 So welcome everyone and thank you for joining. My name is Juliette Tunstall and I'm the Events Officer at the International Institute for Environment and Development. Really excited to be here and looking forward to today's conversation on food systems of the poor, shaping the agenda for the Food Systems Summit. I'm now very happy to hand over to Andrew Norton, IID Director, who is going to give some introductory remarks. Thank you very much. Yeah, huge thanks Juliette, as always. I'm Andrew Norton, I'm an Applied Anthropologist by background and I'm the Director of IID. I'm going to moderate the first half of today's session before handing over to my colleague Alejandro, Alejandro Guarim, who will moderate the Q&A. So let me say a few words before introducing the fantastic panel that we have today about the topic. What we want to do today is to debate how food system transformation can be relevant for people living in poverty. The UN Food Systems Summit next year aims to transform the way the world produces, consumes and thinks about food for health, sustainability and equity. And also, of course, in the current context, there's the huge issue about building back food systems that have been dramatically upended and affected by the global pandemic. So the urgency of this task is clear on a worldwide basis. The tools and processes for transformation seem much less well understood for food systems based around the informal economy in low and middle-income countries than they are for the food systems of the industrialized world. And indeed, the general debate seems geared to a set of concerns about which have largely been generated in these rich country contexts about sustainability and food systems. It hasn't, for example, taken much notice of issues of affordability, even in the global north, or of issues of inclusion and conditions under which people in the informal economy in much of the world get their livelihoods in informal food systems and also the role that those systems play in facilitating access and nutrition for huge populations in lower middle-income countries. So this event builds on the report, which was mentioned in the introductory slides, Sustainable Diets in the Informal Economy. And this is the conclusion of five years of work by IID with colleagues from HEVOS and from the Netherlands Ministry of Food and Agriculture. This program was called Sustainable Diets for All and it's really been eye-opening in many ways in terms of the realities of food systems in many parts of the world. The report highlights the importance of informal food systems for livelihoods and nutrition throughout Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America. It points out how informal food systems are often unfairly assumed to be inefficient and unsafe and also makes a case that appropriate policy and planning needs to build on the realities of food systems wherever they are. These realities, for example, may include people in informal settlements who don't have the facilities to cook for themselves and therefore will depend on informal food vendors extensively for their access to food and nutrition. And this is a sector also, which is dynamic and entrepreneurial, often in the face of hostility from authorities or a lack of understanding at best from authorities that control large amounts of the conditions under which they work. And we also need to find ways to include people from the informal sector in debates and policymaking about food and sustainable food systems from the local level to the global. So that's the agenda for today's discussion and we're delighted to have an excellent panel with us. So the first speaker will be Jessica Fanzo, who is the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Global Food Policy and Ethics at the Berman Institute of Bioethics, the Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Mita School of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University in the USO. She also serves as Director of Hopkins Global Food Policy and Ethics Program and the Director of Food and Nutrition Security at Hopkins Alliance for a Health in the World and many other things. I think the full bios will be placed in the chat if you want to see more of our speakers at the moment. And Jessica is going to be taking on the issue of the Food Systems Summit and the path to food systems transformation. Jessica, please go ahead. Great. Thank you so much, Andrew and IID for inviting me to this really important and timely panel and session. I'm going to talk a little bit about the UN food summit and some of the framing as well as what Andrew had talked about, this transformation of food systems and who is this transformation for. So I think we're at a really pivotal moment in the world, you know, geopolitically, climate-wise, pandemic-wise. And because of these grand challenges that the world's facing, we're really starting to see inequities play out in a significant way. We know the poor and those who are marginalized and disadvantaged are disproportionately affected by climate change. They're disproportionately affected by the expense of eating healthy. They're disproportionately impacted by COVID. Some of the poorest of the poor have insufficient availability of food, poor physical and economic access to food, and of course, high burdens of malnutrition. And those high burdens of malnutrition are clearly being seen as co-morbidities with COVID-19. And so the constraints that the world faces will be all the more difficult for those who have insufficient incomes, those who've been purposely marginalized and disadvantaged. So when we think about the UN food summit, you know, I think about a few different things. There is a call for game changers, game changers that will completely transform food systems. But what's the game that we're playing? And who controls the game? Who controls the chess pieces on the chessboard? What's the context of those game changers? So the context needs to be central to those who have low resources, low capacity. And those game changers need to be directed through the eyes of those who've been marginalized and disadvantaged. So to me, the key piece to the UN food summit is to ensure that the marginalized disadvantaged, the poor, are at the table of the summit, not in the back of the room, not online on Zoom calls, participating in networks, of getting feedback for the summit, but sitting at the summit next to the envoy, directing the dialogue, not the elite, not the usual suspects. Their voices need to be heard, they need to be valued. And I think we all need to push for the summit to become a people's summit, a people's summit that shapes food systems for people, putting people at the center of the summit, putting people at the center of food systems. The many of the calls for food system transformation are grand. I was part of the Eat Lancet commission calling for human and planetary health changes. It provided a global roadmap, but it really didn't set out priorities for the poor. When we think about what often, you know, people living in poverty face, they're trying to stay alive, they're trying to feed their families. They're feeding us largely, but they're also trying to feed their families. And so while these transformations are key, and the messages around transformation are key, we really need to be thinking about how the poor are able to sustain these transformations. I think we also know that the problems of food systems and why we need a transformation is that the poor will disproportionately be affected by a lack of action and change. We've been discussing this for a long time, but there's just not a lot of changes that are happening fast enough for those who are disadvantaged. But what I learned during COVID is that governments can actually act quite quickly, maybe not always in