Photos illustrate that healthy nutrition can be provided to everyone
Winners of the 2022 FAO World Food Day photo contest for Europe and Central Asia selected
©FAO/Fatih Yilmaz (Türkiye)
22/12/2022
World Food Day is celebrated each year on 16 October to raise awareness and action for those who suffer from hunger and for the need to ensure healthy diets for all, leaving no one behind. It’s an occasion to work together and create a better, more sustainable future. Each year, World Food Day is marked by hundreds of events and outreach activities all over the globe. One of the activities launched for countries of Europe and Central Asia was a photo contest.
Under the motto “Healthy nutrition for everyone!”, the 2022 FAO World Food Day photo contest for Europe and Central Asia received images from residents of this region that illustrate how to ensure good nutrition for ourselves and everyone else in a sustainable manner. The photos emphasized the moments and approaches of how healthy food is produced, processed, and shared, instead of the food itself.
A sustainable world is one in which everyone counts.
First place
The top position was split between two talented photographers, both residing in Türkiye: Ömer Şahin and Fatih Yilmaz. Their images are not only of high photographic value, but also illustrate traditional and sustainable food production and processing methods.
As Ömer Şahin described, through this photo, he wanted to show the efforts of the people of Çalışkan Çukurca, who prepared and irrigated an organic rice field with their hands at the foot of high mountains and cultivated it under very difficult conditions.
“I like to photograph people who are engaged in food production and agriculture, I want to pass them on to future generations,” Şahin explained. “I support organic and natural agriculture for a healthy life.”
The photo of Fatih Yilmaz captures peppers in Anatolia that are collected and left under the sun to dry. As he explains, agriculture has been the livelihood of the society for centuries in Anatolia. People generally produce and consume their own food through local processes.
“In this photograph, you are witnessing the journey of the chili pepper in Gaziantep, Türkiye,” Yilmaz said. “This drying process is generally practiced in the Asian continent. This has been a great source of inspiration for agriculture and photography for me.”
©FAO/Shodibek Sharipov (Tajikistan); ©FAO/Maja Delibasic (Serbia)
Second place
From Tajikistan, Shodibek Sharipov’s image of two small children picking apples from the tree won second place, representing his belief that transferring knowledge and life experience on food from the older generation to the younger is an important step to improve food security. In fact, this was the reason for his participation in this photo contest.
“I wanted to show how the older generation teaches the younger generations to take care of nature and how to grow healthy food,” told Sharipov. “Because our country [Tajikistan] is an agrarian country. For us, young people, it is very important to know how to grow healthy food and how to take care of nature.”
©FAO/Ömer Şahin (Türkiye)
Third place
Maja Delibasic from Serbia scored third with her image showing her family harvesting potatoes on their own land in Gornji Matejevac village in south Serbia. In her family, three generations are involved to harvest and store potatoes for the winter period, and even though it was a dry season this year, they’ve managed to provide enough potatoes for the whole family on this small plot of land.
“As someone whose family owns a small farm I believe that the future of agriculture is in growing food in partnership with nature, not in spite of it or in conflict with it,” Delibasic said. “It can be done. We work hard to be sustainable as a family and that means we have quite a bit of food independence, and I am sure that is possible for wider communities. Also I believe that with enough support this is the way we can heal our lands and make enough food so no one is left behind.”
And as she emphasizes, if we want things to change, we need to see producing food in this, hands-on way, sustainably, with love and respect, progressive and fun, and not as a backward and torturing activity.
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