 Excellencies, representative from permanent missions and international organizations, partners, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, the participants. We'd like to welcome you to this FAO Geneva Agriculture Trade Talks. We have 180 registered participants. We have already about 70 who have joined. I guess other people will be coming, but I think we should not stop, no stop. My name is Dominique Bourgeois and I'm the director of the FAO liaison office in Geneva and I will moderate the event today. This is our second event of 2022. And our objective is to share information on exciting and timely topics at the intersection of trade and agriculture. We have a series of events planned throughout the year and this is already number two and we commit to keep the pace. I would like to thank you for taking the time to attend our meeting today, given this very busy time in the Geneva agenda. We greatly, greatly appreciate your support and interest in FAO's work. Before starting our event, allow me to share some details regarding the logistics and the housekeeping for this virtual session. You are invited first to update your name and organization by clicking on the dots that appear in the right hand corner of the box where your own personal video stream appears and selecting rename. The webinar will be in English only with no interpretation. It will be recorded and will later be available on our website along with the various related resources relevant to this session. The event is scheduled to last for about one hour and a half. We have reserved some time towards the end of the webinar for comments and interventions and if you wish to intervene, please use the Q&A module, not the chat box. Kindly state your name and organization or institution and we'll try to accommodate as many requests as possible. So that's all for the housekeeping and anyway you must know all the experts in Zoom meeting. So I would like now to take a moment to present FAO's work and today's topic as well as our speakers. FAO's, as you all know, FAO supports members' efforts to formulate trade policies that are conducive to improve food security by strengthening evidence and analysis, providing capacity development and facilitating neutral dialogue. In this spirit, the FAO in Geneva Agricultural Trade Talks are based on an approach we call the tree hives. Informal, exchanging information, IDs and views without any attribution. Interactive, providing a neutral platform for dialogue and engagement amongst stakeholders. And inspirational, sharing knowledge and IDs for use in policy and negotiations accordingly. Today's topics, today's topic, look at the intersection between trade and agri-food system and how it could and should be transformed. The FAO Director General, Dr. Choudong Yu recently stated actually at the opening of the Asia Pacific Regional Conference that exploiting the potential from agri-food systems for the sustainable development, offering a package of solutions for development of green and climate resilience agriculture, et cetera, are fundamental to achieving better production, better nutrition, a better environment and a better life for all leaving no one behind. In correction, it was the nearest regional conference. A sustainable food system must actually deliver food security and nutrition for all in such a way that the economic, social and environmental basis to general food security for future generations is not compromised. This means that it is profitable throughout ensuring economic sustainability. It has broad-based benefits for society securing social sustainability and that it has a positive or neutral impact on the natural resources environment, safeguarding the sustainability of the environment. Trade is of course crucial to make the system work. Therefore, a set of multilateral rules have been negotiated at the WTO and these rules continue to be developed. The global agri-food system is a highly complex value chain or logistical operation, but as we are all aware, the system is not functioning optimally. Our presenters today will try to highlight the current situation and how the system can be transformed in order to become more sustainable, robust and address the issues of hunger and nutritional needs of the world's entire population. To explain these issues, we are very happy to have three of our leading experts with us today. We have Dr. Ekaterina Krivonos, who leads the trade team in the markets and trade division of FAO. She's a agricultural economist with more than 20 years of experience in research, technical advisory and policy dialogue on agri-food trade, commodity markets and trade negotiations. She has written numerous papers, analytical reports and country and regional strategies on agriculture trade and markets, managed trade projects and organized a level dialogue and capacity development program on agri-food trade. Ekaterina holds an MSc and a PhD degrees in agricultural and resource economics from the University of Marina. We then have Professor Corina Oaks, who is the director of the Center for Food Policy at City University of London. She has worked for over 20 years to support the design of more effective policies throughout the food system to improve diets and prevent malnutrition, obesity and non-communicable diseases. She's currently a distinguished fellow at the George Institute for Global Health and Board Chair of Buy Back 23rd. She holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Bristol, UK. And I'm also happy to add that Corina is working with the liaison office in Geneva on the development of a similar series of dialogues on nutrition. We then have Dr. Jamie Morrison who is the director of the Food System and Food Safety Division of FAO. Jamie has more than 25 years of experience in the provision of research, capacity development and technical assistance in relation to the impact of trade and economic policy reform and food security during processes of structural transformation. He holds a PhD in agricultural economics from the University of London. Following these presentations, Ambassador Abraham Peralta from Costa Rica and Mr. Alvin Kops from the Swiss Federal Office for Agriculture will share with us some of their views on these topics. We'll now hear from Katia about her analysis of these issues. As I mentioned earlier, please post any question in the Q&A module. We'll pass on to your question following the presentation. With that, I'm delighted to give the floor to Katia. Katia, over to you. Thank you very much Dominique and welcome everyone. Thank you so much to our Geneva office for organizing this important webinar. We're very pleased to be part of it and the Trade and Markets Division taking an active role in this webinar. Very good to see so many people join and many old friends that I know are participating and listening in and I hope I have to have a good discussion with them. As Dominique said, our discussion today will really center around the role of trade in fostering more sustainable food systems. I will speak briefly about the role of trade in addressing shocks and making food systems more resilient using the most recent shock that we had the opportunity of analyzing which is the COVID-19 pandemic. And then our other speakers will probably compliment from a more long-term perspective of food system transformation and all the different facets of sustainability. So I will speak about three main things. So very briefly just placing the role of trade in sustainable food systems because it is indeed a very central role but I will not spend a lot of time on this and just move directly into the relationship between COVID-19 and agri-food trade because the pandemic and the measures to contain it have triggered questions about resilience of food systems overall and how to react to supply and demand shocks of this nature. Then I will just speak a little bit about how trade and trade policy can help to build more resilient food systems again looking at the lessons from COVID-19. So just in general terms, I think it has to be recognized that trade is an important part of food systems but it does not automatically support food systems to become more sustainable. We do speak about three dimensions that Dominique already mentioned, economic environmental and social sustainability. And for example, if you look at the economic sustainability increased trade flows due to greater openness to trade have a very high potential of raising incomes and even farm incomes through export expansion and productivity gains. But at the same time increased competition in import competing sectors can also lead to income losses for certain sectors and population groups especially if there are constraints and markets for example lack of access to credit over cultural inputs. This is very closely linked to social sustainability because rising incomes from agri-food exports can foster desirable