the best, most equitable way, but governments can act fast. But we need to be thinking about how do we get governments, how do we get private sector actors working in food systems to work for those who are the most disadvantaged? I think the other big issue with transformation is that we need to adopt an approach that recognizes that the challenges are systemic and they can't be solved by silver bullet solutions. So with the Food System Summit, we have to be thinking about systemic changes, changes to ensure that those who don't have voice have voice, those who don't have agency have agency, and meeting the needs of the world's people in an equitable and just manner. So I think in any way, we need to push the summit agenda and ensure inclusion and equity is central to the mandate of the summit. And I think I'll end there and looking forward to the conversation and hearing from the other panelists. Thanks very much indeed, Jessica. That was great. It's very powerful. And it does occur to me that after the pandemic, we really do need a completely new standard for the speed, the potential speed and depth of public response. I mean, we've seen what can be done. So these uses for slow and inadequate action shouldn't be taken in the way that they were previously. And I also loved your appeal for genuine participation of people from the informal sector in debates at global, local and national level. So our next speaker is Jane Battersby, who is Associate Professor at the African Center for Cities at the University of Cape Town, where she heads up the food security and food systems cluster. She serves on the independent expert group of the Global Nutrition Report and regularly consults and advises local, provincial and national governments, NGOs and civil society groups on food issues in the African continent. It's great to have you with us, Jane. And Jane, you'll be taking on the topic of the reality of informal food markets. Jane, please go ahead. Great. Thank you, Andrew. And it's a real pleasure to be here. And obviously to follow Jess is always a pleasure. So, yes, I'm going to be focusing on these questions of informal food markets, but taking us back a little bit. So, we've been working on urban food security, urban food systems and food systems governance for a while. And not just looking at this within the urban, but trying to understand what it is about the urban that drives this food insecurity, that drives these challenges in the food system. And what we found over the years of doing this work is that the global food policy agenda has largely neglected the urban. And likewise, the urban has largely neglected issues of food. So, if you look at the SDGs, for example, if you look at the SDGs, for example, Jonathan Crush has said quite powerfully, if you look at SDG2, the food SDG, it's a world of food in which no one lives in cities. And SDG11, the urban SDG, is a world of cities in which no one eats. Now, I understand the history of SDG11 and how it developed and why food was left out, but the neglect of the city within SDG2 is less clear. And if you look at the action tracks proposed for the food security food system summit, that neglect of the urban continues and then neglect of informality continues. I've been assured that it is coming, but it seems like an afterthought at the moment. So, if we're going to start thinking about how do we include informality, how do we include food systems of the poor with my particular focus on cities into food systems agenda going forward, I think we need to go back and to understand why the urban has generally ignored food and food has generally been ignored in the urban. So, global food security agenda has tended to ignore the city, except in the focus of ensuring that cheap staples come into the urban market, partly to stabilize wages, partly to prevent urban uprising. And food has largely been absent from the urban agenda. But this is ironic because if you look at how our cities have developed, food was really central at how spaces were delineated, how spaces were divided and set up, how people were separated from each other. So, in the colonial city, food was very much used as a way to control space, to control economies and to control people. And informality was not an accident. Informality was created and inequality and inequity was hardwired into the system. And so, you look at this kind of creation of controlled formal market spaces and the rendering of everything else to be illegal. You look at the kind of zoning regulations around urban agriculture and how that suppressed that activity. The creation of zoning schemes that placed milling as something that could only happen in the industrial area, therefore creating this notion of a large-scale formalized urban food system, neglecting the fact that most milling, in fact, happens within informal areas, but therefore rendering it illegal. And so, all of this created the system of informality, created the system of precarity. And therefore, when we try to act to address it, there's these many, many limitations that are placed on local government's action. And this history of food planning has largely been neglected as governance processes move on. And so, the urban agenda now really focuses towards formalization, towards modernization of the food system, focusing on kind of the push towards formalization of markets, pushing towards supermarket, pushing towards regularization. And the discourse continues of informality as being backwards and as being high risk. So, when we had the outbreak of COVID in many African cities, one of the first things to happen was the shutdown of the market because they were seen as these places of potential risk for COVID transmission. And yet, that is in part due to the long-term neglect of those spaces. And so, we have a situation in which the food systems of the poor are persistently marginalized and the state is fairly incapacitated to act. So, when we have things like the renewed interest in food systems governance and an attempt to bring it into the urban, you'll find urban government saying, well, we don't have any mandates. If you look at national government mandates, food is not really within that. We don't have any funding for it. We certainly don't have the capacity for it. And so, there's this gap, not only that, but we'll find that the discourse around what urban food looks like doesn't meet the realities that we see on the ground. So, you'll hear, for example, World Bank talking about cities of less than one million as being agro-cities. And yet, when we go into those cities and understand where the food is coming from, yes, there's rural urban linkages, but likewise food is coming trans-border from many different places. And when we misunderstand the nature of the city, then the kinds of solutions we put in place are poorly aligned to the interests of the poor. So, there's been many millions thrown into market upgrading or market relocation. And yet, many of those markets become white elephants because they fail to understand how these things interconnect within an urban system, how the market connects to the trans-border system, how multi-dimensional poverty plays out in people's ability to access and utilize food. So, I think the challenge is that this historic neglect of food in cities and this informality that has been marginalized, I would say on purpose, leaves the global governance processes with very little space to actually proactively engage in the food systems of the poor. And at the moment, I don't see that the food system summit is adequately aware of the politics of these sites or of the very real nature of the food systems that are feeding our populations. And I think I'll thank you. Thank you very much indeed, Jane. Again, a really powerful contribution, these kind of themes of duality, power and the history of marginalization of the food systems of the poor in many parts of the world. And I'm sure these are things we will come back to in the discussion, also your challenge as to how an event like the Global Summit can move forward, given all of those deep historical barriers to progress. So our final speaker is Immaculate Yossi Daisy and she is the regional advocacy manager for Uganda and for East Africa for EVOS. She has over 12 years experience in coordinating and implementing advocacy programs, campaigns and actions at local, national, regional levels, and influencing government policy programs and plans. Immaculate, you will be talking about the view from civil society and it's a real pleasure to have you here as our partner in this work from EVOS. