 Welcome, welcome everyone and welcome to the panel for the press conference for the Food Action Alliance that's being held in the context of this third annual Sustainable Development Impact Summit and so my name is Sean DeClean, I'm on the Executive Committee of the World Economic Forum and I'm delighted to have here today AJ Jakar, who's the Chairman of Barat Krishak Samaj, the Farmers Forum of India, so welcome AJ and as well as Zilber Juan Bol next to him, the President of the International Fund for Agriculture Development, so welcome Zilber and then Ruben Echeveria, the Director General for the Centre for International Tropical Agriculture, SEAT, based in Columbia, welcome and then also Agnes Calabata, the President's Foreign Alliance for a Green Revolution for in Africa, based in Kenya, welcome Agnes. So just to give some context to the Food Action Alliance, I mean the 2030 agenda requires food systems to deliver probably more and better on all fronts at the same time that has ever been done before and in particular the SDGs has you know really called out stretch targets around hunger, around nutrition, around incomes of small holder producers, water, climate change, greenhouse gas emissions and much more but today we're seeing that the evidence calls for urgent change and probably an unprecedented degree of cooperation that will require immediate and collective action and so if there is one thing that is clear being in New York this week for the UN General Assembly there is a strong call for action and leadership if we are to deliver the necessary impact at scale but particularly to make sure that that actually resonates at a country level, that this isn't just a global agenda but actually has real impact in specific countries and although there are many fragmented efforts that are taking place you know we can bring a lot of these initiatives together and actives to support those country led agendas and ultimately to support the farmer households and the individual farmers where you know who are really you know being challenged by taking this much broader complex agenda and so to move forward we will need to build smart SDG sustainable food systems. We need alignment and transformative partnerships to drive the next generation of food systems investments that will impact on food systems on a large scale but this agenda is not easy the complexity of this agenda can often paralyze action you know we often hear it's too complex to look at everything that's involved in growing food sustainably in a way that is healthy for people and inclusive and also creates market efficient systems and so today we're introducing the Food Action Alliance a next generation of partnership building on a number of different models the new vision for agriculture and many others to deliver on the promise of food systems that work for everybody and so in response to a leadership mandate that came from the World Economic Forum annual general meeting in 2018 the Food Action Alliance has been catalyzed by the efforts of IFAD of Rubbo Bank of the World Economic Forum but developed in collaboration and leadership from the Alliance for a Green Revolution for Africa from SEAT from the World Business Council for Sustainable Development from Regional Development Bank partners from partners such as Mercy Corps and many others who are coming together across business and civil society and international organizations to say can we create this collective agenda that will really deliver us the food system that we need and so this is where the Food Action Alliance brings in the capacity to serve as that platform for alignment and action that can help us to nourish 10 billion people by 2050 without destroying the planet in line with the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Climate Agreement but also in a way as we said that works to support the priorities of individual countries and individual farmers and so I in that capacity I'd like to now turn to the panelists to maybe put some context to this and so maybe Xiobai Huangbo if I turn to you first it's been estimated that you know as a UN organization as the president of you know one of the key UN organizations looking at food it's been estimated that achieving the SDG2 on food security will require 140 billion dollars annually for rural development and agriculture which is about 10 times the current you know sort of ODA that is spent on agriculture at the moment and so as a financing institution how does IFAD see making up this gap in funding for the future of food? Thank you so much Sean for this very comprehensive introductory remarks and to get straight to your point I have to say that this is really the challenge that we are facing where we know that the current or the although ODA in the global term has been increasing the past years we know that that increase is going rather to humanitarian security and so forth the peace and the percentage going to agriculture has stored around five six percent flats for the past 10 years if not if not more that put us in a kind of a no choice then by looking for alternatives so one we cannot count only on ODA and we have been talking since the MDG era the importance of bringing in a private sector so it seems to me that talking about action that we have been talking about action a time has come for us to really move toward action in terms of how do you concretely create the conditions that will bring the private sector to invest in agriculture so there are different obviously different products that we are considering the first one that a lot of us are working on is leveraging our existing assets leveraging through borrowing borrowing to sovereign borrowing or market borrowing to increase our own resources that we put in for