 colleagues, agricultural ministers, higher representatives of international organizations, guests from all over the world. I know that some of you are in different time zones and it's very early in the morning there. For some of you it's night, so thank you very much indeed for being with us today. If we need to talk about figures as regards to the coronavirus pandemic, we see that many people have died and fallen ill. And we can also see another dramatic figure here. It is estimated that the number of people suffering from hunger has increased by 130 million because of the COVID-19 pandemic. And ladies and gentlemen, we know that this has happened in addition to the almost 690 million people who were already afflicted by hunger before the pandemic hit. This caused incredible human suffering which we cannot be measured in figures. Today, as part of the international community, we want to draw attention to the suffering. We want to mobilize counterforces to curb this development because while solutions to the coronavirus crisis are beginning to take shape, vaccination, hunger will not cease to exist when the pandemic ends. So colleagues and high representatives of the international organizations, we need to prevent new pandemics together. We need to make access to food safer. We need to stop climate change and adapt to its challenges. And in order to do so, we need to further deepen our international networks. We have pooled our proposals on this in an ambitious communique. And I would like to thank all of you who've participated in the technical negotiations. It shows that there's no simple solution. There's no master plan which can be pulled out of a hat overnight. The contrary is true. We need the combined forces of the international community instead. And this is why I would like to mention three key areas at the beginning because the COVID-19 pandemic has made it even more clear that we need to act together. First of all, let me mention the topic of wild animal health. 70% of the new infectious agents that have appeared in humans in the past 30 years have come from animals, from wildlife. And there's a strong reason to believe that the coronavirus pandemic originated by wildlife and human dwellings overlap. As was the case with other zoonotic diseases as well, like Ebola or rabies, every day 70,000 people die from rabies every year. So the control of zoonosis must therefore become an absolute priority. We need to apply basic research. We need functional early warning systems. We need improved health management and wild animals. And we need to strengthen veterinary services on the ground. We need to increase awareness building among the population about the looming risks. And last but not least, we need to strengthen our international cooperation. The so-called one-health approach needs to be further strengthened. Germany is prepared to assume responsibility here. And a designated institute has already been established at our leading research organization, the Friedrich Löffler Institute, so that we can share knowledge and support fundamental research. And let me come to the second point, and this is food. Food needs to be available. We need functional resilient supply chains, open markets, without them. We cannot ensure people's food supply worldwide. And I'm deeply convinced that we need to take this problem seriously, also as regards the U-M-R-I-2 food. Let me mention one figure. 40 countries of the world alone do not even have sufficient agricultural land to feed their own populations adequately. They depend on imports and export restrictions force up prices and threaten their food supply. And we must not apply these restrictions carelessly. And the WTO is implementing an initiative to lay down rules in this respect. In addition to that, we need stronger mechanisms to prevent price volatility. And one means to this end is also improved transparency, of course. We all know the agricultural market information system aims. It provides a good service here. And we also need to ensure the mobility of the workforce. But we also need certain work standards. Despite the coronavirus pandemic, farmers must be able to continue to cultivate, harvest and sell their crops. And this brings me to the third point. And this is a joint effort. This is climate change. We need joint efforts here. The risks posed by the pandemic regarding the security of the food supply are being exacerbated by climate change. Extreme weather events such as droughts, storms and floods are fueled by climate change. They cause considerable harvesting losses and reduced crop yields. They also contribute to the wasting of resources. And of course, they also threaten the livelihoods of our farmers. I would like to say clearly in agriculture sector that is completely emission free. This will not be possible. The farming sector provides us with food and nutrition, but the sector's potential to contribute to curbing emissions not only when it comes to animal husbandry, but also as regards storing carbon needs to be better exploited. Besides forests, only agricultural land can store carbon naturally. We need to appreciate that and create incentives. Agriculture is ready to be part, an important part of the solution, but we also need to recognize it and create incentives. And this is why the International Climate Change Conference, COP26, should therefore take a pioneering decision to continue to appropriately and purposefully integrate agriculture into international climate negotiations. And colleagues, you all know that in your countries, you all show the responsibility in your countries for feeding the world. Agriculture needs support to protect soils, to improve carbon sequestration in soils, to use nutrients more efficiently and to conserve biological diversity. And in order to do so, despite climate change, they still need to be able to produce food. And let me mention another figure here. And I would also like to refer to my colleagues in Africa, for instance. The consequences of climate change can be felt there a lot. The productivity in staple food production, such as maize and cereal in Africa, will probably decrease by up to 17%. So despite all challenges, we need to explore new paths and make all lines of action more efficient. For instance, there are already examples of good strategies, but we need about full-site adapted concepts. One concept may be the strengthening of agroforestry. So the combination of cops with arable crops and meadows with pastures and a significant advantage of agroforestry systems is that they survived rice belts, better protect soil from erosion, store