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Andrew. And thanks everyone. I'm pleased to be part of this panel this afternoon. It's almost evening here in Uganda, Kampala, where I am best. And like Andrew has mentioned, I'm the regional advocacy manager for the sustainability for all program, program that we implement globally in five countries, notably Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, Indonesia, including Bolivia. And of course, we've had a number of global interventions as well. So for my discussion presentation, I'll focus on our program in Uganda, looking squarely into the kind of context we've been implementing this program, but also draw the attention to what role civil society organizations actually play. Uganda as a country, just a brief intro. One will say we exist in a kind of context, one will call a paradox of the plenty. As a country, we are blessed with a good weather, fertile soils. We are actually the food basket of the East African region and supply about 72% of the total food regional commodity exports. And yet amid such a very beautiful picture, a third of the total of all the young children, about 2.4 million children are started and half of children under five and one quarter of childbearing mothers are anemic. These are women in the childbearing age are anemic, which is not quite a good picture for a region renowned to produce quite a lot of food. Alongside this, in Uganda, we see rising cases of obesity, as well as non-communicable diseases are on the rise. Consumer preferences are changing over time. We see a population moving from consuming fresh foods from the garden, but going more into highly processed foods. The population largely will say is low income. We are categorized as a low developing country. Then of course, you have a population which is dealing with competing priorities and needs and of which government cannot meet majority of this, which partly explains the changes in deaths. And we see a surge in the growth of the informality sector. Street food vending, we have a good delicacy called the Rolex, not the watch, but a chapati mixed with eggs. That's just one of those foods that you'll find being very commonly supplied by the food informal sector by street food vendors who ply the streets every evening in Kampala and other cities around Uganda. The program we've implemented for five years, Heavos IID, has been a lobby and advocacy program that has sought to influence the policy as well as government programs for healthy, diverse and nutritious, including green foods, looking into the aspects of climate, like my colleague Jessica from IID mentioned, the one of my colleagues did mention on the panel about the importance of climate. And in this case, what influences it has on the food system. So the program has focused on how to influence government policy for healthy, diverse and nutritious green foods, especially focused on the low income populations. From our experience, five years down the road that implementing this program, we have seen and recognized the importance of civil society playing a very key intermediary role between citizens and governments, as well as other agencies who play critical role in addressing aspects of food and nutrition in countries like Uganda, but also other countries in East Africa, especially Kenya, as well as Tanzania. And in regard to this intermediary role, it is very, very important and key that civil society ensures that the views, whatever agenda they are putting ahead in transforming local food systems or the national food system, as one would refer to it, reflects the views and opinions of the citizens they seek to represent, so that it kind of validates the kinds of arguments and the policy direction they are focusing on. And in this case, for the program in Uganda, the program did play a leading role in looking into governmental programs like the agricultural sectoral plan of the Ministry of Agriculture, especially looking, critically assessing its incorporation of aspects of food and nutrition, but also looking at emerging trends in the food system, especially the growth of the food, of the informal food sector. And as a result of this, with our partners in Uganda, we saw and appreciated the Ministry of Agriculture's recognition of nutrition as key, as key drivers in addressing the malnutrition question in Uganda, but also looking into policies like the seed policy and recognizing what are those seed systems that apply to the informality, especially informal food-saving and storing, as opposed to the more formal, what one would call the formal seed systems that are being by government and government policies. So having a citizens voices is very, very key, especially when civil society are playing that intermediary role. But related to that is how do we position citizens at the top of this agenda, what one would call the citizens agency giving power back to citizens to be able to speak directly to power, incorporating them to be part of the influencing processes. One of the key examples I can highlight here is one of the flagship projects we had called the Food Change Lab, which we implemented in one of the regions in Uganda, which has situated in western Uganda, beautiful place, good weather, but the emergence of the whole rural abandoned influx of rural areas because of what is attractive in the urban centres is a high growth of the street food vending as well as market vending in this region. And through playing a facilitatory role with partners, the street food vendors were able to form an association and through this association they were able to speak to the local authorities and push for the review of one of the food policies that initially did not incorporate of the food informality as one of the key actors of food and nutrition, especially for the low income wage earners in this region. So that is also one thing that that we find very, very important and giving agency back to the citizens to be able to be part of this of this process. But related to that also has to do with building trust and confidence of citizens, especially the growing apathy among the poor people. There is this growing apathy and you know a kind of thinking that you know government want to do much to act on our issues. So you find there is a group of people who say we want to speak up, we want a voice, our voice will not necessarily matter. So how and what role can citizens, what role can certain organizations play in building the trust in you know citizens to be able to build their confidence to speak directly about these issues to tap into opportunities and using multi-actor initiatives such as the food lab and also food parliaments in Uganda, in Uganda's case, citizens were able to pass resolutions and then later affected by government authorities in this regard. So that building of trust is something that we find is very, very important. Going back to the summit that is being organized, of course we do recognize the importance of high level panel discussions and all other kinds of conventions