Food Security - from the Global to the Local Dimension

Abstract

The food system serves as a basis for the livelihood of billions of people worldwide from the small-scale farmer to the inhabitants of megacities. Food and nutrition security, environmental health and quality, and social well-being represent key outcomes of sustainable food systems.

Objective

The main outcomes of food systems are food and nutrition security, environmental quality and health (including the protection of natural resources and the mitigation of climate change impacts) and livelihoods and social wellbeing. This year, the course focuses on transformation pathways to sustainable food systems. Food security is depending mainly from availability of, as well as access to, food, but as well from quality (safety playing an important role) and stability. Global food and nutrition security is currently threatened by multiple pressures: climate change, with direct impacts on water (availability and access); health of the soils; demographic changes; health of the population; conflicts and governance. The concept of “Food systems” is key to understand the complex framework of actions to ensure food and nutrition security of present and future generations around the globe. Agriculture and the related farming practices, food processing, storage and distribution as well ass the consumers themselves are some of the key elements and key actors in food systems. Others are policy makers, public administration, research institutions, farmers, private sector and many other such as input providers or retailers. Several methods and tools have been developed to assess the sustainability of agriculture and of food systems. Different approaches have been set-up and tested to facilitate the transition of food systems within their given local environment towards more sustainability. Learning from practical experiences may help to understand more the complexity but as well the pathways to improve the functioning of local food systems. During the course, we propose to learn and discuss approaches, tools, strategies and policies, which are economically viable and which support the transition of food systems or specific elements of them at different scale: local, national or even global. We want to address how the barriers to adopt them could be overcome. We want to learn and discuss with international experts from FAO and IFAD ideas and experiences about how farmers and other actors of the food system could adapt to the developments in the food system in order to achieve global food security and reduce poverty.

Content

Achieving a transformation to sustainability is a major challenge of the world. Because adverse impacts of climate change are very likely to worsen with time, a global transformation to sustainable food and agriculture should begin now. At the World Food Summit (WFS) in 1996 food security was defined as follows: “Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food which meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.” Availability, access, utilization and stability are generally recognized as the four dimensions of food security, combining (i) availability of food at a certain time and a certain place, (ii) individuals physical and monetary accessibility, (iii) appropriate use of the food to make sure it’s healthy and of high quality and (iv) stability of the food system, especially regarding the economic, political and environmental conditions. The fact that the four dimensions of food security are highly interconnected and under influence of many different drivers, makes it a highly complex issue. According to the 2019 FAO report on “The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World,” the world faces an unacceptably high burden of malnutrition. Over 820 million people do not get enough food to eat, and malnutrition is responsible for more ill health than any other cause. At the same time, obesity has contributed to 4 million deaths globally. Worldwide, there is an urgent need to improve the way food is produced, consumed, and wasted in order to increase sustainability. Three main aspects will support the learning process during the course: - Exploring concepts, approaches and tools that are leading to any improvement of functioning of the food system, such as among others , Sustainability assessment methods, Agroecology, Nutrition-sensitive value chain approach, Climate-smart agriculture and tools (like SAFA framework developed by FAO), Responsible investments, Circular economy and especially food waste management, Safe food initiative, One-Health concept, etc.; - Identifying and analyzing examples of cities, regions, countries which have developed their own strategies and pathways to make a transition to a sustainable food system; - Reflecting about the role of policy making processes, United-Nations Agencies like FAO, the research and especially the agriculture research, and other institutional players, the NGOs and the civil society, the consumers, the private sector and the public administrations. Eradicating hunger and ensuring food security for all at any time is one of the key challenges of our society. The specific issues related to “food systems” will be at focus of this course. In desk research, discussions and by listening to experts, we critically reflect and analyze how food security can be achieved, livelihoods improved and natural resources conserved. Based on case study analysis of examples from FAO work and others, we will discuss promising pathways to address this global challenge.

Resources