social outcomes and especially for different groups such as youth, women and smallholder farmers but on the other hand, it can also contribute to rising inequalities when countries are not fully prepared to face the competition from the outside. So there are definitely winners and losers and the environmental side trade can't play a big role in adaptation mitigation for example, climate-related shocks will increase and by 2050, we all will have to produce 50% more food feed and fuel than in for example, 2012. And under transparent predictable trade policies food trade can function as a reliable source of food in face of disruptions because trade allows food to flow from deficit regions from supply regions to deficit regions and this effect will probably be exacerbated with climate change. So it does play a big role in reducing disruptions it fosters relocation of factor of production to regions that are more efficient and potentially with less emissions but on the other hand, greater trade and economic gains from exports may also incentivize environmental soy degradation and deforestation. So these are discussions that are really taking place in both Geneva and in Rome and in the capitals and I think it's very good that we have this conversation today. So moving directly into the effects of the pandemic because to make food systems more resilient to shocks we really want to focus on the stabilizing role of trade when these disruptions happen. And the first thing to note is that of course the pandemic had on the supply side many negative effects. So restrictions on movement of people and people falling ill and shortages of labor they all created disruptions. They also have been market closures and just generally to logistical issues and slow down in border crossing and related procedures. And the demand side we know that there has been a global recession in 2020 with the minus 3.1% growth with increased unemployment with shocks to livelihoods reduction purchasing power with more food insecurity, more inequality, worse nutrition and this really has affected also trade both domestically and internationally. So the measures taken in response have triggered questions about how we should react how should trade and markets adapt to those shocks. And then it is of course important to recognize that there has been quite a strong policy response both domestically and internationally. So to save our food security and among trade measures what we can mention that governments have undertaken there actually have been very few restrictions on exports and that is a positive departure from previous shocks. There have been some import restrictions but they are focused on sanitary, if it's sanitary measures and specific products for example, live animals but actually many countries did lower restrictions in order to ensure flow of food across borders reducing tariffs or raising the tariff rate voters. Some countries also introduced trade facilitation measures streamlining the procedures switching to digital certificates for example so these are positive developments of how trade can be facilitated during difficult times. There have also been a number of domestic measures for example, producer support has increased in some cases to ensure that production takes place and to ensure domestic availability countries increased procurement from farmers and all have also introduced or extended the use of minimum prices for example to extend food distribution programs and improve access and profitability of food. So governments did react to this crisis and that as we will see it has actually had positive effects on trade. There have been an increase in trade costs so for example, the Asian Development Bank through its carried program monitors trade costs on a monthly quarterly basis, I believe quarterly basis and we can see already that there was a big jump in both the time to cross borders and the cost of crossing borders. So for example, the cost and dollars to cross borders between countries in Central Asia and China has increased by 23% during 2020 and some components of this cost have been more effective than others. For example, loading and unloading of vehicles which could presumably be related to the restrictions on labor. There have also been restriction affecting agri-food businesses. For example, our colleagues in FIO have conducted a survey of several Sub-Saharan African SMEs who are SMEs in agri-food businesses and they have found of course that more than half of them have been affected by restrictions in the movement of goods but many have also been restricted, affected by restriction on movement of people and closures of course the supply of food to restaurants, hotels and other workplaces has affected these businesses tremendously. Overall, however, agri-food trade has been quite resilient. So what we can say is that although there have been disruptions in supply chains overall given that food is essential and if the demand is quite inelastic, we actually see on-trend movement in the volumes of agricultural trade during 2020. There has been a dip in some months of 2020 but that was quickly recovered due to again that the markets relatively stayed open and people did continue demand food which is what we would expect. So unlike other products, for example, non-agri-food trade contracted during 2020, agri-food trade actually stayed on trend in volume terms or very small increase in volume terms and a little bit of increase in value terms. In 2021, all trade expanded both agri-food and non-agri-food and it is quite a big jump given that there was an economic recovery and also largely driven by high food input prices, high food prices and generally commodity prices and high transport costs in 2021. So we see that big jump. Now looking a little bit at the factors of resilience. So what have we learned from this crisis that the businesses, operators, consumers, governments all had to deal with a large degree of uncertainty. So the extent and predictability of COVID-related measures definitely played a role in how both private sector and trade rules adapted. There was a critical government support to agriculture, for example, by supporting farmers through seed distribution, through continuum to run extension services in difficult conditions and of course providing income supports through social protection programs. These all play the critical role. The private sector also took mitigating measures, switching very often to electronic, to e-commerce, implementing digital solutions into the business models, diversifying the suppliers of everything from packaging to transport and really trying to work to pivot this, the business models to address this crisis. Vertically integrated systems have been better adapting. The ones that already have a strong supply chains for refrigeration, integration, information. But as we have seen also in the research that my colleagues have done, for example, in some African countries, having digital infrastructure in place helped also smaller enterprises to cope. So how can trade help build more resilient systems? So first of all, we have to reorient the type of support that governments provide, targeting greater productivity, resilience, sustainability. And that means really phasing out price interventions and other distorting forms of support to during crisis and in preparation to future shocks to really favor income support to households, to consumers, to poor households especially. And then reorienting public expenditures towards investment in public goods. So for example, roads, infrastructure, digital systems and this is how we can build greater resilience in the future. We also have to look at reducing disruptions through greater market transparency. And that's where global cooperation is so crucial. For example, through agricultural market information system of G20 and FAO's market and monitoring, market monitoring and outlook work. We do encourage governments to limit the use of expert restrictions, particularly for food staple and instead focus on strengthening and enforcing consultations and collaboration, having exchange and market information and notify, using notified processes, for example, in place of the WTO. Finally, we have to really pay attention to strengthen the supply sites to expand access to information for farmers, credit and insurance markets have to be modernized, expanded and being have more equitable access and hence adoption of digital tools and continue facilitating trade by making it more efficient procedures such as passing through customs, passing through borders. Again, electronic certificates play an increasingly important role. For example, if I thought that international plan protection convention pioneered and many countries have adopted. And finally, just really streamlining SPS control systems, making a risk-based decision solutions based on science, based on the risk analysis