Food security and nutrition and sustainable agriculture
Description
As the world population continues to grow, much more effort and innovation will be urgently needed in order to sustainably increase agricultural production, improve the global supply chain, decrease food losses and waste, and ensure that all who are suffering from hunger and malnutrition have access to nutritious food. Many in the international community believe that it is possible to eradicate hunger within the next generation, and are working together to achieve this goal.
World leaders at the 2012 Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) reaffirmed the right of everyone to have access to safe and nutritious food, consistent with the right to adequate food and the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger. The UN Secretary-General’s Zero Hunger Challenge launched at Rio+20 called on governments, civil society, faith communities, the private sector, and research institutions to unite to end hunger and eliminate the worst forms of malnutrition.
The Zero Hunger Challenge has since garnered widespread support from many member States and other entities. It calls for:
- Zero stunted children under the age of two
- 100% access to adequate food all year round
- All food systems are sustainable
- 100% increase in smallholder productivity and income
- Zero loss or waste of food
The Sustainable Development Goal to “End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture” (SDG2) recognizes the inter linkages among supporting sustainable agriculture, empowering small farmers, promoting gender equality, ending rural poverty, ensuring healthy lifestyles, tackling climate change, and other issues addressed within the set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals in the Post-2015 Development Agenda.
Beyond adequate calories intake, proper nutrition has other dimensions that deserve attention, including micronutrient availability and healthy diets. Inadequate micronutrient intake of mothers and infants can have long-term developmental impacts. Unhealthy diets and lifestyles are closely linked to the growing incidence of non-communicable diseases in both developed and developing countries.
Adequate nutrition during the critical 1,000 days from beginning of pregnancy through a child’s second birthday merits a particular focus. The Scaling-Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement has made great progress since its creation five years ago in incorporating strategies that link nutrition to agriculture, clean water, sanitation, education, employment, social protection, health care and support for resilience.
Extreme poverty and hunger are predominantly rural, with smallholder farmers and their families making up a very significant proportion of the poor and hungry. Thus, eradicating poverty and hunger are integrally linked to boosting food production, agricultural productivity and rural incomes.
Agriculture systems worldwide must become more productive and less wasteful. Sustainable agricultural practices and food systems, including both production and consumption, must be pursued from a holistic and integrated perspective.
Land, healthy soils, water and plant genetic resources are key inputs into food production, and their growing scarcity in many parts of the world makes it imperative to use and manage them sustainably. Boosting yields on existing agricultural lands, including restoration of degraded lands, through sustainable agricultural practices would also relieve pressure to clear forests for agricultural production. Wise management of scarce water through improved irrigation and storage technologies, combined with development of new drought-resistant crop varieties, can contribute to sustaining drylands productivity.
Halting and reversing land degradation will also be critical to meeting future food needs. The Rio+20 outcome document calls for achieving a land-degradation-neutral world in the context of sustainable development. Given the current extent of land degradation globally, the potential benefits from land restoration for food security and for mitigating climate change are enormous. However, there is also recognition that scientific understanding of the drivers of desertification, land degradation and drought is still evolving.
There are many elements of traditional farmer knowledge that, enriched by the latest scientific knowledge, can support productive food systems through sound and sustainable soil, land, water, nutrient and pest management, and the more extensive use of organic fertilizers.
An increase in integrated decision-making processes at national and regional levels are needed to achieve synergies and adequately address trade-offs among agriculture, water, energy, land and climate change.
Given expected changes in temperatures, precipitation and pests associated with climate change, the global community is called upon to increase investment in research, development and demonstration of technologies to improve the sustainability of food systems everywhere. Building resilience of local food systems will be critical to averting large-scale future shortages and to ensuring food security and good nutrition for all.