carbon, and sustainably improve soil quality. That's what they can do. And colleagues, food losses and waste. Within the whole food chain from production to processing up to the consumers, we need to avoid food loss and waste. In many parts of the world, up to half of food, up to 50% of food goes bad during transport. In addition, in addition to that strategy, we also need new and modern breeding techniques which are climate resilient, less pesticide or less fertilizers because of these new breeding techniques. And last but not least, and this is in line with the work which we've all already done. We also need investment in the digital transformation. We have promising approaches here. These were provided by the Coronavia joint work on agriculture. This is the World Climate Conference, Climate Change Conference at the COP23 in Bonn and within the scope of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Decisions were taken there with a climate framework convention and we need to work on this. The global community needs to further develop these approaches in a dedicated manner at COP26 in Glasgow and we should support this to the best of our ability. So I would like to conclude by saying that it's quite clear that we all know that there are numerous other areas which we need to work on together. This is access to land, a holistic approach to the food system and enhancing food security. We have included many aspects in our communique as a work assignment to ourselves with a one central goal and this is to feed the world and to do so despite climate change and despite the pandemic. We need to reinforce our efforts in these difficult times to achieve zero hunger, the zero hunger objective of the 2030 agenda and this is why I would like to use this opportunity to once again promote the 2021 United Nations Food Systems Summit. We need this discussion process to future prove our food systems and the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, said on World Food Day, let us make a commitment to grow, nourish and sustain together. And this is why we should show today that we take this call seriously, that we want to be part of this commitment. This is my appeal today to us and to the international community. And I'm very happy that you're with us today. Thank you. And colleagues, I'm pleased that the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres is with us today. We feel honored and we're looking forward to his welcome address. Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, I'm pleased to greet the Global Forum for Food and Agriculture. We are now five years into the 2030 agenda and our common objective to end hunger and all forms of malnutrition. Yet in this world of plenty, nearly one person in 10 still goes to bed hungry. The COVID-19 pandemic has made things worse. Someone other than 30 million extra people have been pushed into extreme poverty and hunger. We need to intensify our efforts to achieve zero hunger by 2030. The other sustainable development goals depend on it. And we must also address humanity's relationship with nature. How we produce and consume food is a main driver of habitat destruction, biodiversity loss and climate change. Our vision is a healthy planet where everywhere is safe, secure and sustained access to the healthy diets they need. This is fundamentally a question of human rights and dignity. This year, I will convene a Food Systems Summit to inspire action towards this vision. We need bold action to transform how we produce and consume food. Our agri-food systems should provide everyone with access to a healthy diet, generate decent work opportunities and minimize waste. They should deliver economic, environmental, social and health benefits for all people and be resilient to shocks, especially from climate disruption. This forum has a key role to play as we look ahead to the Food Systems Summit. I wish you a productive meeting and I thank you. After these impressive words of our Secretary-General, we will now have our discussion and therefore colleagues. One important element of our GFFA are the two high-level panels. And at these two panels, we had international experts presenting their view on this important topic of this year. And they discussed potential solutions and tasks. The audience was included and future trends were discussed and therefore I would like to thank the FAO and the EU Commission for hosting these important events. Colleagues, I would like to extend my warmest thanks to you and I would be grateful to you if you could give us your impression and share your view of the current situation and therefore, Director-General Chu, you have the floor. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. And my dear Minister Julia Excellency's latest gentleman. It's my pleasure to join you today as thanks to the future Minister of Ecartural and Food of Germany for inviting FAO to be one of the key panelists. I'm happy to share with you the key conclusions of a high-level panel on how innovation can help strengthen the sustainability of food systems and prevent future pandemics. That took place last Tuesdays. The key point that emerging from our discussion was the pandemic gave the impetus to innovation. We should work together to keep up this momentum. We visited the innovation policy, Africa Union organized a trade partner committee with technical support from FAO, which included Ecartural Trade and Financial Ministers to coordinate their response to the COVID-19 emergencies. That's why the first time such a trade partner meeting took place in Africa. So we are not working alone in our own small silos. We work together and collectively, holistically. We innovated in a global multi-stairhold initiative together with Italy and other partners to launch the food creation, multi-stairhold global alliance and the unified global action to prevent the health crisis becoming a food crisis. At the national level, governments set up a innovative mechanism to respond to the challenges of the pandemic. In South Africa, efforts were made to track the wildlife movement in the crackier national park rather to timely identify potential risk for spillover. Switzerland, innovated by the initiative and database of livestock producer and animal tracking. Business also came up with innovative solutions and made a bold adjustment to their business model, having to keep food value chance functioning at the local, regional and the global level. We discussed how this promoted modern input and have improved family skills. Digital technology and the solutions created in response to the pandemic. We wisdom the rapid