and cooperating with other trading partners by sharing information, by keeping the measures known and published on time. This all helps to facilitate trade during a crisis. In summary, this was an economic and health crisis that affected everyone, but the poor households and poor countries in particular and many countries had to also assume a large debt in order to be able to introduce public support programs to both farmers and to provide income support to consumers. Mitigating measures on public and private sector side have played a crucial role. So it's really the interplace of that response that helped us to avoid massive disruptions in supply and in consumption. In terms of longer-term resilience, I already mentioned better targeting of public policies, public support to wet counts. So we need to pay great attention to science, to technology, adoption of good agricultural practices, having stronger infrastructure in place to avoid disruptions. Avoid introducing expert restrictions and just keep trade and information flowing. We need transparent markets, we need stronger governance mechanisms and very crucially global cooperation and coordination. So for us to be better prepared to future shocks and to be able to protect the vulnerable population, which is really the people who did suffer from this crisis, more than us who are still working, able to work from home and still are not facing this food crisis. We need to have resilient systems in place because this crisis underlined the existing inequalities and really affected those who were already in precarious situations. So we need all the power of the food systems, including sound, healthy, transparent, agricultural trade measures to have robust food systems and that benefits all. I will stop here. Thank you. Thank you very much, Katia. Yes, okay. Thank you for stopping sharing your screen and thank you very much for your views on this very important matter. And I would like now to pass the floor to Corina to share her perspective. Corina, the floor is yours. Thank you very much, Excellencies and colleagues for and thank you for inviting me to talk about this important issue today. It's a pleasure to be here. So I'm going to pick up on the important topic of how can trade policies really be honest to ensure access to better diets and better nutrition, which is such a critical part of agri-food systems transformation. And my title broadly is conflict or co-benefit trade policy to advance benefits for diet and nutrition. And for the next 10 minutes, I just want to talk you through some of the main issues in this area. As you are likely familiar, it's a very contentious area, the relationship between trade policy and nutrition. And when I teach this to my students, I always show them different newspaper headings or the headings of titles of reports and papers and blogs on this issue. And some of them say trade is needed for food security, for nutrition and health. And the others say trade is very bad for nutrition and health and food security. So you get a very polarized debate about actually the role of trade policy in advancing agri-food systems for better nutrition. And what that means is, is that there are a lot of assumptions that are made and a lot of perspectives where people dig in with the perspectives and then a lot of confusion arises. And then people say nutrition is far too complicated as a trade issue. We'll run away and leave those people to argue about it. But in fact, we need trade policy to support nutrition justice. We need all policies across all areas to support better diets and nutrition across agri-food systems. So where does this complexity come from? Part of the complexity comes from the fact that there are many different forms of malnutrition. For hunger and food insecurity, for example, trade plays a critical role in addressing seasonal food shortages. But hunger isn't the only issue for nutrition. There are also issues of wasting when children are very much underweight and not growing for their age and their height. And the trade issues there may be around how you get the resources, the inputs to treatments for acute forms of malnutrition like wasting. Another form of malnutrition is stunting where key issues are dietary diversity. So the trade issues here are, does trade help dietary diversity or not? Then there were issues about micronutrient deficiencies which are very much associated with dietary diversity. But some of the solutions proposed are around fortification, for example. So there were issues of trade around fortificance that go into these foods. And then there were issues of obesity and non-communicable diseases. And they're the trade issues around the availability of snack foods, foods high in fat, sugar and salt, foods that are often termed ultra processed foods and the affordability and availability of those foods. So all of these issues have different trade issues associated, all of these malnutrition issues have different trade issues associated with them. So if there's a conflict between trade and nutrition or a co-benefit, it really depends on what issue of malnutrition you're talking about and what the context is. So for example, if we talk about lowering tariffs, which of course is an excellent principle, has just been laid out, but that might have immediate benefits for hunger in the case of seasonal shortfalls, for example, in the cases of the situations like COVID and other emergency situations. But it may have the unintentional situation of reducing production of local whole grains, which are important for dietary diversity and intake of nutrition and staple whole grains. So there are many other differences as sources of difference too. For example, some things can be beneficial over the short term and lead to negative outcomes over the long term. Trade issues will affect farm households and non-farm households differently. They will expect the exporting country and importing country differently from the perspective of nutrition. And all of these complexities are reflected by mixed findings of studies on trade and diets and nutrition, of which I have to say there were all too few. But some of the benefits, these studies show that there are benefits to trade for diets and nutrition. For example, we know that regional and inter-regional trade can help balance out food services and deficits. We know that trade facilitation can be associated with higher dietary energy supply and lower food deficits. We know that as lower income countries transition into specialized production of fewer crops, the ability to import boosts the availability of different nutrients by boosting diversity. And trade openness has been linked to higher levels of diversity in natural food supplies. And trade, of course, also has important implications for food safety. But there are also studies that indicate some of the harms that trade can do. When there's a high proportion of low income farm households in the country, imports can damage the livelihoods and nutrition of those households. Exporting nutrition crops may deflect those shortage of evidence in this area, may deflect from domestic efforts to boost consumption of those nutritious foods. And evidence from a range of countries is very clear that increased openness to trade increases the availability of these snack ready to eat, foods and drinks, high and unhealthy saturated and trans fats, added sugars and salts. So there were both benefits and risks to trade policy for diets and nutrition. And what's really been absent is an intentional focus on the role of nutrition in trade. This should not be about a polarized argument and a polarized debate about who is right and who is wrong about trade policy and nutrition. What we need is an intentional focus on nutrition for trade policy. So the question isn't is trade good or bad or what exactly do we know about the outcome? But what are the nutrition challenges in that particular country and regional locality and how can trade policy help address them? Or what are the trade policies that we have and all are negotiating and how can they help nutrition? So we shift the focus away from a polarized debate towards a positive question about how trade can help. But that means that both people involved in trade policy need to focus on nutrition and people working on nutrition need to focus on trade with an intentional focus and that isn't what's been happening in the past. So for example, questions such as how can the trade policy that I'm negotiating provide the policy space for nutrition action? How can we be sure that these trade policy objectives align with nutrition objectives? How can we be sure that the actual outcomes of this trade policy actually support nutrition action? These are the kind of intentional questions that we need the trade community to be asking. Let me share an example with you in the last couple of minutes. Let's talk about a