The first two questions to guide this e consultation describe a very broad framework embracing the many societal factors that are associated with inequality (and on which many libraries of information exist):
Qu1. a. Defining inequality within the context of food systems and for food security and nutrition: What does ‘inequality’ mean through a food security and nutrition perspective; Commitments to reduce inequality (SDGs), efforts to improve measurement; Relationship between inequality and inequity….
Qu 1. b Identifying drivers of power asymmetry that cause and perpetuate inequality
Qu 1. c Paths toward equality
Qu 2. Share good practices and successful experiences on policy, legislation, interventions and initiatives that have proven successful at: reducing inequality gap and its potential impact on food security and nutrition outcomes; ensuring the effective legal framework to guarantee equal rights …; empowering the role of small farmers’, producers’ and workers’ organizations in making food systems more equitable and accessible; addressing capacity gaps ….
The risk of such a broad opening framework is that the scope of this HLPE report would be too diffuse, inadequately focused on FSN, and re-invent some of the wheels developed by other organisations. I outline below key reference sources that cover much of the FSN ground of questions 1 & 2, and respond to question 3 on recent references that should be considered in this report. And my brief summaries below of those sources (which in turn include many associated references pertinent to question 3) respond to some of the items in question 4.
I. Much of that Qu 1&2 context was investigated leading up to the UN Decade of Family Farming 2019-2028 which highlights the important role family farmers play in eradicating hunger and shaping our future of food. Family farming offers a unique opportunity to ensure food security, improve livelihoods, better manage natural resources, protect the environment and achieve sustainable development, particularly in rural areas.
The Global Action Plan of the UN Decade of Family Farming 2019-2028 aims at accelerating actions undertaken in a collective, coherent and comprehensive manner to support family farmers, who are key agents of sustainable development. That Action Plan comprises 7 pillars:
Pillar 1. Develop an enabling policy environment to strengthen family farming
Pillar 2–Transversal. Support youth and ensure the generational sustainability of family farming
Pillar 3–Transversal. Promote gender equity in family farming and the leadership role of rural women
Pillar 4. Strengthen family farmers’ organizations and capacities to generate knowledge, represent farmers and provide inclusive services in the
urban-rural continuum
Pillar 5. Improve socio-economic inclusion, resilience and well-being of family farmers, rural households and communities
Pillar 6. Promote sustainability of family farming for climate-resilient food systems
Pillar 7. Strengthen the multidimensionality of family farming to promote social innovations contributing to territorial development and food systems that safeguard biodiversity, the environment and culture
Pillars 1, 4, 5 and 7 are directly relevant to this e consultation.
II. The CERES 2030 report (deriving from a partnership between Cornell University, IISD and IFPRI) was discussed at the CFS AG/B meeting on 18 March (cited also by IFAD and GDPRD at that meeting). This studied sustainable solutions to end hunger, and developed ten recommendations of which the first three focused on “ Empower the Excluded”:
1. Enable participation in farmers’ organizations.
2. Invest in vocational programs for rural youth that offer integrated training in multiple skills.
3. Scale up social protection programs to help create a bridge for people living in poverty to find productive jobs.
III. The IFAD RURAL DEVELOPMENT REPORT (2021), titled Transforming food systems for rural prosperity.
This report underlined that food systems need to be changed dramatically so that a new food system may deliver available, accessible, adequate, and nutritious food for all in a sustainable manner. The new food systems must aspire to become fair, inclusive and sustainable.
The overall goals of a food system’s transformation are to ensure that people are able to consume diets that are healthy, to produce food within planetary boundaries and to earn a decent living from their work in the food system. Livelihoods, nutrition and environmental goals are interlinked. Central to these desired outcomes is the need to ensure that food systems are resilient to shocks from weather extremes, pest and disease outbreaks, climate change and market anomalies.
The key recommendations of this Report of particular relevance to this consultation included ‘What can governments do?’ That section is re-stated here:
A failure of food systems is a failure of governance. National governments play a central role as drivers and implementers of change, yet global markets and geopolitical considerations also play a crucial role. Policymakers, governments and stakeholders can support this transition by:
Providing incentives that reward responsible investments, nature-based solutions and agroecological strategies, and low carbon and climate-resilient techniques. Investments in food markets need to be fair: food markets need to be accessible to rural people and farm/ non-farm small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) on fair terms. Increasing investments in infrastructure can help with this.
Building and strengthening responsible investment principles and practices related to labour conditions, gender equality, the environment and climate.
Ensuring opportunities for large numbers of smaller-scale producers, supporting the marketing of their products and developing the entrepreneurial skills of rural people, particularly youth.
Spurring scalable innovation among local, small, food system actors by investing in digital technologies and in production techniques that, once tested, are also suitable for scaling up, such as those related to nature-based solutions and agroecology.
Developing pricing systems that reflect the true cost of production, including the benefits of nature-based solutions and environmental costs.
