Agencies for a Food Secure Future

Yesterday, the Rome-based United Nations agencies – Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Food Programme (WFP), and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) – along with the CGIAR’s Bioversity International held an event on ‘Aiming for a Food Secure Future.’ This event served to engage stakeholders in a dialogue on steps toward a food secure future.

The four agencies acknowledged that “Rio+20 gives us a golden opportunity to bring together the agendas of food security and sustainable development to build the future we want. Increasingly, we know how to eliminate hunger and poverty in ways that also promote sound management of natural resources, encourage social inclusion and drive economic growth.” So the means of sustainable development are already available, it is a matter now of taking action. Some of the key needs to move forward were recognized during the day, and include:

• Addressing the ‘hidden hunger’ from lack of essential vitamins and minerals;
• Ensuring good governance systems and institutions to promote sustainable agriculture, at community/landscape, national/regional, and global scales;
• Building multi-stakeholder and public-private partnerships;
• Decreasing food wasted or lost;
• Supporting smallholder women farmers, who are the drivers of change;
• Reducing risk and vulnerability in agricultural systems from land degradation, resource scarcity, and climate change;
• Securing land tenure and access to land, fishery, and forest resources rights.

All of these are important factors in order to “build resilient livelihoods and landscapes.” Read the joint statement from FAO, WFP, IFAD, and Bioversity, calling for an effort across agencies and in collaboration with the variety of players in the field to realize this vision.