Milestones
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January 2015 SDG 2SDG2 focuses on ending hunger, achieving food security and improved nutrition and promoting sustainable agriculture. In particular, its targets aims to: end hunger and ensure access by all people, in particular the poor and people in vulnerable situations, including infants, to safe, nutritious and sufficient food all year round by 2030 (2.1); end all forms of malnutrition by 2030, including achieving, by 2025, the internationally agreed targets on stunting and wasting in children under 5 years of age, and address the nutritional needs of adolescent girls, pregnant and lactating women and older persons (2.2.); double,by 2030, double the agricultural productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers, in particular women, indigenous peoples, family farmers, pastoralists and fishers, including through secure and equal access to land, other productive resources and inputs, knowledge, financial services, markets and opportunities for value addition and non-farm employment (2.3); ensure sustainable food production systems and implement resilient agricultural practices that increase productivity and production, that help maintain ecosystems, that strengthen capacity for adaptation to climate change, extreme weather, drought, flooding and other disasters and that progressively improve land and soil quality (2.4); by 2020, maintain the genetic diversity of seeds, cultivated plants and farmed and domesticated animals and their related wild species, including through soundly managed and diversified seed and plant banks at the national, regional and international levels, and promote access to and fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the utilization of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge, as internationally agreed (2.5); The alphabetical goals aim to: increase investment in rural infrastructure, agricultural research and extension services, technology development and plant and livestock gene banks , correct and prevent trade restrictions and distortions in world agricultural markets as well as adopt measures to ensure the proper functioning of food commodity markets and their derivatives and facilitate timely access to market information, including on food reserves, in order to help limit extreme food price volatility.
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January 2014 Rome Decl. on Nutrition and Framework for ActionThe Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2) took place at FAO Headquarters, in Rome in November 2014. The Conference resulted in the Rome Declaration on Nutrition and the Framework for Action, a political commitment document and a flexible policy framework, respectively, aimed at addressing the current major nutrition challenges and identifying priorities for enhanced international cooperation on nutrition.
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January 2012 Future We Want (Para 108-118)In Future We Want, Member States reaffirm their commitments regarding "the right of everyone to have access to safe, sufficient and nutritious food, consistent with the right to adequate food and the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger". Member States also acknowledge that food security and nutrition has become a pressing global challenge. At Rio +20, the UN Secretary-General’s Zero Hunger Challenge was launched in order to call on governments, civil society, faith communities, the private sector, and research institutions to unite to end hunger and eliminate the worst forms of malnutrition.
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January 2009 UN SG HLTF on Food and Nutrition SecurityThe UN SG HLTF on Food and Nutrition Security was established by the UN SG, Mr Ban Ki-moon in 2008 and since then has aimed at promoting a comprehensive and unified response of the international community to the challenge of achieving global food and nutrition security. It has also been responsible for building joint positions among its members around the five elements of the Zero Hunger Challenge.
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January 2002 Report World Food Summit +5The World Food Summit +5 adopted a declaration, calling on the international community to fulfill the pledge, made at the original World Food Summit in 1996, to reduce the number of hungry people to about 400 million by 2015.
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January 2000 MDG 1MDG 1 aims at eradicating extreme poverty and hunger. Its three targets respectively read: halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than $1.25 a day (1.A), achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people (1.B), halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger (1.C).
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January 1996 Rome Decl. on World Food SecurityThe Summit aimed to reaffirm global commitment, at the highest political level, to eliminate hunger and malnutrition, and to achieve sustainable food security for all. Thank to its high visibility, the Summit contributed to raise further awareness on agriculture capacity, food insecurity and malnutrition among decision-makers in the public and private sectors, in the media and with the public at large. It also set the political, conceptual and technical blueprint for an ongoing effort to eradicate hunger at global level with the target of reducing by half the number of undernourished people by no later than the year 2015. The Rome Declaration defined seven commitments as main pillars for the achievement of sustainable food security for all whereas its Plan of Action identified the objectives and actions relevant for practical implementation of these seven commitments.
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January 1992 1st ICNThe first International Conference on Nutrition (ICN) convened at the FAO's Headquarters in Rome to identify common strategies and methods to eradicate hunger and malnutrition. The conference was organized by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) and was attended by delegations from 159 countries as well as the European Economic Community, 16 United Nations organizations, 11 intergovernmental organizations, and 144 non-governmental organizations.
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January 1986 Creation of AGROSTAT (now FAOSTAT)Since 1986, AGROSTAT, now known as FAOSTAT, has provided cross sectional data relating to food and agriculture as well as time-series for some 200 countries.
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January 1979 1st World Food DayWorld Food Day is celebrated each year on 16 October to commemorate the day on which FAO was founded in 1945. Established on the occasion of FAO Twentieth General Conference held in November 1979, the first World Food Day was celebrated in 1981 and was devoted to the theme "Food Comes First".