World Food Day 2020

16 October 2020

Grow, Nourish, Sustain. Together. Our Actions are our Future.

As countries around the world suffer the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, #WorldFoodDay is launching a call for global solidarity to help the most vulnerable people to recover and make food systems more sustainable, stronger and resilient to shocks.

Our actions are our future.
But the responsibility doesn’t only lie with governments. We all have a role to play, from making food choices that improve both our health and that of our food system, to not letting sustainable habits fall by the wayside.

More information available here

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UNICEF Core Commitments for Children in Humanitarian Action

UNICEF has released its revised Core Commitments for Children in Humanitarian Action (CCCs). Grounded in global humanitarian norms and standards, the CCCs set organizational, programmatic, and operational commitments and benchmarks for UNICEF.  

The CCCs have been revised to equip UNICEF and its partners to deliver principled, timely, quality and child‑centred humanitarian response and advocacy in any crises with humanitarian consequences.

For Nutrition, the revised CCCs describe eight commitments to ensure children, adolescents, and women have access to diets, services and practices that improve their nutritional status in humanitarian crisis: 

  1. Leadership and coordination 
  2. Information systems and nutrition assessments 
  3. Prevention of stunting, wasting, micronutrient deficiencies and overweight in children aged under five years 
  4. Prevention of undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, and anaemia in middle childhood and adolescence 
  5. Prevention of undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, and anaemia in pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers 
  6. Nutrition care for wasted children 
  7. System strengthening for maternal and child nutrition 
  8. Community engagement for behaviour and social change 

To fulfil these commitments, UNICEF draws upon multiple resources including those in UNICEF's Nutrition in Emergencies Training and those developed by the Global Nutrition Cluster and the Infant Feeding in Emergencies Core Group.

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As FAO turns 75, its mission to end hunger and nourish the world is as relevant today as ever

Today, World Food Day marks the 75th anniversary of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations.
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Rome’s Colosseum illuminated to mark FAO’s 75th anniversary and World Food Day

The Director-General QU Dongyu today was joined by Italian authorities for the presentation of two video mapping shows in Rome (one at FAO's headquarters and the other at the Colosseum) to celebrate FAO's 75th anniversary on World Food Day.
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Nobel laureate outlines how new technologies measurably boost farmers

Mobile technologies and digital agriculture hold great promise for the world’s farmers, making it all the more important to foster appropriate institutions able to generate innovation whose benefits reach smallholders and disadvantaged groups, Nobel Prize-winning economist Michael Kremer said today.
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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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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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FAO, WMO and partners call for early warning and early action to avoid disasters

As extreme weather and climate events have increased in frequency, intensity and severity, particularly due to climate change, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and its partners have warned that early warning systems, followed by early action, are critical to prevent disasters and save lives.
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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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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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