Overcoming market constraints and constraints related to missing markets by having clear regulations, incentives and innovation programmes to support poor people’s food purchasing power and women’s bargaining power – and enable them to make better-informed food choices through training, labelling, and communication that reduces transaction costs and reflects fair pricing.
Building partnerships: governments, civil society, the private sector, academia and representatives of rural people need to come together with innovative governance mechanisms that give a real voice and influence to poor rural people.
This 2021 RDR also identified three key ways to ensure rural people benefit from a food systems transformation:
Create new employment opportunities and invest in local midstream food businesses. Local SMEs provide new ways to access both markets and non-farm employment opportunities, while supplying healthier foods to meet consumer demand.
Invest in agricultural systems by helping small farms become more productive and profitable
Focus on social protection measures that encourage better diets and livelihood opportunities.
The next three sources were cited in my mail of 29 March to the CFS Bureau/AG, regarding ‘Possible themes for the HLPE report to be presented to CFS in 2024’. I recommended in that mail including in the title and in the leading questions the issue of equity: 1. Building resilient and equitable supply chains for FSN.
IV. SOFI 21 included in the conclusion: WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE TO TRANSFORM FOOD SYSTEMS FOR FOOD SECURITY, IMPROVED NUTRITION AND AFFORDABLE HEALTHY DIETS. Six pathways were stated to address major drivers behind recent food security and nutrition trends. Pathways 3-6 have a direct bearing on poverty reduction/inequality and FSN.
The six recommended pathways described were: 1) integrating humanitarian, development and peace building policies in conflict-affected areas; 2) scaling up climate resilience across food systems; 3) strengthening the resilience of the most vulnerable to economic adversity; 4) intervening along the food supply chains to lower the cost of nutritious foods; 5) tackling poverty and structural inequalities, ensuring interventions are pro-poor and inclusive; and 6) strengthening food environments and changing consumer behaviour to promote dietary patterns with positive impacts on human health and the environment.
V. The CFS Voluntary Guidelines on Food Systems and Nutrition – still foremost in the memory of CFS B/AG colleagues- are structured around seven focus areas encapsulating cross-cutting factors that are relevant for improving diets and nutrition.
The first three focus areas and the associated text are directly relevant to this consultation: 1. Transparent, democratic and accountable governance; 2. Sustainable Food Supply Chains to Achieve Healthy Diets in the Context of Economic, Social and Environmental Sustainability, and Climate Change; 3. Equal and equitable access to healthy diets through sustainable food systems.
VI. HLPE Report – Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships (MSPs – HLPE 13, 2018). A key MSP mechanism described and also discussed in the follow-up meetings (mediated in 2019 by CFS Bureau members Germany and China) is the value chain (from farmer to consumer and all the stakeholders and links in between) to deliver on FSN. The term value chain and supply chain are often used interchangeably in the literature. The challenge is to ensure that these interventions and MSP developments benefit the poor farmers and smallholders. This discussion was informed by documents cited from CGIAR and IFAD, including a then recent book and associated articles from the CGIAR Centres CIP and IFPRI “Innovation for inclusive value-chain development: successes and challenges”: Andre Devaux, Maximo Torero, Jason Donovan, Douglas Horton, (2018). This book preceded Maximo coming to FAO as Chief Economist. IFAD had produced reports on the ‘Sustainable inclusion of smallholders in agricultural value chains’, and ‘ Public-Private-Producer Partnerships in Agricultural Value Chains’ (Mylene Kherallah, Marco Camagni, Philipp Baumgartner, 2015 & 2016). Much of that is revisited in IFAD’s current Rural Development Report, 2021 ‘Transforming food systems for rural prosperity’, cited in III above.
VII. Finally I draw your attention to a cautionary note on the challenges and probabilities of inequality reduction, cited in an ILRI e mail of 1 April 2022. This referred to Susan Macmillan’s ‘ Tiny Letter’ and the provocative article: 'Taking Stock: Justice Creep, Scott Alexander. . . justice is eating the world’.
I quote an excerpt below, noting that you have Iain Wright, DDG, ILRI in the HLPE SC ( copied here), who will doubtless have his views on this.
“Below are just two of the hundreds of reader responses to this issue '. , , There's an inherent underlying assumption that we would have equality of outcomes in a just world. There is absolutely no reason to believe this.
'It's basically pitting "justice" in a state of perpetual war against bad luck, uneven genetics, uneven geography, human self-interest, the natural tendency toward centralisation and hierarchy in both the economic and political domain, and basically every other force that creates unequal outcomes in human societies- not least of which is personal choice.
'Unfairness is baked into the world at so many levels or emerges so rapidly from organic human processes that expecting a mere absence of malice or even-handedness in dispute-resolution to produce equity is laughable, so in practice this vision of 'justice' has to become totalitarian and all-encompassing. Every variable- including personal choice- has to be coerced into irrelevancy.”
Dr. Rodney Cooke