that happen. We live in a globalized world and we can't negate the fact. However, from the years of implementing this program and being part of a number of discussions at the global level, I must underscore the importance of change happening at national as well as local levels because most of the discussions are targeting this poor person or this person in the community, this person at the ground. That's where change happens and because change happens there we need to interrogate and reflect on the question of what mechanisms and measures are being put in place to adapt and bring down the discussions and commitments to the reality of the people in the informal sector but the reality of the discussions are centered. So any kind, all kinds of support, it could be taking assistance, capacity building. All these are some of the avenues the program has used to deal to address the whole issues of the person at the ground level who is key in this discussion. So I think for high level summits it's good to interrogate whether and how decisions reached at the global level, how do these decisions work for the food systems of the poor and the adult reality is good to reflect on that question. How do we, you know, one of our colleagues on the panel talked about how do we accord, it's very good and I think to accord seats at the table for the poor where these decisions are being made so that they're able to bring this kind of value, this kind of meaning, this kind of reality in which they live at the table of the discussion so that decisions reached speak to the realities and the kind of context within which they operate. As I wind up my thoughts, even for civil society they are still, they're still a window of opportunity to change, to make a few adjustments and also do better. I think our citizens need to be, sorry, citizens need to be empowered more to take charge because there is a tendency at times to say civil societies take the leading role and leave, they say the poor or the citizens at the back. So how do we, I think civil society needs to play more leading role in empowering citizens to take charge. This includes information, skillset, capacity building, such that lasting transformation is facilitated, especially if we are looking at sustained transformation, citizens need to be well equipped to be able to facilitate this even beyond the timelines. But also supporting, how do we support citizens to be able to collect as much information as evidence, which is very, very important if we are to change aspects of policies as well as programs. I think also civil society will play a key role in supporting and gathering of evidence back to the citizens so that they are able to reflect on what the evidence means for them and how they can use this evidence to transform their food systems. But also advocacy with the poor, how do we run the agenda with the poor so that at its right we have good consensus, this commonality of voice, especially if we are going to speak to power. But also engaging the citizens in the whole thread of the policy making process. So thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed, Immaculate. This question of how voice and agency can be built for actors in the informal food systems was indeed the role of civil society in that was a huge issue in the Sustainable Diets for All program that we spoke to earlier and that we work with HEVOS on from IAED. Capturing those lessons in the kind of vivid way you spoke and applying them to the questions of power and rigidities in policy systems that Jane spoke to will be really important to figure out how we do that going forward. So huge thanks to our three speakers. That was a great panel. I am now delighted to hand over to my IAED colleague Alejandro Guari who is a senior researcher in IAED's Shaving Sustainable Markets Group and Alejandro leads IAED's work on agro food systems from small holder farming to large scale entrepreneurship, informal markets and retail and consumption and nutrition. So please go ahead Alejandro. Thanks Andy. Thank you for your words and thanks to all our panelists. So before we open up to to everybody and we've already had a trickle of really interesting questions, I'd just like to maybe give five minutes or so for the panelists to react to each other. So I'm going to give I'm going to go in the same order. I'm going to let Jessica go first and Jane and Immaculate and just quick thoughts prompted by what the other panelists have said. So Jessica why don't you go first? Thank you. Thank you Alejandro and thank you to Jane and Immaculate for the great thoughts and comments. Just a couple of quick thoughts to Jane's speaking points. The urban issues are massive and this idea of the cheap food paradigm of these process packaged foods and the significant contribution that those are making to diets can't be underestimated and I was on a call earlier today with Action Track 1 of the Food Summit, particularly a subgroup looking at the affordability of diets that Corinna Hawks is leading at City University in London and thinking about how do we not only make diets more affordable, but how do you create more purchasing power for those purchasing food and the perception of value? How do we value food and what are we willing to pay for that food? So we've been having discussions about that and thinking about well what are the potential solutions to ensure that food is more affordable and accessible, particularly for those that are in deeply rural areas or the urban poor, those living in poor cities. I spend some of my time in Baltimore which is a city that's been really struggling with systemic issues of racism and poverty and incarcerated affected families and so how do you work to improve the food system in those difficult environments? And so I'll be curious to hear what Jane has to say about urban agriculture and some of the other questions coming up around local versus global food and how does that impact urban populations? Jessica, I'll let Jane respond immediately actually because it's an interesting question so we don't have to like wait till the very end. I think that that's a really interesting question and I'll let Jane call if you want. Thanks Alejandra, thanks Jess. So we specifically asking the urban agriculture question. Yeah, why not? It's often a question that comes up. Is urban agriculture going to feed the world? Well I can do a one word answer to that. So Cecilia also asked this question in the Q&A and my sense is in the COVID era I think we are seeing many more people turning to urban agriculture and part of it is around real food crisis. Part of it I think is around this need to try and take control of the systems and all of those things kind of play in. My concern is that it's often been the kind of the default solution that's promised to people without really understanding how people's lives actually operate and also how urban markets operate. So if it's around own consumption that's one story but if it's around feeding into markets there's a real need to understand how those systems operate. So my concern is I think it is really a key element of the solution. I think there's an awful lot of work that needs to be done in making it work better. Be that around issues around zoning, around agricultural support mechanisms, around thinking about how it links to markets. And so I'm often given a reputation of the person who always says that urban agriculture isn't the answer but it is and it isn't and we need to be very careful about who's promoting it and for what purposes. And if it's not coming from the voices of the poor and if it's not designed in a way that works for the poor then I worry that the states and other entities are advocating their responsibilities to address this can change more broadly. Thank you. Jessica you had a second, there