Global forum on food security and nutrition

97.Samuel Oriala, Farm Management Center, Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, Nigeria,

In the face of the seeming insurmountable challenges to sustainable food security in Nigeria, the following measures could suffice to ameliorate and save mankind from the pump of hunger in the next decade:
1) Improve smallholder productivity and market access. Investment should be sealed up to improve access to inputs such as seeds, fertilizer, financial and extension services as well as rural infrastructure including irrigation.
2) Promotion of productive social safety nets; This should be done to offset the impact of shocks, secure basic livelihoods and protect poor people from risk and vulnerability. Social safety nets have protective, preventives, promotional and transformational functions with different objectives.
3) Harmonization of food security and sustainablility policy.
4) Keep trade open: Government should eliminate existing harmful trade restrictions and refrain from newly imposed ones so as to reduce food price volatility and enhance the efficiency of agricultural markets.
In conclusion, strong economic performance is not in conflict with great environmental performance. Through innovation Nigerian can achieve agricultural sustainability and food security which in turn ameliorate the rate of poverty and malnutrition.

98.Jennifer Dias, Brooke, United Kingdom

As an organisation with 80 years of experience working on the ground in developing countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America, we urge for a strong focus on the needs and priorities of smallholder farmers who produce nearly 70% of the food consumed in the world.  In particular, we believe special attention should be paid to the resource systems they depend upon.  We believe that understanding of these systems can be improved through multi-stakeholder engagement and the development of a more comprehensive body of knowledge.  While the links between livestock and nutrition are complex and differ across the varied food systems, in a smallholder context, livestock keeping is a fundamental element of food security and nutrition.  Livestock’s important role goes beyond food production, and also includes, for example, the draught power used to produce, distribute and access food.  In the smallholder context, the production of animal-sourced foods and other agricultural products is often facilitated by the use of draught animals.  Therefore, nutrition interventions should take this issue into account within the broader and complex nutrition picture.

99.Gabor Figeczky, IFOAM, Organics International, Germany

IFOAM – Organics International thanks FAO for organizing this broad consultation on the Maximizing the Impact of the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition. IFOAM – Organics International is the global umbrella organization for organic farming movements with more than 800 members in all continents. We are a recognized CSO representing farmers by various UN organizations including CFS, UNDESA, UNFCCC, UNEP and UNCCD.

We welcome the idea to have the coming decade dedicated to action on nutrition. We believe that it is a great opportunity to make a big step towards achieving commitments undertaken by countries in the framework of WHA, Nutrition for Growth, ICN2, as well as SDG 2 and contribute to other relevant targets of Agenda 2030. However, we also believe that, if global agriculture is to stay on the path it has been taking for the past decades will lead to the failure of DoA. As the UNCTAD report titled ‘Wake Up Before It Is Too Late’ points out, hunger and malnutrition are not supply-side productivity problems: "meeting food security challenges is primarily about empowerment of the poor.” A shift is needed "from a conventional, monoculture-based and high-external-input-dependent industrial production towards mosaics of sustainable, regenerative production systems that also considerably improve the productivity of small-scale farmers."

The common goal: dietary diversity

The benefits of a more diverse diet are now widely recognized. Dietary diversity is a strong predictor of micronutrient adequacy and overall diet quality. Increasing availability and access to a nutritionally diverse range of foods within and across different food groups is key to ensure adequate intake of essential nutrients required for healthy, productive lives.

However, to date, the diversity of produce delivered by international trade has mainly benefited wealthy consumers in high-income countries, while poor people in low-income countries continue to be unable to afford the diversity available on these markets. We need to stop the erosion of traditional diets that has started in many places. No government policies should anymore have an explicit focus on monocropping of staple crops or favouring the specialization in major cereal or cash crop production that helps to push out more diverse food cropping at the expense of nutritionally-important foodstuffs. What is needed instead is supportive policies at national level for dietary diversity, combined with locally developed solutions, including integrated homestead food production and greater integration of locally available nutrient dense foods into market systems that can reach urban consumers. Reviving the importance of locally available nutrient-dense foods such as fruits, vegetables, and beans and pulses within food systems and ensuring greater market access are key strategies to achieve a more diversified diet.

Besides being detrimental to nutrition and dietary as well as agricultural diversity, corporate industrialization of agriculture in many developing countries is resulting in massive land grabs, destruction of biodiversity and ecosystems, displacement of indigenous peoples, destruction of livelihoods and cultures and creates financial dependency for smallholders.

NSA as the real challenge

Some developing countries, which are just about to start putting nutrition on their national agendas, might be tempted and misguided to tick the task by turning to the simplest solutions sometimes driven by donors. Public-private partnerships need to be critically viewed in this respect, too. In our opinion, nutrition-specific actions will remain a much easier and more popular target for donors. Therefore, while it is imperative for DoA to keep both nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive interventions in any portfolio designed to improve nutrition to address malnutrition both in the short and the longer term, the main challenge lies in the latter. If DoA is to make a real mark on the nutrition scene, it should stimulate and enable countries in the form of clear guidance as well as targeted resources to walk the hard way of designing nutrition-sensitive policies, schemes and investments.

Focus on Actions!

Last but not least, instead of an often followed events-based approach for a UN Decade, we believe DoA should be action-oriented. It should define a roadmap of actions for nutrition-sensitive agriculture, which should form part of an overall transformation towards truly sustainable agriculture and food systems based on the idea of ecological intensification. Awareness raising programmes and campaigns on the importance of dietary diversity and ‘good food’ adjusted to local conditions should be an essential part of such a roadmap.

IFOAM – Organics International will work in its full capacity to make DoA a true success and we offer collaboration to all organizations and entities wanting to join us on the pathway outlined above.