Ending hunger: all of us have the potential to be food heroes

Helmine Monique Sija, a 50-year-old single mother, with six children, prepares raketa (cactus) to eat with her daughter Tolie,10, in the village of Atoby, Madagascar. The raketa eases hunger but does not provide any nutrients and is known to cause strong stomach aches. For decades the South-East of Madagascar has been prone to "kere" or the food crisis due to intense drought. AFPShow less

This year’s World Food Day finds us at a critical moment. The Covid-19 pandemic remains a global challenge, causing untold losses and hardship. The affects of the climate crisis are all around us. Crops have gone up in flames. Homes have been washed away. Lives and livelihoods have been thrown into turmoil due to conflict and other humanitarian emergencies. Global food security challenges have not been this severe for years.

Yet in the midst of all this, there is an encouraging new momentum as we strive to overhaul the ways in which our food is produced, stored, distributed and consumed. We have started confronting the problems and making the structures more fit for purpose.

Last month’s UN Food Systems Summit convened by the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, mapped out the broad outlines of how the world needs to move forward to transform agri-food systems.

Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio (left), Deputy Secretary-General of the UN and Chair of the UN Sustainable Development Group, Amina J Mohammed and the FAO Director General, Qu Dongyu during the Fao Pre-Food Systems Summit, Rome, Italy, July 28. EPA

The closing maxim of the gathering was: “From New York back to Rome,” where the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and sister UN food agencies are based.

At FAO, the agency working on food and agriculture, we have already rolled up our sleeves and got down to the practical tasks of leading the implementation and driving the transformation.

A World Food Forum was successfully convened in the Italian capital earlier this month, powered by the global youth, and youth representatives at FAO and our sister agencies, focused on harnessing the creativity and resilience of younger generations. They have the most at stake. They will be the ones living with the direct consequences of the climate crisis and malfunctioning agri-food systems.

At the same time, the 1.8 billion young people in the world today between the ages of 10 and 24, of which nearly 90 per cent live in developing countries, provide an unlimited potential to tap.

We have already started to leverage that into widespread awareness, holistic solutions and concrete youth-lead actions for change. Of course, the young aren’t the only ones who need to worry about our agri-food systems not being fit for purpose, and on how to make them more efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable.

Even before Covid-19 shone a spotlight on the vulnerability of the world’s agri-food systems, hundreds of millions of people worldwide were afflicted by hunger. That number has increased in the last year to 811 million, despite the world producing sufficient food to feed all of us. This is unimaginable and unacceptable.

Pest control workers look for malaria mosquitos in the irrigation water of a farm in Al Rahba town, Abu Dhabi. Jaime Puebla / The National )

At the same time, 14 per cent of the food we produce is lost, and 17 per cent is wasted. Combine this with other stressors – pests, diseases, natural disasters, loss of biodiversity and habitat destruction, conflict – and you can see the magnitude of the challenge we face in meeting the world’s growing food needs, while simultaneously reducing the environmental and climate impact of our agri-food systems.

FAO has developed a toolbox which we are confident can enable us to find solutions to many of these complex systemic problems.

We have a clear sense of where we are going, framed in the objectives: Better Production, Better Nutrition, a Better Environment and a Better Life. And our work is underpinned by a new set of parameters, our Strategic Framework 2022-2031, that for the next 10 years defines the actions and inputs needed to make a reality of the "Four Betters" – the organising principles for how FAO intends to contribute directly to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, and leave no one behind.

A worker removes bugs from a trapping machine at a family farm in Suqian, Jiangsu Province, China, August 16. The farm has created truly organic rice by installing traps in the paddy fields to trap rice pests and using biological agents to control disease. Getty Images

To end hunger by 2030, FAO estimates that as much as $40 to $50 billion in annual investments on targeted interventions are needed. There are plenty of low-cost, high-impact projects that can help hundreds of millions of people.

For instance, targeted interventions on Research and Development to make farming more technologically advanced, innovation in digital agriculture, and improve literacy rates among women can go a long way to alleviate hunger. But there are also other essential elements such as better data, governance and institutions, that need to be added to the equation.

Our approach, however, can only be effective if we work together with governments, and key partners, as they forge their own national pathways towards transformation in line with their specific conditions and needs.

We also need to realise that scientists and bureaucrats and even food producers and distributors will never be able to bring about all these desperately needed changes on their own.

The transformation can and must start with pragmatic and concrete action by ordinary consumers and the choices we make; the foods we consume, where we buy them, how they are packaged, how much food we throw away – all these daily decisions have an impact on our agri-food systems and the future of this planet.

All of us have the potential to be food heroes. Our actions are our future. The process of transforming our agri-food systems – and making an impact on global hunger, healthy diets, environmental damage and waste – starts with you and me. But it doesn’t end with you and me. Our children and grandchildren will also be influenced by what we eat. Let us learn together, work together and contribute to ending hunger together.