The High Level Panel of Experts for Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE) seeks input on the V0 draft of its report on Biofuels and Food Security. The report aims at providing a balanced science-based assessments of the opportunities and challenges that Biofuels may represent for food security so that they can be produced where it is socially, economically and environmentally feasible.
Economic growth can be a powerful driver for increased food security when translated into agricultural growth. However, to reduce poverty and hunger, growth needs to reach the poor and the increased income needs to generate demand for the assets controlled by them. As not all countries are being equally successful in generating this inclusive growth, how can good governance and social protection help to translate economic growth into improved food security and nutrition for all?
There is now considerable interest among international development organizations and practitioners in agriculture programming and policy to improve nutrition. This discussion is an opportunity to review the substantial international dialogue on improving nutrition through food and agriculture, to identify the research gaps and to distil and prioritize the actions needed at country-level.
While the relationship between food security and nutrition security might seem straightforward from a technical perspective a lively debate is taking place on how to best capture these concepts in a common definition that is both technically and politically acceptable. At present, food security, nutrition security, food security and nutrition and food and nutrition security are all being used. The paper "Coming to terms with terminology" proposes to move towards the more inclusive terminology food and nutrition security in order to better reflect the conceptual linkages between food security and nutrition security. What are your views on this and the new proposed definition of food and nutrition security?
Rural cooperatives and producer organizations play a crucial role in the eradication of hunger and poverty, in the promotion of social harmony and in the achievement of more equitable economic growth.What are the ideal conditions that will enable these member-based organizations to become more self-reliant and sustainable business enterprises?
Reaching the goal to feed a growing world population is threatened by an important lack of investment in agriculture and a decreasing Official Development Assistance (ODA) in agriculture. To tackle this issue, Innovative Financing Mechanisms (IFMs) are being discussed as a means to complement ODA without replacing it to provide reliable and predictable financing for development and specifically for agriculture and food security and nutrition, especially by catalyzing and encouraging new projects.
Following the request by the CFS, the HLPE is approaching the issue of biofuels through the lens of food security, taking into consideration a wide range of issues such as: forecasted demand, competition for biomass feedstock and for land, benefits along the biofuel production chain, the role of smallholders, social issues, new technologies etc. Please share your knowledge and views on this multifaceted topic to respond to the key question: are biofuels compatible with food security concerns or are they not adding too much to the – already unmet - challenge to feeding the world?
A large percentage of word poverty is rural, largely directly or indirectly associated with smallholder farming. Smallholder farmers produce most of the food consumed locally, and food security at a world scale thus importantly depends on the investments made by external actors and by the smallholders themselves in their agricultural production. What are the constraints that limit these investments and what can be done to encourage investments in smallholder agriculture.
Social protection has risen rapidly up the development policy agenda in the last decade. Although increasingly dominated by conditional and unconditional cash transfer programmes, the wide range of instruments that aim to alleviate poverty and manage livelihood risks often have direct, intended implications for food security.