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World Food Day 2020.
by Dr Renata Clarke
It is a fact of human nature that nothing focuses our collective consciousness on our fundamental needs more than a crisis.
World War 2 and its immediate aftermath brought humanity face-to-face with an existential crisis like no other in modern history. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) was born out of the recognition that cooperation and unity was necessary to be able to meet a common basic need of a growing global population: to feed humanity. World Food Day 2020 (WFD) marks the 75th anniversary of the founding of FAO.
This landmark WFD anniversary has arrived in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis. The tourism and travel-based economies of the Caribbean have been very hard hit.
We are seeing levels of unemployment that were unimaginable only a few months ago and loss of a major source of foreign exchange.
A number of surveys verify the dire impact on food security. About one third of respondents reported either eating less or skipping a meal as a result of their reduced incomes and higher food prices.
While many countries took actions to boost local food production in the early stages of the crisis, farmers and fisherfolk across the region faced disruptions of input supplies and of their marketing channels. In many cases this has led them to lose part of their production: food wastage in the midst of growing food insecurity.
Rather than a commemoration of FAO’s achievements over 75 years of existence, this article underlines FAO’s commitment, in the face of the mammoth challenges posed by this crisis, to work with countries to strengthen the role of agriculture sectors to enable recovery from the crisis.
There is truly a need for countries to transform food and agriculture systems. Many of the countries are highly food import dependent; there are alarming rates of obesity – particularly female obesity – in many of the countries due to unhealthy diets; contribution of agriculture to GDP is low; in many countries there is loss of biodiversity, low productivity and inadequate investment in agriculture. Multiple manifestations of a dysfunctional food system.
FAO is committed to supporting this transformation process in a number of ways:
Reinforcing market-oriented approaches to value chain development by working across sectors to systematically address competitiveness issues throughout the value chain. Actionable profitability and risk analyses are needed to attract needed investments.
Promoting better collection and use of agricultural data and statistics without which there can be no meaningful planning or assessment. The Caribbean countries are notoriously data-poor.
Promoting dynamism through innovation by utilizing our global networks to enable identification and adaptation of innovative technologies that enhance efficiency and sustainability of small-holder agricultural production systems.
Disseminating good practices in climate smart agriculture: the challenges faced by farmers and fisherfolk due to COVID-19 disruptions were exacerbated by concurrent drought. We cannot lose sight of the imperative of being effective custodians of our natural resources.
The theme chosen for this WFD-2020 is “Grow, nourish, sustain. Together. Our actions are our future.” We need to act with urgency. We need to act together. We need to get this right.
Dr Renata Clarke is the Sub-regional Coordinator of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