focus on regional and inter-regional trade on nutritious foods. It makes sense that regional and inter-regional trade of food has a focus on ensuring that improves the accessibility and safety and affordability of nutritious foods in both exporting and importing countries. We know that regional trade facilitation is historically focused on more staple grains. So a starting point is to say, how can we align regional trade with healthier diets to address the particular nutrition issues that are faced by a particular country? So we're talking about fruits, vegetables, dairy, whole grains, legumes, and fish, for example. This could reduce prices and enhance access in importing countries when supplies are inadequate. In exporting countries, regional trade opportunities could stimulate investment in infrastructure for production and market linkages in domestic markets and create income-generating opportunities for low-income households. But we also need to recognize that as a strategy, regional trade on nutritious foods bring risks. In importing countries, imports could fail to benefit the lower-income households who really face the most dire nutritional issues if those foods remain unaffordable and only benefit the richer elements of society. Imports may also displace domestically produced foods. In exporting countries, regional trade in nutritious foods may lead to foods that would have been consumed domestically being exported, thus reducing supply and raising prices. In short, even though it makes sense to align regional trade with nutritious foods rather than just the basic staples, which are also important, there were both these benefits and risks. So given the potential for both benefits and risks, regional food trade facilitation and investment should proactively take into account how they can access to and increase the affordability of safer nutritious in both importing and exporting countries. So this means asking specific questions about how to support countries to establish trade corridors but making sure that those trade corridors are between lower price to higher price countries for nutritious food, for which price is a barrier to access by low-income households as opposed to displacing what has been produced in that country. And the provision of technical assistance to enable exporting in importing countries to identify the types of tariffs and non-tariff measures and cost border procedures and all of the food handling infrastructure which are presenting a barrier. So the point is to be very intentional in the way that these negotiations take place to make sure that the policies are put into place to both advance the benefits of trade policy for nutrition as well as policies to manage those risks, always focused on addressing the most important nutrition burdens in that country. And to end, I'd just like to say that in order to do this, a cross-cutting change that needs to happen is to support capacity building for the nutrition community to really engage in and monitor national trade facilitation and policy activities as well as advocating for complementary policies and really to support capacity building for the trade community to engage in discussions about nutrition. Thank you. Thank you so much, Corina. And thank you for being such a vocal advocate of the nutrition community and really keeping in mind your call for an intentional focus on nutrition for trade policies. I think this is really at the core of your presentation, which of course is much richer than that. But thank you very much for that, Corina. And now let me give the floor to our first speaker today, Jamie Morissan. Jamie, the floor is yours. Thank you, Dominique. And greetings to Excellencies, colleagues and friends. So what I'll try to do is to add a different perspective to the rich presentations that both Katja and Corina have provided. And the reason for doing this is that I think over the past two decades, we've seen an increasingly complex and challenging debate related to the role of international trade in agriculture and food products. We've moved from debates which were very much focused on the efficiency gains from reductions in agricultural trade barriers through to looking at the relationship between trade and food security and nutrition. And most recently to the role of trade in processes of agri-food system transformation. The focus of analysis and debates and the resulting insights available to trade negotiators and policymakers has been constantly changing. So the food system transformation agenda provides a new lens through which to articulate improved trade rules, trade strategies and trade related policies that are supportive of meeting contemporary challenges. But what do we mean by food system transformation? Those of you who followed last year's United Nations Food Systems Summit would have appreciated an increased awareness that contemporary food systems are not delivering on social outcomes to the extent that they can and indeed need to if we're to meet the sustainable development goals. The global statistics related to health, environment inclusiveness are really concerning and show that we're not on the right track. Only two years ago, 690 million people were suffering from chronic hunger. That was an increase of 60 million over the previous five years. So we were seeing an increasing trend before COVID. And in 2020, an additional 120 million people were added to that number. At the same time, 3 billion people don't have access to a healthy diet. Food systems are responsible for a third of total greenhouse gas emissions. And many food system workers face fragile, implying conditions. And as Katcha's intervention has demonstrated, we have now the additional dimension of resilience which has really come to the fore over the past two years. As a result of the pandemic, yes, but also as a result of the immediacy of climate change impacts and other shocks to the food system. But when we take the longer term perspective, the transformation of food systems will require us to identify what outcomes are actually needed to deliver across the spectrum of the sustainable development goals. It will need an analysis of the constraints to achieving this and the design of strategies and policies which will be needed to overcome the constraints. And this is a real challenge because the outcomes that food systems are expected to deliver are multiple. And whilst we see some similarities across countries, we talk about health, we talk about environment, we talk about inclusiveness. The prioritization of these outcomes can be quite different. It's driven by different levels of economic development, different agro-ecological capacities, different cultural values, and so on. So we really need to work at the country level initially to understand and to help countries to identify and prioritize those outcomes which need to be pushed forward immediately, of course, taking account of the other outcomes that need to be met to meet the sustainable development goals. And we need to design pathways which will result in the achievements of these outcomes. Now, again, the difficulty here that is in every context will be an infinite number of pathways to take us from where we are today to the desired set of outcomes. And each of those pathways will entail trade-offs. For example, a country which is seeking to rapidly reduce levels of hunger by increasing agricultural productivity may find itself in a position that it's putting the natural resource environments in a detrimental sense, and or can be affecting the welfare of workers which are entrenched in certain food industry sectors which are perhaps going to become less important in the future. But as Katch has indicated, the impacts of trade in delivering or hindering processes of transformation can be particularly complex. The transboundary nature of trade complicates our analysis of food system transformation further because it's not just about the pursuit of national processes to transform to higher levels of sustainability, but it's looking at those national processes in the context of what all other countries are doing. And we find a number of potential situations where the actions of one trading partner are likely to undermine those of another if countries are not following the same set of outcomes or similar pathways. So to try to give us some examples of what I mean by that, take countries that are trying to internalize the cost of greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural production or from food processing or from food waste disposal. In doing so, they may inadvertently confer a competitive advantage on others that are not imposing similar messages. And this risks increased production and exports from countries without mitigation measures, potentially leading to emissions leakages and resource misallocation. Another example, producers in countries seeking to mandate higher