was a second part to your question I think. To immaculate, yeah there was something I was thinking about that she said towards the end of her speaking points and it was about it seems like when you're thinking about nutrition and food systems and agriculture there's a lot of dialogue happening at the global level. You know and before COVID people were flying around going to meetings talking about food systems and it's exactly what immaculate had said at how much of that global dialogue and global conversation gets down to the community level. You know I've traveled to I work mainly in rural places and I've traveled to some very deeply rural places and it looks like none of that dialogue is getting down to the community level. So you know what you know you have this conversation going on up here and how do we drive it more from starting down there in communities and filtering up. And you know for me in my career I'm getting to be an old lady now you know I've often been really frustrated sitting in these global dialogues and then you go and work in a community or you speak to women and you know women farmers and it's like nothing has gone on at the global level. So how and this pertains a bit to the summit as well. You know the summit's going to be in New York potentially if COVID ever leaves which is not looking good right now in New York. But you know how do we how do we get get those messages down to the community level and again I think it's really about who's sitting at the summit who who is is thoughtfully integrated and involved in the summit and I think we need to push the envoy and the action tracks and the leader groups to really change the way they think about these global dialogues and who gets to make decisions about the future of food systems. So I love the maculets comment about that global conversation often not filtering down to local levels and and local action. So how do we the 164 people on the skull how do we start pushing that agenda in in in holding people to account. That's a very good question. Immaculate you're at the kind of implementation end of sometimes of these big global discussions. So what what does it look like for you and what are the chances of the flow if I take it from Jessica also just going on the opposite direction from the local experiences back to the global. Thank you so much and thank you so much Jessica. I think it goes back to what you've mentioned is and it's about how do we get the poor how do you get this for whom we are discussing to to this discussion. Sadly when you look at these global summits and conventions it's country to country. We're dealing with you know countries not necessarily going down to what one we call the micro levels at which people are living. So for me I think one of one of the ways in which is to rethink about the participation at these global levels because while you will have representatives at government representatives of government at these levels who holds these representatives later to account for how they have pushed the commitments that have been made at these tables as the community. What follow up mechanisms have been put in place or are we having people who are glad to go to New York they will be in this in this room then eventually they will go shopping and go you know do all other kinds of things and when they get back to to these countries little of this information is then pushed down to the community. So for me to go back to how do we do the selecting how do we deliver things through some of the representatives of these groups of people to be at these tables beyond just looking at countries as clusters to be at these discussions. Of course I also do recognize it's important to have these discussions and possibly one would say these discussions could be taking place at the national level but what what if if countries do not prioritize these discussions then you find that the discussions are taking place at the global level. So it's about how do we get representatives of the poor in these discussions at these tables alongside government so that at the end of the day we are able to have a number of people critical mass of people to to account and follow up through in terms of the decisions that have been reached. Thank you that that will be my thought disregard. Can I can I kind of stay on this one because we're also getting quite a number of questions from from the participants on this topic itself and just maybe to to to follow up with with you Immaculate and maybe I'll bring it back to you Jessica. So yes I guess it's relatively so there's I think there's two complexities that have been brought up by our participants. One is who are the poor and who defines who the representatives are right and so what that's a that's a that's a really really good question and we also know that particularly the informal economy there's very poor or loose organization so it's very difficult to say who actually speaks for the informal economy so that's one one problem and the other thing it's it's not so difficult to to kind of just pick someone and fly them to New York and sit them in a panel I think that's not very difficult the question is how does does that a meaningfully contribute to and shape the discussion one and I think the flip side is how much when that person flies back home how much do these big global discussions actually what traction do they have at the local level so I see I see those to us as really important questions and I'd like you to comment maybe on it and then I'll bring it back for Jessica to if she wants to answer as well. I'm smiling at the question of who are the poor who defines who defines that's a really hard question but I think they are called be different their various thresholds that have been used to classify who the poor is because you have these different groups of people you have the rich you have the middle class then you have the poor I know World Bank for a long time has used the whole dollar you know definition of who the poor is but I think if we are looking at who are these who are the poor people these are the people who are living at the periphery of advancement at progress at anything you're looking at people who struggle to go by every day they probably live on one meal a day they can't afford education decent clothing plus all the basics of life I would like to narrow to bring it down to as simple as that if you're dealing with the poor people these are poor who struggle every day they are uncertain of what they will consume the following day they are rarely in discussions even that as simple as the village level where for example you're going to have a devolved system they are rarely in these discussions so there are different different definitions one person but in the context of Uganda for me I would say the poor person you know who is struggling to get by it's either to do with income it has to do with their social aspects of life it's about all those dynamic so this person really is poor I don't like to bring it down to that kind of person the other question you talked about represent representation yes I agree with you Alejandro the aspects of representation may be complex especially when you are dealing with the absence of organized groups per se but in countries like Uganda I've seen increasingly as a result of government promoting citizens to come together in groups as one of the ways in which they can channel some kind of support and assistance it is very unlikely that you will find any group or citizens who in one way or the other could be disassociated for any kind of grouping even in the informality sector I do recognize at the time of the engagement of this program the food vendors in this case had no association they had no group but it was also because of the kind of a section of government towards you