Investing in long-term resilience with lives and livelihoods in mind to prevent a next food crisis

FAO Chief Economist, Máximo Torero, spoke at the Meeting on Transition from Relief to Development, ahead of the Economic and Social Council Humanitarian Affairs Segment (ECOSOC HAS).

Preceding the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) Humanitarian Affairs Segment (HAS) taking place from 21 to 23 June, today’s ECOSOC annual meeting on the Transition from Relief to Development convened around the solutions-based theme, ’Recurrent crises and sustainable solutions: building resilience and addressing rising food insecurity and displacement’. In accordance with General Assembly resolution 75/290 A, the meeting focused on countries in situations of conflict, post-conflict countries and countries facing humanitarian emergencies. 

Presenting on the need to act early, differently, and based on reputable and actionable data to ensure limited humanitarian spending saves lives today and builds livelihoods tomorrow, was FAO Chief Economist, Máximo Torero, ahead of FAO’s active engagement during the ECOSOC HAS.

Painting the global acute food insecurity landscape, the Chief Economist outlined that between 2016 and 2021, the population in Crisis or worse situations [of food insecurity] increased by around 80 percent, from 108 to 193 million people. “This number is on the rise,” Torero warned.

Speaking of this increase, Torero explained, 72 percent was mainly driven by conflict, 16 percent was the result of economic slowdowns and downturns, and 12 percent the consequence of climate change.

This is in addition to the up to 811 million people who are chronically hungry, a latest increase mainly driven by the direct and ripple effects of COVID-19, according to the latest State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2021 report.

The need for multifaceted responses against closely interwoven drivers of hunger

Torero outlined how the major drivers and underlying factors of hunger – COVID-19, conflict, climate variability, and economic shocks and downturns – are mutually reinforcing, worsening a global food crisis now accentuated by the current war in Ukraine and its impact on global food and input markets. 

All of the above, he said, “affects the cost of affordability of healthy diets, but at the same time has exacerbated the situation in terms of extreme poverty and significant inequalities,” with some 90 million people falling into this category since 2019, redressing a decade’s worth of poverty eradication efforts. 

Against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine, Torero said: “We need to have a rapid response, not only in humanitarian food assistance, but also providing inputs and cash to maintain critical production supporting agrifood supply chains”.

The need to transform agrifood systems, reduce the number of people in need of humanitarian food assistance, and contribute meaningfully to sustainable development and peaceful and prosperous societies all depend on a concerted, out-of-the box approach to fighting hunger.

Diversification: central to building resilient food supplies

Building more resilient agrifood systems is also about diversifying the supply of goods and inputs that are vital to countries’ food needs. FAO is therefore monitoring several avenues through which to build resilience to market and other shocks – diversity of domestic production, level of imports, and domestic food stocks. 

Torero outlined how low-income countries and lower middle-income countries show lower levels of diversity and of resilience , in their food procurement practices. Even some upper middle-income countries show low resilience in how they satisfy their population’s food needs.

“There is a significant concentration of suppliers of [key commodity] exports in the world,” Torero said, and as a result of the war in Ukraine, we have lost 30 percent of this share of exports in the world, leading prices to follow a skyrocketing upward trend.

Torero also spoke of latest FAO evidence coming from the Dietary Sourcing Flexibility Index (DSFI), which points out that significant amounts of global trade in terms of calories – close to 17 percent – are being constrained by the implementation of restrictive trade measures in response to the war in Ukraine and its impact on world food commodity prices.

Fulfilling immediate needs and building long-term resilience

The Chief Economist offered short-term policy recommendations and long-term solutions, both anchored in (i) providing humanitarian assistance to Ukraine; (ii) supporting countries’ balance of payments challenges in the face of rising food import bills including, but not limited to, via the Global Food Import Financing Facility; and (iii) building a more resilient global agrifood architecture, including by diversifying sources of food commodities and tapping into digital innovations to improve agricultural productivity. 

All of the above call for a paradigm shift in food crisis response, by helping the most vulnerable and hungry produce food where it is needed the most, especially in the face of weather extremes – like droughts and water stress – and climate variability, which prevents farmers from predicting future harvests as before.

Working hand in hand across the humanitarian-development- peace nexus is critical, Torero added, given that what we are witnessing today is not a lack of food but a staggering lack of equality in access to food. 

Among the 193 million acutely food insecure across 53 countries and territories, most are the poorest of the poor, living in rural areas, and closely dependent on agriculture to survive. They are farmers, herders, fishers, food producers and traders. 

Our humanitarian response needs to be tailored to their realities, with agriculture as a key to lasting peace, security and collective wellbeing, moving the needle away from only after-the-fact food aid and onto longer-term resilience building and the propping up of productive and adaptive capacities.

Related links

• Watch the recording.
• Revisit the presentation by the Chief Economist here and follow @MaximoTorero on Twitter for latest updates.
• Read more about the Global Food Import Financing Facility.
• Mark your calendar for the launch of the SOFI 2022 report. Register here.