increase in the uptake of digital tools, farmers, business consumers and governments are well-recognized technology as an important area. In Uzbekistan, the development of agricultural information systems and the e-commerce progress is with efforts to improve digital infrastructure in rural areas. Switzerland recognizes the challenges of digital technology, establish the multi-stairhold platform to agree on the digital chart, setting principle on how digital technology can be applied in food and agricultural. EFL, we are here working tirelessly together with all members, it's such a forum at the global level, international platform for digital food and agricultural. Actually, that was last year's communique in G-Farfa. Ask EFL to do so. So we got all the members, EFL here 194 members agreed for running the international platform for digital food and agricultural. These are some examples of how the pandemic can give impetus to innovation and we should continue to work together and keep this momentum. But at the same time, there is 690 million people hungry in the world in 2019. And EFL estimate that the pandemic could add it to 132 more million food insecurity people to this number with a serious long-term impact on the food security and livelihoods. The upcoming U.N. Food Summit provide us all with a value and opportunity to work together to make sure that our agri-food systems are more inclusive, resilient and sustainable to leave no one behind. Finally, and most importantly, a panel discussion underlying that what is most needed to continue cooperating, embracing new working method adopted a new mindset and adapting more new normal life. EFL is ready to support the world in this new past. EFL launched a comprehensive COVID-19 response recovery program to help the countries to build back better and stronger. We continue to implement our innovative Hand in Hand initiative to accelerate the transformation and the sustainable development. EFL is committed to innovation, a power solution through digital technology. We have launched the geospatial platform to get food security investment and the data laboratory for statistical innovation, which combine big data and artificial intelligence for decision-making. We are committed to address the zoonotic disease through the One Health approach and the global forum for food and agricultural. We launched the recommendations on how to reduce the future wildlife-borne spillout of disease. These innovative tools can help us to better understand and respond to the impacts of the pandemic. Most importantly, they can help to avert major food security and livelihood crisis. I thank you all for your attention. I look forward to continuing our working together for better production, better nutrition, better life, and a better environment for a better world. I thank you. Over to you. Thank you very much indeed from our side, too, Dr. Xu. And I would now like to give the floor to the European Commission. Commissioner Wojcikowski, I would like to ask you to share yesterday's insights with us, the insights you gathered at your panel. Please feed them into our forum here. Thank you very much, Mr. Julek Lekner, dear minister, dear director general of the FAO, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much for inviting me to this high-level panel. So far we have seen a very stimulating discussion and I'd like to congratulate all participants for their valuable insights to this year's rich program of the virtual forum. The topics that were discussed covered three dimensions of agriculture interaction with the climate. The agri-food sectors contribution to climate change mitigation, the climate resilience of food systems, and the role of trade and development cooperation. The panel concluded modernizing the global food system and producing food around the world in a more environmentally responsible and climate smart manner can and should make a large contribution to mitigating the effects of climate change, particularly on vulnerable communities. The way food is produced, traded and consumed, in example, the global food value chain needs to take into account the reality of climate change and prepare for its impacts. A shift toward more sustainability is inevitable and we must diversify the chain to ensure uninterrupted food security for all. As I pointed out during the panel discussion on Wednesday, one important aspect is the transport of agricultural products. In the EU average, we transport our agricultural products 177 km. I know that agricultural trade is needed and essential, but we need to produce and consume more locally, reducing the transport distance. That alone would have a significant impact on the climate. More cooperation and international agriculture policy is becoming increasingly important if we want to further scale up our efforts to address the effects of agriculture on the climate, but also the effects of the climate on agriculture, which is sometimes forgotten. Climate change has global causes and therefore calls global solutions. We must adopt the existing channels of international trade and development cooperation to better take into account the need to address the environmental and climate implications of the global food system. Our future development cooperation can be a real tool for effective joint action on agriculture, climate action, innovation, and value chain addition. For me, it's important that we put agriculture on a road to be more sustainable and more environmental friendly without compromising on food security, which was mentioned by Julia Klechner. All actors of the food supply chain must play their part in it. You all know that the European Union is in the process of marking 40% of the funds of the Common Agriculture Policy for climate relevant action. We will also support more ambitious funding for climate and environmental goals within the rural development budget. The European climate law, part of the European Green Deal, sets out the objective for the European Union to become the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. In this context, we will have to be mindful of the environmental footprint of our agri-food production, as well as our imports and exports. The ambitious goal is supported by the Farm to Folks Strategy targets, targets to reduce by 20% the use of fertilizers, a half the pesticides use, raising the share of organic cultivation at least 25% of the European Union's agricultural land, and to half the overall EU cells of antimicrobials for farmed animals and aquaculture by 2030. Of course, the European Union cannot do this alone. We will rely on the cooperation, support and expertise of our trading partners around the world. We will seek to strengthen existing partnership and build new green alliances to better align our joint efforts for improving the sustainability of global agriculture. In this sense, the panel has reaffirmed our appreciation for the acute relevance for the team chosen by our host Germany and confirmed my belief that the big picture is indeed global in scope and all parts of the puzzle, be it agri-food trade, climate change, international cooperation or food security are all connected. