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.

Climate change and food systems

Climate change and the policy implications for agriculture and fisheries

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our era. Rising temperatures and sea levels, changes in rainfall patterns and water temperatures, ocean acidification and more frequent and intense extreme weather events, will all affect how and where we produce our food.

Food production systems need to adapt to climate change

Climate change will increase pressure on land and water while reducing yield growth, with the exception of only a few regions. Productivity is expected to decrease for about half of fisheries worldwide as a result of climate change impacts on stock productivity and on fish migration patterns. This will hurt the tropics the most, but also OTGC fisheries.

Over time, farmers, aquaculture producers and fishers will be under increasing pressure to adapt their practices and technologies to meet these challenges. While there is much that people can do on their own, in the worst cases, government policies will be essential to successful climate change adaptation.

Ongoing OTGC work looks into how inclusive and science-based policy-making processes can best support the adoption and implementation of needed policies such as disaster recovery and catastrophic insurance as well as policies to improve co-operation, preparedness, and resilience.

Food policy must take climate change into account

Since the Paris Agreement from the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 21), stronger mitigation efforts are being embraced worldwide to slow down and stabilise global warming. Many countries have revisited their mitigation plans to strengthen their effectiveness or to find new solutions.

The agriculture sector, together with forestry and other land uses, contributes nearly a quarter of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). Half of this share comes from direct agricultural emissions, mainly from livestock, with most of the rest from deforestation of which agriculture is the main driver. Emissions from the global fishing industry are only 4% of emissions from food production but grew by 28% between 1990 and 2011, with little coinciding increase in production.

Emission reductions from food production have so far received less attention in GHG mitigation policies than those from energy, transport and other industrial sectors; consequently emissions from agriculture could become the dominant source of global emissions by mid-century. Therefore, meeting the Paris Agreement’s targets  to limit global temperature increases to 1.5°C or well below 2°C, will be impossible without the sector doing its part to tackle climate change.

OTGC work identifies policy solutions that can unlock the large mitigation potential of food production, while helping to minimise the economic impacts on the agri-food sectors and consumers. Policies at the international, national and sector levels must work together to avoid simply shifting carbon emissions from one place to another. In low-income countries, all this must be accomplished without threatening food security.

Enhancing Climate Change Mitigation through Agriculture

Agriculture, with its growing contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions and opportunities to mitigate emissions, can help close the gap between existing global mitigation efforts and those that are needed to keep global warming to between 1.5 °C and 2 °C by the end of the century. Global scale and farm scale analyses are used to evaluate both the effectiveness of different policy options to reduce agricultural emissions, and the impact on competitiveness, farm income, food security, and government finances. In order to contribute to global mitigation efforts, countries will need to design agricultural policy measures that can navigate these trade-offs within the context of their national policy priorities and objectives. As most countries have not yet implemented policies to reduce emissions from agriculture, the analyses provided here come at an opportune time to inform this policy development.

Food security and Nutrition

Better agro-food policies are crucial to improving global food security

Ending hunger and malnutrition is among the greatest challenges humanity faces. A person is considered “food secure” when they have the physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life (as defined by the United Nations Committee on World Food Security). Urgent action is needed to address global food security as recognised in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). SDG2 sets targets to end hunger, achieve food security, improve nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture by 2030. These are critical challenges for the world requiring international cooperation and policy reform.

While progress had been made over the years to improve food security, the pandemic has reversed many of these gains which were already uneven across countries and regions.  According to estimates by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, COVID-19 has led to a sharp increase in undernourishment with between 720 and 811 million people in the world facing hunger in 2020, 118 million more people in 2020 than in 2019. Despite average global food availability per person growing by 4% to 2030, achieving SDG 2 on zero hunger will be challenging. Disparate growth in food availability between regions will see consumers in middle-income countries increase their food intake most significantly while diets in low-income countries will remain largely unchanged. This has serious implications for undernourished and severely food insecure populations who are most in need. The impact of climate change and the rise in extreme weather conditions will further impact food security, as crops production has to shift to new regions, creating short-term fluctuations in food availability. Trade will remain essential for food security in food-importing countries and for rural livelihoods in food-exporting countries.

But governments can act to increase food security, and in the face of these challenges, policy choices matter.

Food security is not only about the availability of food, but also about better access to food

The root cause of most food insecurity today is poverty and even people in OECD countries face food insecurity, with Indigenous Peoples being particularly vulnerable.

Short-term interventions were important to address the immediate needs of the most vulnerable (emergency food aid, for example) in OECD countries during the COVID-19 pandemic and in some instances digital technologies were used.

Foodbanks run by non-governmental organisations provide emergency food assistance, sometimes using food recovered as part of food waste policies; but policy efforts must focus on sustainable solutions to build medium- and long-term resilience to food supply shocks for those people currently afflicted by chronic hunger and food insecurity. Work is currently underway on the operation of foodbanks in OECD countries. Understanding the role that socio-economic and demographic factors play in determining household food purchases and consumption is critical too. Socio-economically disadvantaged groups tend to consume less nutritious food, leading to suboptimal health outcomes, including obesity. Contributing factors include low levels of income and education; time-poor single parent households; and the prevalence and accessibility of fast food restaurants.

Policy choices matter

Increasing the incomes of the poor and tackling development challenges for countries are critical elements for achieving global food security. But policies may also be needed to ensure that higher incomes translate into improved nutrition, including polices focused on health, education, social protection and infrastructure. OECD has a four track set of recommendations for policies for encouraging healthier food choices. Evaluating the effectiveness of policies and in particular the needs of socio-economic and demographic groups is hampered by inadequate and irregular food data collection, including on the prevalence of food insecurity.

Agricultural policies are often maintained with the stated aim of increasing food production and thereby food security. Market interventions in the agriculture sector (such as subsidies or export restrictions) often result in higher prices for staple foods, with a negative impact on the food security of poor households (which can include poor farmers who may be net consumers of such crops). Support policies not only fail to achieve their aim, they can also divert public resources away from actions that could tangibly contribute to improved food security. These includes efforts to create a stronger enabling environment for agricultural productivity or to develop agricultural innovation systems to boost productivity growth. Other investments that support improved food production and availability include rural infrastructure and storage facilities, and appropriate training and advisory services would be beneficial for food security. Strong and effective systems to build resilience and risk management capacity in agriculture production are also critical in helping build food security at the national and global levels.

More efforts are needed to design coherent food systems policies to address food insecurity to reach SDG2 by 2030.