know this group of people so they had a kind of conflict rather than peaceful coexistence so I think it's about looking far and wide to see if there are any representatives of the poor or these groups of people who rarely are part of discussions are take place and how then do we speak through those kind of of representatives or through those kinds of groups of people they could be food vendors they could be market women associations like in Uganda they are very common from those kinds of groups the other aspect of the discussion is gain instruction is about what measures and then you see that these kinds of beyond when it's not in that marks the end of the discussions within the boardrooms okay thank you immaculate I'm gonna I'm gonna move on because we have lots of questions coming in and I just want to give Jessica one last chance maybe to go back to his questions because again it's popped up a number of times since you've been involved in kind of the organization of this by very high level events and and processes what would it look like or what what what would be helpful in terms of kind of representation of the poor what's what is a workable solution in your mind to you yourself said we want this to be the people summit we want the people sitting at the table what would that look like for you to have the people sitting at the table to me what it would look like is having food system workers and actors meaning farmers small and medium enterprise you know entrepreneurs sitting at the table you go to a lot of these meetings and the farmers and ranchers and pastoralists and fisher folk aren't there we're talking about livestock and its impacts on planets right on the planetary health so the consumer groups you know that that focus on food justice issues in their communities there's you know a lot of groups working all over the world in urban places rural places that are representing consumers whether it's due faith-based organizations or community leaders and you know one of the the key things we learned from climate is youth who has shaped the climate agenda ensuring that everyone in the world knows how important climate changes it wasn't the IPCC it wasn't the UN secretary general it was youth young people last year marching in the streets we don't have that for food we don't have that powerful drive from the bottom up pushing for change yet a lot of people don't even know about the food summit they don't even know it's happening we do in our small little world but everyone knew about the climate summit and i think we can bank that on a very powerful youth energy surging from the bottom up that created the the urgency of the issue we need that in food we don't have it yeah and we need you know and that that forces government's hands to to look at it and to potentially you know take action but we don't have that in food governments don't really shepherd the food systems in the right directions there's a lot of power imbalance so Jane let me let me switch over to you i'm curious to hear your answer to this question because it's coming up again and again and again about about how do you effectively involve i think we all agree that it's important to get these voices into the discussion but how do you effectively do it and i'd like to get your take on that first but i think there's also lots of other questions for you but let's start with that one yeah i mean i think part of it then is about we were having a meeting with a group of community activists this morning who were just talking about how exclusionary the discourses that we that we're engaged in are right and so we've got to think about how we how we tell the message and and maybe one of the reasons that there isn't this mobilization is that we've taken something as as tangible as food and made it really hard to understand and so is there a lot of work that we need to do in translation um but also for me the question is how do we connect these grass roots movements in a in a meaningful way and how do we start to harness the potential of ict and and and kind of remote work in making these these connections across groups because i think the opportunity now i think everyone is is finding new ways to to connect but i think i think there does need to be an awful lot of work in the modes that we're using to generate data and the kinds of research that we're doing and if we are more participatory in our research processes then it enables more of a dialogue to to start to emerge and allows us to to really bring community voices in but also translate these kind of global discourses and national policy discourses into a language and a mode of being that that's more accessible so i think it's part of the problem is is is us and how we've we've framed and engaged yeah that's a very good point let me quickly turn to a few other things that have come up directly that you mostly um and and i think it also helps us to bring back the discussion a bit more squarely to to informality so there's a few questions one is what is informality which i think would be great if you can answer and and also what do we know about where the informal sector can deliver save food and whether this how has this changed i think that's a really like basic question that i'd like to start with and then maybe we can move on to to other to other ones yeah what is informality is far from a simple question um and so you know so you can use the the ilo's definitions um we tend to think about it as those that are excluded from from formal governance structures um and occupy peripheral spaces um so you know in in the case of some of the work we've done in in zambia there are the formal marketplaces and we would consider those to be formal food sector yet peripheral to those markets right on adjacent to those markets are people who are operating outside of that space who are doing very much similar practices but are governed in very different ways and so for me it's a question of governance rather than the actual practice um so that's that's that even though many of the conditions look quite similar the question about whether they can deliver on safe nutritious food for for people particularly under conditions of covid i think is is one and and we go have done quite a lot of you know a sense of literature reviews looking at this and it seems that although public health and environmental health seem to consider this to be an unsafe environment many of the studies have shown that a lot of the food is as safe if not safer particularly around meat than that in the formal sector and so you know meat is slaughtered that day sold that day consumed that day and often has a lower microbial load than the supermarket's wrapped food that sits there for for a while but i think there's also this this kind of framing of this food is potentially unsafe and therefore reasons to shut it down while if you look at the work again of of wego in promoting guidelines for traders of how to make their food safer during conditions of covid um and things like what the city of Cape Town have have been doing with providing covid safety kits to informal traders and trying to work with that to improve the safety rather than just saying this is unsafe let's shut it down so i think there's the language i think there's a set of assumptions but we can't we can't hide the fact that there there are challenges but rather work with the traders to improve safety than overly regulate and remove them from the system thereby removing any access to food right and so that that kind of is a nice segue into into the next issue which is you've so you've talked about this fraught relationship between urban planning and informal the informal food systems and there's questions here including from from philippe heimlich so it is how do local governments work or can work with informal