 I'm Melissa Wood. I'm the director of the new Australian International Food Security Centre. This is a new initiative by the Australian government. It was announced at the end of last year. The centre is being placed within the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research. Our centre has a global focus, but initially we're focusing on sub-Saharan Africa. Australia is re-engaging in Africa with quite a bit of vigour at the moment. And I think it's the realisation that the urgency surrounding the food security situation here in South Saharan Africa is part of that. The other part of that is the realisation that in Australia, in our agricultural and food production, we also experience similar issues to what Africa confronts. We live in a very climate-variable environment, suffering drought, we have water resource issues, we have very poor soils, we have issues surrounding transport competing on the global market against farmers who are heavily subsidised. So we think that we have some learnings that we can share with our African partners. We wanted to come back to Africa and bring the experts together and ask them, well, what are the issues? So this workshop over the next few days is focusing on designing a programme for our food security centre that focuses on food nutrition. My name is Delia Grace and I'm a veterinarian and an epidemiologist. I'm leading work at ILRI here on the diseases associated with agriculture, including diseases associated with food, in fact, foodborne diseases. We're very happy to co-host this meeting along with the Australians because they're interested in food supply, food security. So as ILRI has been working for many years on livestock food chains, dairy, small-scale poultry, fish, other areas. So we think that this is a real opportunity to help promote these animal-sourced food chains to better improve the nutrition of poor people. One of the ones which I'm particularly interested in is this gap between nutrition and food safety. That's an actual fact. The quality of food in terms of nutrition and the quality in terms of food safety are closely related and yet they tend to be treated very separately. And we think that by closing this gap, by bringing the two communities the food safety and the food security together, we can get better results. My name is Bruce Kogel. I'm from Biodiversity International, which is part of the consortium for agricultural research. I'm visiting here in Kenya with our colleagues to discuss issues around under nutrition. Having a good basis on which to be able to know what the problems are, where they are and what you can do about them is very critical. And so investments in information systems that describe poverty, describe malnutrition, that can also help in terms of the marketing of food and the marketing of agricultural production. I think a good information system is essential and that's true in the finance area as well as in health, agriculture and certainly in nutrition. One of the things we're doing is looking at the drivers of under nutrition and by drivers of under nutrition we understand why under nutrition occurs and what we can do about it. So many of the things that determine under nutrition are also related to urban nutrition. In sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, many parts of the world now, especially in cities, we're seeing a dietary transition. People are eating more concentrated calories, sometimes fewer nutrients, but a lot more calories in the fats, the sugars and the carbohydrates they're eating and they're experiencing obesity, cardiovascular disease and diabetes. A lot of it's behavioural, a lot of it's convenience, cost. It's expensive sometimes to eat well. So understanding what people eat and what constitutes a healthy and sustainable diet will help not only kids who are stunted and undernourished, but also people in cities and urban areas who are becoming overnourished, but not necessarily in a healthy way. And so political will, accountability, rule of law, transparency and resources are all part of the solution to address under nutrition. I'm John McDermott. I'm the director of a new CGIR program called Agriculture for Nutrition and Health in which the nutrition and health is human nutrition and human health. Some of the key gaps that exist are how do we move from kind of agricultural value chains and food systems to the kinds of diets that people need, especially young children and pregnant women. So that's a big gap. And then who needs to be involved? I think one of the big gaps is the food industry is dominated by private sector partners, but we're not very good at engaging them and I think they're interested in being engaged in. And the second group is that if you look at the range of agricultural and agriculture nutrition kind of research projects, what you find is there's almost no leadership role for national institutions. And I think that's a major gap as well. Hi, my name is Robin Alders and I work for the University of Sydney in Australia. I work within the Faculty of Veterinary Science and I've had 20 years of working with Village Poultry basically and largely with the food security emphasis. I certainly think that poultry can fill a gap in the work that we're doing, not only from poultry and poultry production, but because of the role that they play within the household. Within livestock production, poultry are frequently the only livestock asset under the control of women. So if you're able to improve their production and use it as a vehicle to address women's empowerment, women's understanding, their ability to control how assets are used, it has a major impact. Dr. Juliet Sentomwe, I work with the Minister of Agriculture and Malina Strength Fisheries in Uganda. Currently, the Assistant Commissioner in charge of dairy and meat in the country. Uganda has quite a lot of food when you compare it with many countries in the region. Unfortunately, you find that we still have high levels of stuntedness, underwinter. Children dying, about 45% of the children die because of nutrition-related illnesses per year, which is very unfortunate. In fact, in the southwest of Uganda, where we have the food basket, you actually find that the level of stuntedness there is about 50% compared to, for example, the central region, where it's about 20%. So that is really malnutrition in face of plenty. And that means that possibly one of the interventions that Australia and International Food Safety Centre will help us with the need to repart knowledge among mothers and other caretakers from the need to invest in nutrition. My name is CJ Jones and I'm the Country Director for GAIM, the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition. We've been working in Kenya for probably the last 10 years, but we've had our own office here now for the last three. And we've been involved in primarily the large-scale fortification. That's been the work to date. And then we're really moving very heavily now in the establishment of public-private partnerships to really take nutritious foods into the emerging consumer market, so the lower end of the market. And if I was really to ask the Australian government anything, it would be to really start investing in those sorts of partnerships in a holistic way. I think science is fabulous, but science doesn't really produce a lot of food. It's private sector that produces the food, so we need to engage them. I'm Ruth Onyango. I'm Kenyan. I'm advocating for improved food and nutrition security for Kenya and for Africa, and especially for our children and women. First of all, I just want to say I'm happy to serve on the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research at Police Advisory Council. I've been there now for the last two years, and I was there when they hadn't come to Africa yet. Right now, with the increasing population, without proper policies, without proper planning, without proper prioritisation and resource allocation to those areas which matter, yes, we have hunger, we have farming, we have malnutrition. We have all these issues. We are standing. But drought is just an excuse, because we have always had drought. But at one time, we were able to feed ourselves. We just needed to say, yes, we are feeding ourselves. We have enough maize, we have enough grain, we have enough staple. But now, what do we do to make sure that we have good nutrition? And good nutrition means you have to add on other foods as well, and you have to look at what is processed, how do you eat nutrients to that. I think there is not enough food, and the variety is also limited. Many people grow maize or corn. You find they are limited, for example, in vegetables and fruits. And we feel that diversification is going to be very helpful in improving the nutrition of the people. My name is Sipriya Nauma, and I work for World Vision, based in our current office in Nairobi. From my field experience, what we have seen is that people know the solutions to the problem of malnutrition. So the issue here that I'm really passionate about is how we can work with Australian people to make sure that some of the evidence-based interventions are scaled up. That's where we can achieve input, meaning increasing access of the services and increasing coverage of the programs. We have interventions like supplementation of micronutrients. We have interventions like preventing and treating children with acute malnutrition. We have programs like deworming children. We have programs like giving iron and also making sure that households get adequate diets. These are some programs that have been evidenced and seen that they have a lot of impact, but only when done at scale.