the for the agriculture development secondly is to what extent we can use the little knowledge that we have on the ground in the field use it as I will say some kind of an assurance that will bring forth will bring that extra guarantee or extra assurance that the private sector is looking for to be able to invest in in agriculture that being said that moral or knowledge of the ground is not sufficient so developing the insurance product itself or guarantee schemes is something that okay we are working with different partners on on on that and what and you know I'm quite quite hopeful because tremendously what you notice there's a lot of initiative a lot of out of the box I'm thinking in developing new product that we need to experience obviously some of them will might not succeed we have to accept that yes we can have failure here and by far in large even yesterday you know I have a meeting that was planned for half hour ended up I've been 90 minutes away with one of this private sector we are elaborating plan to really get into very specific thematic area in eastern eastern Africa for for example so the capacity of the international community to develop new project for me is a strong alternative to the the the challenge we have on the ODS side that means said though I have to say that we have to remind ourselves that financing in itself is not the main and the main challenge the main issue and you touch on it Sean at the very beginning you know I'm sure sooner or later Agnes will come through the the capacity side and the knowledge on site so I'm not going to touch on that but to really look at how you put the different parts of this puzzle together and gaining in efficiency is going to be critical in in moving forward and and so yeah bringing those parts together I mean actually Reuben maybe if I turn to you I mean Latin America you know the Latin America and Caribbean region probably has about a third of the world's you know fresh water resources you know more than a quarter of the world's medium to high potential farmland but in order for the Latin American region to really deliver on this huge potential you know in a way you know that is going to be both you know financially viable but also nutritious and sustainable you know there are many of these moving parts as you'll bear is saying and so you know that are going to have to be brought into harmony so you know what role do you see then in Latin America can the food action alliance play in the context of the challenges that you that we face in the region thanks thanks for the invite I'm really happy to be here one of the reasons why we are really committed from the international public research perspective on this food alliance this great initiative is because exactly what the word that you use and your question which is harmony because we've been discussing the these elements of this new narrative on what is a sustainable food system that we all aspire but we are not there yet for a long time but we never had these type of partnerships all together in the same place before all together so as he was saying reason you know just now bringing the private sector bringing civil society to me agriculture is a business and farmers is their markets and these good consumption of good nutritious food there will be plenty of value chains making good profits so I from the Latin American perspective it's a very heterogeneous reality we have about 650 million people that's about half of what Africa has in population apparently everybody says that Latin America it has all the oxygen for the world the environmental public goods for the world and also the food for the world but we have a lot of challenges too for example we are the more the most overweight and obese of the world we have a lot of heterogeneity within countries and regions and so on so it's not as a one single Latin America and the Caribbean I think this initiative and the reason we are really committed behind it is because for us doing research on food and agriculture for a long time now we see all the partnerships convening connecting coordinating and more importantly sharing good practices I keep sometimes saying good practice and not best practices I think the good practices are enough we're still far away from the yields that we have a research or extension you know imagine digital imagine all the good technology that we have we can scale that up through this initiative I think we are going to be much better in the in the real future now it's not enough to have a sustainable food system narrative that we all agree with these four points that you mentioned in your introduction which they are great finally in a short time we do have a narrative that we agree what is a sustainable food system the important is to have sustainable partnerships and sustainable funding because we can have a lot of good alliances but what is the funding and as he was saying if the private sector comes in including the farming community in Latin America the countries themselves if we can map which are the two or three key elements from a country perspective how to bring the private the public and organizations together yes ODA is a fantastic thing to have but perhaps we don't need that much ODA anymore because the money is not in ODA only there are many other windows to leave each other exactly you leverage so so I am a pragmatic optimistic person looking into the future and I think yes we have a huge challenge but we never had all of these discussions bringing the challenges together and connecting the dots so I'm quite quite positive that having continued to do research on the subjects working at the country and local level not only global big messages which is important to agree but also the reality happens