animal welfare standards domestically may face increased competition from producers in countries that are not adopting similar strategies or which are applying less stringent regulations. If we look from the perspective of agricultural exporting countries, particularly those where the sector has a major role still in the generation of economic growth and employment opportunities, these countries may justifiably prioritize these outcomes over others in pushing forward their particular pathways to more sustainable food systems. So we have a very complex mix of prioritization of outcomes but also relationships between other countries in terms of the actions that they would need to take in order to drive those pathways forward. I think also another very important point to make and this comes through strongly in Catcher's presentation is that although actions that are required in times of crisis are generally taken to meet short-term food security needs by adopting more open trade policies, these could be contrary to longer-term role that trade could play in processes of food system transformation where we're also trying to move towards a situation for example of net zero when we're talking about climate in terms of talking about decent employment for producers. So we really need to take that complex again of outcomes into consideration when we're looking at the long-term notwithstanding the fact that again there will be immediate priorities particularly in times of shock which need to be addressed from a political perspective as much as any other. So we need that flexibility in there. I think it's also important to retain a focus on food systems as opposed to simply food supply. And the reason for this is that it helps us to take a more systemic and broader consideration of the emerging risks to food supply. And here a focus on the interlinkages for example with energy systems and transportation systems is particularly important. This refers not just to interlinkages within countries but also beyond their borders. Choke points to food distribution resulting from climate change or from health shocks such as COVID or from socio-political disruptions are often caused by shocks which occur outside the narrowly defined global food value chain. And I think that the question that Arushi has posed in the question and answer speaks to this and maybe something that we could come back to when we have the discussion. So just to finish with a couple of concluding remarks. Firstly, when we look at improving the resilience of food systems and their ability to deliver accessible and affordable nutritious food to all consumers and we have a real opportunity to consider how best to balance the multiple outcomes that countries are seeking to achieve through their food systems while respecting their own agro-ecological and socio-cultural heterogeneity. And key to determining this balance will be an improved understanding of the changes in agri-food market structures that are gonna be needed to facilitate greater diversity in production and to allow the scaling of local supply produce the higher standards. That local supply certainly supplying domestically but increasingly hopefully as these higher levels of welfare and environmental standards are met supplying the global market. And to some extent or the extent to which the some may say inevitable erosion of competitiveness vis-a-vis trading partners could be mitigated through changes to trade policies and related standards is gonna need much greater focus in trade related debates and negotiations as we move forward. So with those comments, thank you and back to you Dominique. Thank you very much Jamie for giving us your perspective and also I would say at the very beginning for reminding us of the scale of the challenge at hand. I mean, 811 million people undernourished 3 billion not having access to adequate food to which I would add 155 million people in acute food insecurity, food crisis. So this is the situation we have to deal with and then thank you also for illustrating these pathways and to sustainable food system I think this is need to resolve the trade offs you have referred to and I think it came out also very strongly in the presentation of COVID-19. So thank you very much for that Jamie and now moving to our next speaker and I'm very pleased to announce that we are lucky to have with us our Excellency Ambassador Abraham Peralta with the permanent representative of Costa Rica to the WTO in which he shares the Committee on Agriculture Special Session. Ambassador Peralta also serves as co-convener of the trade and environmental sustainability structure discussion and we are therefore very eager to hear our views on this topic. Madam Ambassador, you have the floor. Well, thank you Dominique and good afternoon everyone and thank you so much for this opportunity. The speakers have been speaking about the role of trade and food security and the need to ensure that the food is produced in a sustainable manner. Indeed, we are facing an extraordinary challenge of producing more food for the world's growing population with limited, environmentally distributed land and water resources. We need to guarantee not only the food security of today but also the food security of tomorrow. Hence, sustainability of the agriculture production has become a key consideration for many WTO members. The COVID pandemic also shock up food supply chains although the food trade held up better than expected, stressing the vital role of trade for food security, especially in difficult times. The role of food trade in food security is likely to increase further. This is due to ever increasing interdependence between countries for their food security because of the expected increase in the periodicity and extensity of extreme water events resulting from climate change such as heat waves and tropical storms. Furthermore, we must remember that trade not only enables food to be produced where it is most efficient both economically and environmentally. It also facilitates access to digital and other technologies that help make production process more environmental friendly. But we often forget that in the background of everyday trade are the trade routes. They ensure that food imports can import much needed food and that producers, exporters can sell their products. They also encourage to move from production and trade distorting support often associated with intensive farming and potential negative impacts on the limited land and water resources towards less distorted support. In this respect, many WTO members have taken advantage of the flexibilities of the agreement on agriculture. For example, members have significantly increased their support to the agricultural sector under environmental programs with the aim of moving towards more sustainable production methods. Accordingly to WTO notifications, this support has increased from nine billion US dollars in 1995 to 36 billion dollars in 2016. The latest year for which data is rateable available. The top 10 WTO members notifying this type of support in 2016 were in decreasing order, China, European Union, United States, Japan, Switzerland, Norway, Chinese Taipei, Australia, Mexico, Australia, Mexico and Canada. However, much more can be done. Most of the trade rules governing agricultural trade data from 1995. It is time to update the WTO's agricultural rule book to make it more effective in addressing contemporary challenges. This is precisely what the agricultural negotiations have been trying to do. All recent notification, excuse me, all recent negotiating efforts have been focusing on achieving a meaningful outcome at the WTO ministerial conference. As you know, MC-12 was originally scheduled to take place in December, 2021, but was postponed due to the COVID restrictions. And it's now scheduled to take place during the week of June 13th. It should not come as surprise that domestic support pillar has been at the heart of the agricultural negotiations. More than 600 billion US dollars is spent by governments on agricultural each year. It is essential to use these financial resources wisely and reduce subsidies that encourage unsustainable agricultural practices and instead promote more sustainable food production. The WTO members agreed that production and trade is starting support, including for cotton, should be addressed. Domestic support pillar is also the area where the potential benefits for environment are expected to be the highest. Addressing support that encourage intensives agriculture will also benefit the environment and these type of support tends to lead to lead to the overuse of inputs such as pesticides that can damage soils or the overuse of water that leads to the depletion of groundwater. As many divergences remain about how to achieve the common goal, members have been working on a meaningful intermediate step that could set objectives, parameters, and