Designing a Post-2015 Global Food System for Food, Health and Prosperity

The world has made significant progress since setting the Millennium Development Goals to halve poverty and hunger from 1990 to 2015.  But with 795 million people still going hungry every day, significant acceleration of progress and support is needed, particularly in low income countries.  The new Sustainable Development Goals to permanently end poverty and hunger by 2030 offer an unprecedented opportunity to redouble our efforts. At the World Bank, we have been calling for a food system that can feed every person, every day, everywhere with a nutritious and affordable diet, delivered in a sustainable way. All of these aspects are closely interlinked, calling for broad partnerships and multi-sectoral approaches for delivering a healthier and more prosperous future. KEY ACTION AGENDA The three core elements of the action agenda are aligned around: (i) ensuring a more climate-smart agriculture, (ii) improving nutritional outcomes, and (iii) strengthening value chains and improving market access. Ensuring a More Climate-Smart Agriculture Climate-smart agriculture has three goals: increase agricultural productivity, greater climate resilience, reduce Green House Gas (GHG) emissions for agriculture and related land use change, which is essential to permanently end poverty and hunger. While past actions to address these three elements have generally been considered independently, a high priority is to increasingly move to actions that can deliver all three simultaneously - the triple-win. Ensuring access to existing and new climate-smart technologies by poor farmers will help reduce yield gaps and improve resilience. This includes promoting the adoption of drought and flood tolerant crop varieties. Closing the gender gap will help raise yields, including improving the gender mix in agricultural service providers and tailoring advice to the needs of women farmers. GHG emissions can be reduced through improved fertilizer use to reduce nitrous oxide emissions; alternate wet and dry irrigation of rice, and improved livestock breeding and waste management to reduce methane emissions; and sustainably raising yields to reduce pressure for agricultural land expansion into forests, or by promoting production expansion in areas with no forests. Improving Nutritional Outcomes Higher household incomes can allow families to invest in more and higher nutritious food consumption, and improve access to clean water and better hygiene that can help improve nutritional outcomes. Reducing gender inequality will help raise incomes and strengthen the link between higher household income and nutritional outcomes, as women are generally responsible for most of food production, purchasing, processing, and meal preparation. Scaling up proven interventions to 90 percent coverage in the 34 countries with the highest child stunting rates could potentially reduce child stunting by 20 percent worldwide and wasting by 60 percent worldwide. The package of interventions includes among other things deworming, growth monitoring and promotion for children under two, and iron and folic acid supplements for pregnant women. Refocused nutrition-sensitive investments can further help reduce stunting and underweight. Nutrition-sensitive investments include focus on female smallholder farmers, technologies to reduce women’s workloads, development and adoption of biofortified crop varieties, and investments related to nutrition education, or micronutrient supplementation, and improved access to clean water and better hygiene. Strengthening Value Chains Aligning farmer incentives, through associated policies, to respond to changing market demands can help raise incomes of poor farmers. These include removing price policy biases against production of higher value crops that create disincentives for farmers to respond to market signals and create inefficiencies in value chains. Removing restrictions on using land designated only for specific crops; particularly if these crops also lead to negative environmental outcomes. Reducing transaction costs, improving the structure of markets, and access to information can increase prices farmers receive for their produce. Reducing food losses can help reduce incomes losses, and together with lower food waste can increase overall food supply without GHG emissions and help preserve food micronutrients. Improving logistics and transportation can help link farmers to growing urban demand. A Call to Action The historical evolution of the global food system has made possible rapid urbanization and population growth, contributing significantly to welfare improvements in the world. The impacts on poverty and hunger have been positive and significant. Yet we stand at a critical moment in history where we can and must help shape the evolution of the global food system to permanently end poverty and hunger by 2030. The agenda is large and will require focused, multi-sectoral approaches, and stronger partnerships. The World Bank Group will come together on this agenda and work as one Bank to help countries design and implement integrated approaches to end poverty and hunger. With other partners, we can help shape a global food system that will deliver a healthier and more prosperous world now and for generations to come.   Juergen Voegele is Senior Director, Agriculture Global Practice at The World Bank Group.   The article was originally published in the 2015 Global Action Report, an annual synthesis report produced by the Global Action Platform in collaboration with Diplomatic Courier. Republished with permission.