FAO calls on the Committee on World Food Security to focus on innovation and digital solutions, as well as food loss and waste

Promoting innovation and applying digital technologies in agri-food systems, as well as reducing food loss and waste, are vital to step up the fight against hunger and poverty. This was FAO’s main message at the opening of the High-Level Special Event on Strengthening Global Governance of Food Security and Nutrition.
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Impact of COVID-19 on people’s livelihoods, their health and our food systems

Millions of agricultural workers - waged and self-employed - while feeding the world, regularly face high levels of working poverty, malnutrition and poor health, and suffer from a lack of safety and labour protection as well as other types of abuse. With low and irregular incomes and a lack of social support, many of them are spurred to continue working, often in unsafe conditions, thus exposing themselves and their families to additional risks.
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CFS High-Level Special Event on Food Security and Nutrition

13 - 15 October 2020 | Virtual

The Committee on World Food Security (CFS) will organize a High-Level Virtual Special Event on Food Security and Nutrition, 13 - 15 October 2020. The session, in lieu of CFS 47 which has been rescheduled to 8 - 12 February 2021 in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, will seek to keep food security and nutrition front and centre on the global sustainable development agenda.

Over the course of these 3 days, CFS will organize three high-level virtual plenaries, one per day, to:

  1. Take stock of the global food security situation guided by the SOFI 2020 and the HLPE report on Building a Global Narrative towards 2030;
  2.  Reflect on the impacts of COVID-19 on food security and nutrition and the global efforts needed to “build back better”; and,
  3. Discuss the draft CFS Voluntary Guidelines on Food Systems and Nutrition and the draft CFS Policy Recommendations on Agroecological and Other Innovative Approaches, and their relevance to the objectives of the UN

To enrich and complement the plenary discussions and to give its partners and stakeholders an opportunity to highlight their work, CFS will organize 12 virtual side events over the three days – 4 per day. The side events (two in the morning before plenary and two in the afternoon after plenary), will be hosted/co-hosted and organized by CFS stakeholders. Each virtual side event will be allocated one and a half hours.

Please download the SIDE EVENTS APPLICATION FORM, fill it and send it back to CFS-SIDE-EVENTS@FAO.ORG by COB, Friday 14 August 2020.

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FAO, IFAD and WFP pledge to strengthen collaboration against hunger

The UN leaders renewed their commitment virtually at the Fourth Informal Joint Meeting of the FAO Council, the IFAD Executive Board and the WFP Executive Board. It was the first time the heads of the three UN Rome-based agencies (RBA) had met since WFP was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 2020 on Friday.
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Donors must double investments to stamp out hunger

A doubling of current levels of international aid could lift 500 million people out of hunger and malnutrition by 2030, according to new research by FAO with ZEF, Cornell University, IFPRI and IISD.
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Small-Scale Irrigation, Resilience and Nutrition: Can we have it All? – Side event 2020 World Food Prize

Tuesday 13 October, 7:30 AM CDT - 8:30 AM CDT

Register h​ere​ - Event flyer

Please find the recording of the event here 

With a growing climate crisis and deepening food insecurity, sustainable solutions that address these challenges are urgently needed. Small-scale irrigation, which is increasingly implemented by smallholder farmers or groups of farmers themselves, can play an important role in addressing these challenges. Small-scale irrigation allows millions of smallholders to grow incomes and improve nutrition while increasing resilience to climate change. But small-scale irrigation needs to be placed in a larger complex of water-nutrition linkages, ranging from WASH (water supply, sanitation and hygiene), growing water scarcity and changing diets. This panel discussion provides an overview on water-nutrition linkages based on a recently released UN System Standing Committee on Nutrition paper, discusses specific linkages between small-scale irrigation and nutrition and incorporates insights from the field on how irrigation is transforming rural livelihoods.

Panelists 

Stineke Oenema, Coordinator (presentation)
UN System Standing Committee on Nutrition, Italy

Mure Agbonlahor, Senior Agricultural Production and Marketing Officer
Africa Union Semi-Arid Food Grain and Development (AU-SAFGRAD), Burkina Faso

Nicole Lefore, Director
​Innovation Laboratory on Small-Scale Irrigation, Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture, Texas A&M University, USA

Mansi Shah, Senior Technical Coordinator
Self-Employed Women’s Association, India

Claudia Ringler, Deputy Division Director ​
Environment and Production Technology Division IFPRI, USA

The 2020 International Borlaug Dialogue (October 12-16), will be offered in a week of half-day sessions in a virtual setting. Through a series of live and on-demand components, registrants will hear from leaders and champions, take deep dives into key interdisciplinary topics, and interact with new and familiar partners and colleagues.

Each day, the event will offer three types of live sessions - a panel discussion, a roundtable session and a workshop. Participants will connect through a discussion board feature. This year, the students of the Global Youth Institute will participate directly in presentations and discussions on the key topics: Climate Change, Equity & Access, Nutrition, and Finance & Investment in the context of resilience. 

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Statement by QU Dongyu, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

On the award of the Noble Peace Prize to the World Food Programme
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Prices of several staples up to multi-month highs

The FAO Food Price Index averaged 97.9 points during the month, up 2.1 percent from August and 5.0 percent higher than its value in September 2019.
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FAO welcomes $3 million contribution from Germany and Sweden to help farmers fight the impact of climate change

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has welcomed a $3 million contribution from Germany and Sweden to help farmers in the world's most vulnerable countries fight the impact of climate change and to build sustainability.
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FAO Director-General calls for transformational change in the way we manage our forests and food systems that depend on them

Transformational change is needed in the way we manage our forests and their biodiversity, produce and consume our foods and interact with nature, if we want to build back better after the COVID-19 pandemic and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. This was the key message of a speech delivered today by FAO Director-General QU Dongyu at the 25th session of the Committee on Forestry (COFO).
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Children Eating Well: Healthy Diets Within Planetary Boundaries – Report of the Children Eating Well (CHEW) strategic workshop

The report Diets of children and adolescents: Unlocking gains for human and planetary health summarizes the outcomes of a strategic meeting by UNICEF and EAT in Oslo, March 2020.
 
In the context of the two organizations’ Children Eating Well (CHEW) collaboration, the meeting brought together experts from governments, academia, development partners and youth organizations. They reviewed the latest evidence on healthy and sustainable diets for children and adolescents, identified research gaps and opportunity areas for action, and explored the role children and adolescents can play in advancing food systems transformation.
 
Children have unique dietary needs, requiring a diversity of foods and foods of higher nutrient density than adults; they also have specific rights that governments must fulfill and protect. Meeting participants agreed that children’s needs should be positioned at the center of food systems transformations for healthy and sustainable diets. Three opportunity areas for action were identified: 1) influencing public policy; 2) addressing the issue of affordability of nutritious foods; and 3) improving multi-stakeholder, multi-scale collaboration. Meaningful engagement of children and adolescents themselves as part of this agenda was also considered crucial.

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FAO and CropLife International strengthen commitment to promote agri-food systems transformation

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and CropLife International today renewed and strengthened their commitment to work together and find new ways to transform agri-food systems and promote rural development through on the ground investment and innovation.
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