timeline for addressing this type of support post-MC12. The postponing of the ministerial conference has also given an opportunity to try there. I run out some of the remaining differences. Based on members' discussions, I circulate my agricultural tax for MC12 in November 2021. The tax is intended to facilitate the discussion among the members. It addresses all seven areas under negotiations, domestic support, market access, export competition, export restrictions, foreign public stockholding, and special safeguard mechanisms. In market taxes, the current negotiations have been focusing on transparency in applied tariffs and shipments in rooms. In export competition and export restrictions, the focus has been on improving transparency and exempting WFP food purchases from export restrictions that will benefit global food security. For many members, finding a solution to the issue of PSH or public stockholding is also a priority for the MC12. In short, many of these sought-after outcomes are related to transparency. This is crucial for enhancing the predictability of the trade regime, but also for building trust between trading partners. From the negotiations point of view, today's presentation and discussions are very useful and they as they contribute to a better understanding of the issues behind the disciplines that WTO members are negotiating and will have defined to the outcome of the ministerial conference and beyond. More discussion of this kind are needed. And in this respect, I would like to inform you that WTO is planning a food security event tentatively planned for the late March to help members to think about this important matters. And thank you Dominique so much. Thank you so much, Madame Ambassador Abraham Peralta for indeed sharing your views, highlighting the importance of making trade more effective to address contemporary challenges and for dating you on your effort as chair of the Committee on Agriculture Specialization. Thank you so much, Ambassador. And now before opening the floor to questions and answers in the discussion, we are very happy also to have with us today Mr. Alvin Cops with the Deputy Assistant Director General of the Swiss Federal Office for Agriculture. Mr. Cops is responsible for the design implementation of the International Sustainable Agricultural Strategy of the Department of Agriculture and is the institutional and substantive and is responsible for the institutional and substantive relation with FAO as well as OECD. Alvin, the floor is yours. Thank you very much Dominique for this kind introduction and certainly thank you to the panelists for the really insightful and interesting presentations. The relationship between trade, food security and nutrition and sustainable development attracts increasing attention on both the trade and the development agendas. Last year's UN Food Systems Summit clearly demonstrated that food systems have a key role to play in addressing the global challenges of our time and in achieving the UN 2030 agenda and its sustainable development goals. The current challenges that food systems all over the world face such as growing global population, climate change, soil erosion, loss of biodiversity make the transformation towards more sustainable agriculture and food systems essential. Trade is recognized as one of the means to achieving SDG2 on ending hunger. In addition, trade also has a role to play in the achievement of other SDGs that are relevant to food systems such as SDG12 on responsible consumption and production. Switzerland is a net food importing country. We import up around half of the food we consume. Our food processing industry relies upon the import of agriculture imports. This means that if we are truly committed to food systems transformation, we have to look beyond our national borders and take also into account the sustainability performance along the entire value chain from production to consumption. Let me give two examples what Switzerland has been doing so far. Firstly, in 2017, Switzerland adopted a new constitutional article on food security. This provision stipulates that in order to guarantee the supply of food to the population, the Confederation shall create the conditions required for cross-border trade relations to contribute to the sustainable development of the agriculture and food sector. The introduction of this constitutional provision by popular vote reflects a growing awareness by the public of the current global challenges and the role of food systems. This increased awareness also leads consumer demand to move towards more sustainably produced agriculture products. While Switzerland advocates for this inclusion of sustainability considerations in trade relations for quite some time, this constitutional article highlights the importance of that work. Concretely, we are doing this by continuously looking for tailor-made solutions in order to intensify our trade relations without putting further pressure on global ecosystems. One example is the recent preferential trade agreement within Indonesia where we grant tariff concessions that are directly linked to the implementation of sustainability criteria in the production of palm oil. Secondly, Switzerland adopted its national strategy for sustainable development 2030 last year. This strategy defines the furthering of the transformation to sustainable food systems in Switzerland and abroad as one of its priorities. The strategy sets four measurable goals, one of which calls for the reduction of the carbon footprint from final per capita food demand by one quarter compared to 2020. As about half of the food consumed in our country is imported, this decline of the carbon footprint will need to be reflected throughout the cross-border value chains too. For Switzerland, it has long been clear that no country can address these challenges by itself and that cross-sectoral multi-stakeholder and international collaboration is required to effectively transform our food systems. And this also includes international trade. Switzerland welcomes therefore the opportunity to participate in sessions as the one today and we hope that they help inform the discussion on food systems transformation and the contribution of trade and trade policies. We'd like to congratulate FAO's Liaison Office in Geneva for offering this informal discussion platform. We do hope that you will continue to bring us together so we can exchange experiences and learn from each other as we transition to more sustainable food systems. Thank you, Dominic. Thank you so much, Alvin. Thank you for indeed illustrating the practice, what is being done in Switzerland and by Switzerland globally and also for the encouragement to continue on this series. I mean, this is obviously a huge topic and this is first time we discuss it in this context but certainly not the last and we will come back again on this and perhaps meet with more concrete example of what is being done at country level and as well. So thank you so much for that, Alvin. Now, there has been a number of questions that have come up in both the chat as well as in the Q&A module. So what I would suggest is that we go perhaps to the three speakers, Katia, Corinna and Jamie and ask them to address some of the question and perhaps I would like to start with Katia also asking her perhaps to, I mean, reflecting on how agri-food trade evolved during the pandemic, which trade and market policies work and which didn't in preventing disruption in supply chains. And then Katia, if you also want to address some of the other one, you are of course most welcome with Katia over to you. Thank you very much, Dominic. And thank you to all the questions. These are really good ones, something for all of us to think about. So on the question that you raised, Dominic, what worked and we didn't work, in fact, this crisis generated by the pandemic, we actually saw a very good and balanced response by most countries unlike the previous food crisis during 2007 and eight rather than 2011, where many countries introduced simultaneously export restrictions while at the same time incentivizing imports, which as a result exacerbated the food price crisis by inflating prices even further. So in this pandemic, we actually saw much fewer export restrictions and that shows that we are learning as we go along and the countries really are weighing the different options and trying to implement those that will benefit the broader society rather than taking rash decisions that very often have negative side effects. What I think worked and what we're observing as we analyze the measures implemented by countries is that trade facilitation works, maintaining open channel of communications with trading partners, while at the same time adopting, for example, electronic certification, it's something that does work and is basically a win-win for all trading partners but as well as consumers. And