in the country see with that we are going ahead and there are many examples I mean it's not true we hide a lot of people all the time people say young people don't come to our culture it's not true it's not true I see them coming I'm not that young anymore and I see them coming to do research on digital ag to do digital extension and to do and to go to farming again in a new totally new concept thank you so it requires innovation of partnerships innovation of ideas innovation of the way we use digital technology and innovation in the way that we work together but Agnes I mean Ruben made a point there that this is not just about you know I mean we're here at the Sustainable Development Impact Summit in the context of the UN General Assembly but I mean this is not just about you know looking at global challenges I mean this is you know for for Africa I mean this really comes down to these are local challenges you know these are and they're tough challenges to to address and they can't be just addressed in isolation by one organization and and for African farmers this is real they're suffering you know in in the millions the impact of climate change and you know as we speak and so you know so how applicable you know is this and how important is you know something like the Food Action Alliance to support what needs to be done in in Africa both at the country and regional level but also right down to the to the farm yeah thank you Sean um I guess there's nowhere in the world that you get to see the opportunity for this the type of opportunity we are describing here as in Africa and and I will say why when you look at what is happening at farm level or local level there are so many institutions that are trying to get things done there's so much private sector a lot of it local private sector that is really trying to work with the farming community recognizing that 80 percent of the food that is being eaten in Africa is actually coming from smallholder farmers so an ecosystem has formed around those people that is feeding cities that is keeping the environment going now despite that these farmers are still producing suboptimary and and because of that a number of institutions whether it is research institutions whether it's development partner institutions have formed that are also trying to work towards increasing the yields of farmers ensuring that farmers have the right extension that they have the right levels of seeds and fertilizers that can increase their yields my institution deals with really ensuring that farmers have access to to technology so that they can increase yields and it's true that in the last 10 years yields have actually increased in Africa but they are still extremely low compared to what is happening to the rest of the world now that is being now completely reversed with the onset of climate change because despite that we we we depend on these farmers for for our livelihoods only less than three percent of the land they are using is regated so the idea of climate change the coming on come the the onset of climate change is completely destroying their lives now there's an opportunity here we've come together in the past we've come together and said let's do something let's support private sector let's support governments let's really drive a force that will transform we had the new alliance right we had the grow Africa I feel like we've we we were headed in the right direction with those type of initiatives right now at agro we have local initiatives at local level where we talk about local private sector but for me the question is always how do these things scale how do do things go deep enough I think the opportunity that this type of partnership we are talking about here presents is first of all learning from some of the mistakes we've made learning from some of the opportunities we need to take far enough learning from this the the fact that there's a real opportunity here to scale good initiatives and and the food action alliance does present an opportunity for us to come together and think through where did we come short when we were busy pushing for serious private sector investments in Africa where did we come short when we are pushing for when we all do meet in those landscapes trying to invest but we actually don't add up where do we fall short so there's an opportunity here for all these initiatives to come together the right way add up and they are real good examples shown where farmers working in potatoes in Kenya have created working with private sector local local governments have created an alliance that is delivering for smallholder farmers delivering for private sector and is actually anchored in what is happening local government and is funded by donors so these things can actually happen and you can take them to scale brilliant thank you so AJ I mean you know obviously I mean there are more than 570 million farms in the world and India you know I mean you know a large number of those are run by you know individual or families you know on on small you know land holdings and I mean from your perspective as an Indian farmer I mean why is something like the food action alliance possible I'm I'm just conscious of the time and I want to also just get a couple of questions as well so I think so there's so many farmers and they're mostly the small farmers that it's not possible for the government to reach out to all farmers and so an alliance is required not only between private sector and government but even between multilateral funding agencies banking sector for food processing sector it's also required between extension services research institutions so this alliance will be able to work together to scale up models which are working to accelerate development and to