systems and we know that's fraught and we know that's difficult so what kind of hope do we have if we know that there's a bias against the informal sector at the municipal level certainly at the national level like what can we do so that that bias cannot doesn't replicate itself again at the level of these global discussions um so i guess my i can i'll break it down but my first question is what looks like a good working relationship or what would look like positive or or a proactive engagement of the informal economy at the municipal level in your mind and then what of that could be then kind of learned at the global level so i think a lot of it um you know in our research what we've tried to do with municipal officials is to provide them the information about what this sector actually does in terms of food security and in terms of livelihoods and try to disrupt this narrative that's that's come through that this is something that's problematic that needs to be controlled um to the extent that we've also then taken local government officials out on learning journeys into those sites and ask them to put aside their their preconceptions um and deal with the kind of cognitive dissonance that they have so we'll have in certain cities we've worked in we'll have officials telling us no markets they need they need to stay in the market though and the street traders need to be got rid of etc and then you'll finish the meeting and everything's all the supermarkets are closed after office hours and so they go and buy from those traders and they don't see that cognitive dissonance and so part of it is the approach to to help them see this potential um another element has been just pointing out how much of municipal finance comes through market fees and when you start to point out how much money is actually coming into the city through these processes it does start to shift that but there's a lot of work to be done and I think it I think it's sort of slowly unpicking the regulatory frameworks that have been marginalizing and and working closely with those officials to to try and rebuild something better um but it's it is a slow process and I don't know how successful we're being and I fear that in 10 years time I'll be saying much the same right thank you um Jessica we have a few other questions for you which I maybe I'll try to get through there's one the most voted one from our participants which is what are the most powerful and feasible leverage points to transform the food system and where in the food value change should we invest more time and resources to change the food system and I'd like you to maybe think of this question in light of of our discussion about informality and these kind of under the radar parts of the food system all right that's an easy question yeah I'm sorry that's a huge question um I mean I think there's many entry points and that's what makes food systems complicated right um we've got many ways we can reshape agriculture to improve the production and injection of healthy foods into supply chains um but policies need to change trade policies subsidy policies um there's a lot we can do in the food environment the places where people shop and order and buy food there's a lot of evidence of how to reshape those food environments to help consumers with better decision making around healthy foods and more fair and equitable food environments there's a lot we can do on consumer knowledge consumer education or like I like to say citizen knowledge and and making information easier um again though it gets back to what are governments investing in to help their citizens along the way whether it's farmers or food system workers or informal workers whether it's citizens making decisions about what to put on on their table to feed their families um to me I've been quite yeah I mean I'm in the United States right now so I'm a little bit down on governments overall I have to say but gee I wonder why um but I you know I I always used to think that governments didn't really act quickly and it's getting back to some of my initial comments but I was just you know because working in climate working on hunger working on poverty for years and governments don't seem to take any action but boy I was so surprised at how quickly governments acted with COVID when they feel there's an imminent immediate threat and how quickly they can change you know lockdowns curfews whether they're good or bad but the action taken the exception of the United States is profoundly interesting to me in that if governments do feel there's a threat they can take action and to me can we I don't want to say that food systems are a threat because they're incredible things that feed us every day and there's opportunities within food systems but how do we get governments to take action in a faster way around some of these issues around changing the agriculture landscapes to produce healthier food to ensure that food environments aren't perverse and and um aren't driving people to make decisions around unhealthy foods how do we change the affordability of diets there's so many so much evidence coming out of how to improve food systems not only for human health but for planetary health it's just the lack of will action and investment to to do that so um I think there's many entry points it's a matter of political will holding those to account who are not behaving so well in food systems and building capacity of those who who want to make changes in the food system so yeah I know it's a big answer but it was a big question it is a big question let me let me let me press you on something so because because Jane also talked out evidence and disrupting narratives and challenging assumptions so you're an academic obviously one hopes that you have trust in evidence and the use of evidence but what is your realistic assessment of the extent to which evidence is used or let's talk out the the ability or willingness of governments to use and and really take that evidence seriously so if if we are going to do something like what Jane suggested of of you know using evidence to change minds what is the likelihood of that happening and particularly as you see in the context of the summit how is evidence being used and and and to what to what effect yeah I think it's is a really important question um you know we're at a time when facts and evidence are under incredible scrutiny and even you know openly disregarded as suspect by some policy policymakers business leaders so to me the rigors of science and data and evidence and data and evidence have to be maintained and data and evidence can play such an important role in charting a positive and sustainable direction for global food security and nutrition and and research can bring wholesale changes to attitudes and political thought and action but it's really under threat right now so you know how do we ensure that data is not disregarded I mean you again taking climate change climate scientists in the United States handed over evidence that climate change was happening to the US government 40 years ago in the 1970s and it was ignored are we going to be in that situation we already are you know we've we've been working on food and nutrition for a long time and it's not really improving that much so how do we really push for data changes and we have evidence of where data has really changed policy think of trans fats very strong evidence of that being detrimental to health and now you're seeing bands of trans fats in the food system now whether or not the replacement of other fats is healthy or not as a whole mother debate but there's evidence where strong evidence can lead to policy change in the summit there is a science committee that's been formed and it's providing geographic representation from all parts of the world it will be important