at the same time, we have to be, as I mentioned in my presentation, ensuring that the most vulnerable population has access to food and has access to nutritious food is the utmost priority because this pandemic has been really about income effects rather than any policy decisions that are detrimental or restrictions. It has really been about incomes, vulnerabilities, inequalities, both across countries, within countries and even within households. So we have to be conscious about that. We have to reduce inequalities also when we're not faced with an immediate crisis but rather it's a long-term goal. Thanks. Thank you very much, Katerina. Now I would like perhaps to move to Korina. Korina, thank you also for you have been providing comprehensive response but there has been perhaps questions that came in both the Q&A module as well as in the chat to which you may want to reflect for the entire audience. And for example, one from Martin Pinero and Martin, let me say hi to you, very glad to see you are participating in our trade talks and asking you to say something on how, what you could say, something on how to translate the principles you initiated into trade policies and then you reflected also on the questions from Arushi on the role of trade facilitation provision on the reachable food and how it can reduce food waste. So Korina, over to you. Thanks for the question. Please take other questions as well but I think it would be good to reflect for the entire audience on these questions. Absolutely, yeah. And the questions I think reflect what does this mean for specific elements of trade policy and the specific provisions in trade policy which could support the advance and intake of nutritious foods and reduce any focus on the less healthy foods that don't contribute so much to health and development. And this is quite a tricky one because to a certain extent it depends on exactly what the negotiation is and exactly what the trade policy is and exactly what the context is about is it a net food important country or whatever all of these different contextual aspects matter. But generally speaking, I think there are three areas where particular elements and provisions are important to fit nutritious foods into trade agreements and actually translate them as Martin indicates into specific provisions. And one of them is about ensuring that there are not provisions in the trade agreement, in the trade negotiation, the trade policy which prevents nutrition action from being put into place. So for example, there is a big debate as you are very familiar with about a public procurement issues and trade and what is prioritized for procurement through trade in a way that is designed to ensure that trade is open, of course, which is quite appropriate. But there are examples where appropriate procurement can be beneficial from a nutrition perspective but that might appear to be inconsistent with certain provisions around procurement in trade agreements. So the first thing is to say, okay, let's make sure that nutrition is an objective of trade agreements and therefore that any other provision can be seen to align with existing nutrition action. The same is around when it comes to trying to tax foods, for example, in certain ways, there's no reason why that can't align with trade agreements, but it needs to make sure that it can. So the first set of provisions is around policy space. The second one is around trade facilitation and making sure that the efforts, the technical support, the trade corridors and the kind of support for food handling, all of that aspect of trade facilitation is well set up for nutritious foods, which tend to be much harder to trade. And then I think that is one of the main issues. So that means focusing on all of those different measures in trade facilitation. And thirdly, I wanted to mention the issue of tariffs and non-tariff barriers. In the public health nutrition community, there's been a tendency to focus on tariff barriers and using tariff barriers or reducing tariff barriers to alleviate imports and exports of nutritious foods or put a bar to foods which are considered unhealthy. I think this needs to be very, very carefully done, if at all, because of its potential for unintentional consequences. And it can be a bit of a blunt instrument. So I think the focus does need to be more on the non-tariff barriers and assessing exactly what is needed to make sure that those barriers facilitate the trade of nutritious foods, but don't bias against, don't prevent domestic production and making sure that that capacity is given to domestic production as well. So it's about provisions that support domestic production and balancing out that with trade. So that's a very general set of answers. But I think that just giving a very quick silver bullet kind of a list isn't gonna work in this particular context. It needs to look at the specific context and how different instruments can be used in different contexts. Thank you. Thank you very much, Corina, for indeed elaborating on that. We have a number of questions that have come up on both the chat and the Q&A module. So I'd like now to move to my colleague, Jamie. Jamie, perhaps if you could take the question of Fabrizio Meliado from the WTO, Agriculture and Community Division, who is basically referring to nutritious food and their interplay with trade rules, openness. And he's asking whether you would see any scope for nutritious food, specific provisions in bilateral, regional, or even multilateral trade agreement and in the positive, what could be the main elements to be considered. And then perhaps also, Jamie, if you want to touch on the question from our colleague, Ahmed Mokhtar in relation to the fact that in the WTO, we focus on tariff and subsidies most of the time. And food security debates has been limited to PSH issue and could we foresee a fresh approach towards making the WTO agreement on agriculture, working for a consistent transformation, i.e. beyond the tariffs and domestic support provision. Something that also Katya may want to address when I return to her with a question that has been asked by Thomas. So Jamie, if you want to offer some of your reflection, then I will go back to Katya also. Okay, thanks Dominique. I think in relation to Fabrizio's question, many of the elements that Karina has just outlined in her presentation speak to that. And I would fully agree that there is scope or there needs to be scope in fact for nutritious food specific provisions in trade agreements at all levels. But I think the real challenge is that it's not just as we know now, it's not just about nutritious food. It's also about the way in which it's being produced and the implications for those who are involved in its production. So we need a much more systemic approach to understanding what those provisions might be. And I think again, referring back to the Food Systems Summit, this provides us with a really good opportunity because now we have 111 countries who have submitted so-called pathways, transformational pathways, which articulate to different levels. Some are more sophisticated than others at this stage, how they see their food sectors moving forward. And I think what we're seeing as many of the countries that to think through how to implement those pathways is the issue of trade coming through very strongly and unsurprisingly because nations cannot implement strategies in a way which has zero effect on others and vice versa. So that provision needs to be in there. And we also need to think much more carefully, I think about the policy space which is available to countries to pursue multiple objectives related to food system transformation. And if we're looking at sort of relatively simple dimensions such as food security, the relationship between trade and food security and the provisions which are required there, that's just a subset of the total. So that I think will be very important and provides us with a very good basis for understanding what countries in very different situations actually need to take this agenda forward. It's just the start of a process and I think the discussions in relation to trade provisions will need to move in parallel and to learn from those discussions which are happening both at the country level but also increasingly at the regional level as the discussions are taking forward. I think that there's also another element which I guess could help in answering Ahmed's question but also the question that was put forward by Henry in relation to fair trade. One of the issues that came through strongly in the food system summit process and indeed there's now a coalition of action emerging around this is to take far greater consideration of the true cost of food. So not just looking at the private cost and benefit of food production and food trade commerce but to try to factor in the cost in terms of impacts on environmental