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mr. Commissioner Wojcikowski. And now, dear colleagues and colleagues, please join me in talking about the opening speech of the Executive Director of the World Food Programme of the United Nations of the Organization which has just received the Nobel Peace Prize. A great award, a worthy and suitable award. And he will give us a brief analysis of the effects of the current pandemic on the work of the World Food Programme. David Biesle, you have the word and I am really happy that you are here today. Julia, it's great to see you and your energy and passion with regards to agricultural concerns, food security around the world are absolutely fantastic. And this Berlin Agricultural Ministers Conference is really at the right time. So thank you very much. It's good to see several of my friends are presenting and Dr. Chu, it's always great to see you and the EU Commissioner, thank you for your comments. And I've been asked to speak on the impact that COVID has had on food security around the world. And, you know, there's just terrible news to put it bluntly. The good news is in 2020, the world leaders responded all over the world and we were able to avert famine because we did respond. Unfortunately, COVID has taken another turn in pushing so many of the problems and issues into 2021 and we're facing catastrophic scenario around the world. When I joined the World Food Programme four years ago, we had 80 million people marching to the brink of starvation. Now that's not talking about, as Mr. Chu has said, the 690 million people that go to bed chronically hungry. These are 80 million that don't know where the next meal is, they're struggling to survive. Well, before COVID, that number had spiked to 135 million driven primarily by manmade conflict, climate change and fragile governance. Now because of COVID, it has exacerbated an already fragile system moving those numbers to 270 million people that are marching to the brink of starvation. And if we are not very strategic in 2021, we could have massive famine, destabilization, as well as mass migration around the world. And so it is absolutely critical that we don't disrupt the supply chain. You can imagine if you have, I just saw this like in the United States, for example, when people were panicking buying, you couldn't get toilet paper. Well, you know, that's kind of funny, but it's not. Imagine if in the most developed nations in the world with the most sophisticated supply chain systems in the world, if you were struggling on these basic products, what do you think's happening in nations like Niger or Chad? And so the supply chain is critical. And I know Mr. Chu, myself and others have been on the phone talking with ministers of governments. Don't shut down that border, because farmers won't be able to get their seeds, they won't be able to get their fertilizers. You will disrupt the supply chain and you will only exacerbate an already bad situation. You know, the good news is we've been reducing poverty and hunger all around the world because over the past 200 years, and especially in the last 50 years, we have built systems that's sharing more wealth and more agricultural success in any time period in world history. But for the first time, we're now going in the wrong direction. We must end the wars, we must do what we can on climate change. For example, many of you, and I know the German government has been extremely supportive of us working with FAO and others on rehabilitating land. Now, people who might can debate what's causing the climate change, but we can assure you on the ground, it's changing with flash floods and droughts. And so we're working with smallholder farmers and families who can't wait on a global solution. They have to survive day to day. So we've actually rehabilitated over 3.7 million acres of land just in the past four or five years. We've constructed with beneficiaries over 75,000 kilometers of feeder roads for economic opportunity. And I can remember Mr. Chu and I were in Niger earlier, and I had this West woman was standing there and she said, because of our programs, she said, no longer do we need your help to feed my family, but we're now feeding our village and selling them to the marketplace because of strategic agricultural support programs that are changing the dynamics. I haven't found the beneficiary yet that wanted outside support. They wanna take care of their own families. They understand the free entrepreneurial spirit, but they need your support and our support. In times like COVID, we've gotta be there for them because the price, if we don't, it will be a thousand times more than if we go in and prevent ahead of these catastrophes. I was hoping that today would be one of these days where we could talk about waste, food system summit, what we need to do to secure the future, but COVID has us with all hands on deck. We've gotta get through 2021 so that we can prepare a stronger, better future for the future. 7.7 billion people today are depending on you and on us and working together. I have little doubt we can end hunger. We have a vaccine for hunger. It's called food. With $400 trillion worth of wealth on Earth today, it's a shame that any child will go to bed hungry, much less die from hunger. So thank you for your commitment. I think the world is waking up and realizing the essential power of food. So thank you very much. We have to thank, and lieber David, for... Thank you very much, David, for this emotional, supportive opening words and the audience who have joined us. We are very grateful to you. And unfortunately, this brings us to the end of the public part. Now the ministers of agriculture of this world will stay on the screens, but the negotiations and the meetings will no longer be public. But I hope that at 2.45, Berlin time, you will join us again for the press conference. I would like to thank you for your interest. We will now close for now, but I would like to ask the Ministers of Agriculture to stay on board for our internal meetings. Thank you.