for that scientific committee to hear different types of science not only what's published in peer review journals but evidence from indigenous peoples you know experiential evidence all kinds of different evidence it will be important for them to listen and and pull that into the summit dialogue and so there's many sitting on that science committee that all of you should be reaching out to now will that science committee become like an IPCC an intergovernmental panel on climate change type body as you know that those reports come out every five years and it weighs evidence from low to high confidence that helps policymakers that could be an important outcome but again the kinds of evidence that need to be weighed need to of course be the rigors of science that's published in high impact journals but also lots of different evidence that comes from the ground up community-based evidence indigenous peoples knowledge etc so that's that's my take on on data and evidence I'm sorry if I'm being so pessimistic Alejandro no no no don't worry you're you're you're you're recovering from four years of reasons to be pessimistic so I completely understood don't worry let me we have about five minutes which I want to use going back to the issue of the summit itself and I'm going to start with you Jessica and then I'm just going to go back and and let Immaculate have the last word because a few questions have come up about the kind of the politics of the summit and I kind of want to bring it back to the summit in the context of our discussion so you've said that there is a robust process for evidence deploying it using it but a lot of our participants have commented about the perceived or real influence of the corporate private sector of private sector interests in the in the organization of the summit and obviously a controversy is around the the special envoy for the summit so what's your take about kind of who's in charge here and what are the what are the chances for the people as you as you said in your open remarks to really be part and to shape the discussion and really maybe practical ideas for the people who are listening about who and how can become involved to really try to shape that discussion and yeah I don't know too much about the envoy and ties with with private sector and and I've heard a little bit of inklings but I haven't delved into understanding that fully and and how is a big business multinationals involved in the summit I can't speak to that because I'm not engaged at those high levels myself I haven't been invited to the table either so um but so I can't really speak to that I think it is a concern for many and it's a rightful concern about um some multinational companies who probably uh do worse for public health than good for public health and potentially the environment and social equity issues so I think there's a reason to be concerned and to keep pushing and calling out where um we see power imbalances happening as the summit emerges I think one way to get involved um are these action tracks there's five action tracks across food system outcomes um and they're all meant to call for public comments on what kind of actions should we take forward or what they're calling game changers again or big solutions that will shift the paradigm of how food systems operate um there's there's a lot of avenues to get involved in those action tracks and shape those game changers put forward ideas and get involved in all of those and they they they hit on those five big outcomes of food systems so so definitely get involved in those action tracks and there's these food system dialogues that are happening as well all over the world be involved in those too and voice your opinions and concerns and and ideas great sorry to move quickly Jane I'm gonna go back to you just quickly to answer the same question and just this issue of you said the framing maybe the framing is wrong and somebody in the comment said like why do we need this food system summit at all and I want you to maybe end your last minute or so on that question like from your from where you are and the type of work you do at the urban level does this make any sense and and what what do we need to what would we need to do to make it make more sense yeah so I'm fairly agnostic on these on these processes um listen I don't think the food summit in itself is going to promote large-scale transformation but if it is used by people to promote dialogue if it's used to to raise issues with government if it's used to create conversations at the community level around well what kind of food system do we want I think that's where the change will come I think that the individual the process in itself is not that powerful but I think it's been down to those who want to engage to move it forward and and that's where I see the potential coming through but as Jeff I'm deeply concerned about the role of large-scale private sector in shaping the agenda and I think we need to be very mindful of that in terms of the kinds of things that come out of this thank you and immaculate the last minute is yours and the question is the same really what would the successful summit look like for you in terms of your engagement with civil society organizations in Uganda for example what would you say what would come out of that what that could mean something important for you and your work um thank you so much Alejandro um first I would like to say um I think the the food informality sector is here to stay I don't see it metamorphizing into a formal food system um so if it's here to stay I think there's a need to uh for governments all over uh to provide that enabling environment for these food systems to thrive so that they can able provide safe healthy and nutritious diverse foods especially for low income populations that um that are many in urban settlements so I think for me that is something that I would like to emphasize and underscore looking at the discussions that the food summit it would really be helpful and add value if these eventually translate into improved local food systems for the poor if they are part of these discussions but I think it's also good to push governments to have these prioritized and I think this is a role that civil society can play I would ask civil society to keep their eyes set on these discussions and see if these governments compete and if they have committed then civil society can play a key role in holding governments to account to have these agendas prioritized within national governments and policies so that eventually we can see a gradual transformation over the food systems of the poor working for the poor at community level thank you that's great immaculate and so if you saw like a strong message coming out of this summit saying food systems informal food systems are here to stay they need to be parallel transformation would that make a difference for how you think the Ugandan government for example might engage with the informal sector would that kind of percolate to to where you are it it partly would especially if given a push having engaged with government policy and and government technocrats for quite a long time now if they need some push they need some reminders they need to always be you know pushed to have this prioritized especially when they are dealing with deficits in resources every other day so I think that is the key role that civil society can play in terms of pushing and kind of directing governments to have this on top of the agenda okay that's a very nice way to end I want to thank everybody our panelists particularly Andy for your participation to the more than a hundred people who who participated thank you for your time and again this summit is next year and we hope this is just the first of of a few very interesting discussions thank you everybody