportunity.

Now, in all countries, health and food should be put high on the agenda by politicians.

We need to ask the politicians whether we all have enough food. Most of us, 85 percent of us, have enough food. But what about the other 15 percent?

What about in the Small Island Developing States? When I was there during the past two years, they all told me they used to depend on tourists, they didn’t care about food and agriculture.

When I first traveled there 20 years ago, when I was the Vice President of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, nobody talked to me about food being an issue. But I warned them, and they did not listen. So, people learn from lessons.

Don’t worry, be happy!

Thank you.