resources, impacts on social aspects to the extent possible because this puts quite a different perspective when we talk about distortions to production or distortions to trade. If we're taking into consideration the true cost of food we have quite a different picture than if we're just looking at the sort of private costs of food. So I think that again is an avenue that could be pursued and learned from in relation to trade related debates which at the end of the day are trying to correct distortions in one way or another. So I think I'm not sure I answered the questions very well Dominique, but I think I'd leave it there for now. Oh, thank you very much. I think these are very broad topics. And as I said before, we really have to come back and further discussion on that. I understand Ambassador Avram Peralta wants also to offer a perspective on some of the questions that have come up. So Ambassador, I wish to give you the floor please. Yes, thank you Dominique. I think it's, well, all those questions and comments are very, very interesting and it's very important to have that kind of discussions between us because we are in the middle of those things happen. And then our reflections can help governments to take decisions in some of their own domestic policies. Thinking about the last questions that Hamad Muhtar answer us about in the WTO we focus on direction in some cities and food security has been limited to PSH issue. Yes, of course. But this is that kind of discussions that we continue turning around in the last 25 years. It's important to interrupt that kind of discussions and to put all those pillars who are linked into the agreement of agriculture to link with food security and sustainability because if we are talking about food security we are talking about access of nutrition, of food and in a very nutrition way. And it's not only PSH issue, PSH can be a tool that they use in some countries but not in others to ensure their food security. We need to open markets to need to take decisions to reverse expert restrictions and to allow to increase trade around the world in a very sustainable manner. I think this is the challenge we have now in the discussions under WTO because it's important to think about why we need a new disciplines or a new rule book for the agreement of agriculture because we need to deeper the reform on agriculture but also because we need to ensure countries, their food security and ensure countries then take decisions to put in place policy productions in a sustainable manner that are my comments. Thank you so much Ambassador for offering your reflections as well. Now before we conclude I'd like to give back the floor to Katia perhaps to address a question that was addressed to her by Thomas Vatai on how can the resilience and productivity of small holders be improved in low-income countries where the government's fiscal role is limited to support for farmers through income or infrastructure support. And Katia you may want also to say a word on what would be your advice to integrate better small-holder farmers in global value chains such as sustainability standards. Katia, what about you? Thanks Dominique. This is a million dollar question literally and as some of the other issues that Ambassador Peralta mentioned we have been working on that both economists and international organizations and the WHO and several decades to disentangle those issues for example of domestic support and how we can really benefit small-holder farmers without being trade distorting. So I don't think I'm going to say anything new but it's really I see several avenues. One is really prioritizing agriculture as a priority sector for low-income countries and given that it provides such a big source of livelihoods and the world's poor are still concentrated in rural areas and in agriculture the sector itself has to be prioritized in the budgets of the countries. The second thing is that we do need better targeting of domestic support. So any agricultural policy any agricultural subsidy there are so many examples so much analysis have done on many countries where a lot of subsidies do benefit either processors or bigger producers and actually not so much small-holder farmers. So I think better targeting is always something that can be advisable. Then we have to again and using those various scarce resources that the fiscal space especially of low-income countries they would really need to target those scarce resources in higher returns programs. And these higher return programs there's one case I think that stands out very strongly and that is agricultural research and development. CGIR for example have done analysis and agricultural research pays back in terms of productivity 10 times to what is invested. And again, that is a type of support that is not trade distorting that does benefit the global public good and has very high return on public investment. And finally we do have to look for win-win solutions. So Jamie mentioned trade or obscurina as well they have to be solutions like research, like development, like infrastructure likely in small-holder farmers to markets that do benefit significant returns without imposing necessarily environmental costs or other externalities in terms of increasing inequalities. So we have to find those win-win solutions. And several of them include promoting and facilitating trade and nutritious foods, trade in environmental goods. And it's really interesting and inspiring to see discussions at the WHO and the links between trade by the food security and nutrition but also between environmental standards. The last question also I'm linking smallholder to markets. This is a quite a difficult topic. And in fact Jamie and I have worked on this some of this publications at FIO and there are many constraints some of them are supply related. So for example, again it's always an issue of access to credit access of information of having some sort of process in place with smallholder farmers are linked directly to processes to are able to establish cooperatives or other forms of integration where they're more gaining a greater share value added in the global value chains. There are also much to do in terms of encouraging the diversification of the food they produce in terms of enhancing the quality. And again, I mentioned win-win solutions but for example, when I worked in Chile for a regional office we had very interesting projects on also fostering domestic markets and domestic wholesale markets and domestic fresh produce markets. And this is again something that this has relatively low cost in terms of public resources but a huge return. For example, working on food safety and hygiene in fresh produce markets giving concessions, encouraging, supporting fresh produce markets because very often they're the shortest link between producer and consumer of nutritious foods in the poorer countries. So let me start here, thanks. Thank you very much Katya. Unfortunately, we have reached the end of the session. It has been very rich and I think that the number of participants we had close to 180 registered participants 100 actually participating. The quality of the presentations and the remarks that were made but also the quality of the dialogue that we placed in the Q&A module as well as in the chat box illustrates the relevance of the topic that is being discussed and the need for us to further deepen it in follow-up sessions that we will have in the coming weeks and more. So really I would like to thank everyone for the quality of the presentation the quality of the engagement today. I would like to make a special thank to our colleagues in FAO from the economic and social stream as well as in particular from the market and trade division. This is actually a joint effort between the liaison office and the market and trade division and we will continue doing so. Also a big thank to Ambassador Peralta Alvin Kops from FORAG and of course Professor Oaks for your interventions. And as I mentioned earlier we will be continuing this series of agriculture trade talks throughout the year and the next event will be on agriculture trade in South countries an overview of trends and performance vulnerabilities and policy frameworks. And this event will take place on 29th of March and you will soon receive a save the day so that you can block your calendar accordingly. Also an opportunity for me to say that there will be that there are other series that our office is carrying out on humanitarian response looking at the high level of food insecurity looking at a series of nutrition on which we are working with Corina and a series on one health which is very important especially in the current context as well. So with that I wish you I wish to thank you again for your participation and I look forward to having you again in our follow-up dialogues. Thank you so much and have a great rest of the day. Bye bye.