World Food Forum: FAO introduces the Agrifood Systems Technologies and Innovations Outlook

Rome – The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) today unveiled details and hosted a discussion on its upcoming Agrifood Systems Technologies and Innovations Outlook, a new knowledge product designed to inform evidence-based policy dialogue and decisions, including on investments.

From the climate crisis to conflicts, from humanitarian emergencies to the COVID-19 pandemic, the world is facing a multitude of complex challenges that are contributing to a dramatic increase in world hunger and inequality, participants attending a hybrid session brief at FAO's headquarters in Rome noted.

FAO is currently focused on transforming our agrifood systems to make them more efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable for better production, better nutrition, a better environment and a better life, leaving no one behind, as emphasized in the FAO Strategic Framework 2022–2031.

Science, technology and innovation (STI) is seen as playing a key role in this transformation.

However, the adoption of STI varies widely between rich-, low- and middle-income countries. What's more, policymakers and investors need clear and strong messages supported by robust scientific evidence, including open access data for decision-making and investment planning. But the data and analyses currently available are broadly scattered and difficult to synthesize and access.

The Agrifood Systems Technologies and Innovations Outlook (ATIO) is designed to help address such issues by pulling together existing data and analyses from myriad sources into an actionable body of evidence. Data curation will be supplemented with foresight about the impact pathways that various STI under development might follow, and with syntheses of the available evidence on STI impacts.

"I am convinced that the launch of this innovative initiative will guarantee that essential data and evidence needed for the transformation of our global agrifood systems becomes accessible to all those who need it, particularly decision-makers,” FAO Director-General QU Dongyu said.

FAO Chief Scientist Ismahane Elouafi noted that the creation of ATIO was to level the playing field among countries, and to provide information to galvanize the adoption of technologies and innovations to increase productivity, efficiency, and sustainability across all agrifood systems. Accurate data around the entire innovation cycle will help countries better design their policies and regulatory frameworks and also inform their investment plans in science and innovation.

The Science and Innovation Forum

Part of today’s World Food Forum - Science and  Innovation Forum event aims to kickstart discussions on the ATIO, which is expected to be published every two years, starting in 2024. FAO produced a report for the occasion that lays out the vision, rationale, scope and methods for ATIO.

A direct outcome of FAO’s first-ever Science and Innovation Strategy, the ATIO is being developed in cooperation with Professor Chris Barrett and his colleagues at Cornell University. According to Barrett, an agricultural and development economist, the uneven distribution of knowledge in this area impedes progress, especially among the more vulnerable and lower income populations.

"ATIO can help level the evidence playing field to crowd in better policymaking and higher-return investments," Barrett said.

The overall aim of the ATIO is to curate data and analyses from numerous sources to become a flagship publication that will aid agrifood systems’ decision-makers around the world. In doing so, ATIO will also call attention to important data and evidence gaps that may merit concerted new efforts.

The term "agrifood systems" encompass the entire range of actors, and their interlinked value-adding activities, engaged in the primary production of food and non- food agricultural products, as well as in storage, aggregation, post-harvest handling, transportation, processing, distribution, marketing, disposal and consumption of all food products including those of non-agricultural origin.