deliver faster results what this alliance I hope will also manage to do is not only be able to help farmers with modern knowledge but also be able to take knowledge that is available on the farms of the indigenous people and all the farmers and take it back to the research system which is not happening worldwide and and this is why it has to be a two-way flow of information going down services being available and also what we see in India and other places is that there is a great focus on increasing productivity I have a saying in my village which says that when one farmer works hard he becomes rich but when all farmers work hard they all become poor because there's so much productivity and there's nobody lifting that goods off the farm so you need these alliances to be able to not only market those produce but that they grow the right stuff in the right way and I think it can't be done by any one institution even if it's the government you need an alliance to make it work at the end of the day I'm not sure if there's any specific questions from anyone so I mean concrete next steps then I mean how how would you you know as you'll bear you know in terms of you know this alliance I mean you know what do we need to do you know in the next 12 months then to really see see this you know be be something that's successful I mean even before talking about the next 12 months I want to talk about the next four months between now and our next meeting is January in Davos we really need to come with very concrete ready to to to roll action action plan that I will expect and we know very well that together with with Agra with the Africa Development Bank and we need to with the few countries to really have concrete proposal you mentioned at the beginning because of the issues are so big we just need to tackle some of them and have a concrete action and move so not only our team already working on that but secondly also yesterday I haven't got a what's up message from one of the minister that was at the at the meeting in in Agra asking me what's next and we're waiting for you guys to tell us what's going to be next so we want to our team will be finalizing together with a few countries that we are selecting a concrete action plan for us to move and then in the next year we'll meet here I will really my hope and my ambition is for us to be able to report back on concretely what is happening not in discussion on what should happen but what is happening and that's what the challenge I'm giving to ourselves I mean I really like this I'm just going to go to Rubin because he was asking but I really like this sense that we need this action that we need to be accountable you know to to those actions Ruben yeah two concrete points one is that thanks to EFAT and the World Economic Forum of course we are putting up together a regional alliance for Latin America and the Caribbean so following up on this alliance which is a global one to have more traction on the ground in the region and the second point so that's working well and so we can report hopefully quickly months how is that happening how is that coordination and discussion and networks are going to be built the second point is that we are mapping at the country level what we call sustainable system country profiles five to ten pages very simple what are the options because there are a lot of power points out there about sustainable systems but what do we do in country X so we are starting to from the research side put all the elements that are known in a small package to say well perhaps when EFAT dialogues with a country X with the Ministry of Finance they can use that evidence from public research to to have more concrete action so we are doing those two things very concrete hopefully before the end of the year we can show some results thank you so maybe the same spirit AJ you know concrete actions I think by the end of the year I think as a farmer I would say not only concrete actions are required but also what is required is sometimes we don't need to do something that has been that has failed in another location so the learnings is not only the success stories but even the failures need to come back so we don't repeat the same this point earlier yes how do we make sure we we've had these partnerships we've had different alliances how do we if we're going to create a larger you know more comprehensive alliance you know how do we really learn from that Agnes the last word over to you no thank you we we are already working on a number of initiatives together we Agra has been having a number of meetings with EFAT at country level trying to like you said Sean at the beginning how do we put it in a country context and ensure that what we are doing is aligned to countries own priorities we are not coming up with an agenda these are not our countries these countries already have an agenda how do we align to this their work and what they are trying to achieve and just ensure that we are adding up so I think for me what would be really different is how we find a few of those a few countries not more than five agree that in these countries we are not just going to work together we are going to get together and find other partners as well and agree to really drive down together and see what that will look like at the end of the year but also see what to look like in the next few years that can be an example of what working together in these countries will look like and at the center of that there has to be private sector this is all about ensuring that we are anchoring our resources to something more sustainable being private sector so it's everyone working together isn't it it's private sector government you know smallholder farmer organizations farmers themselves civil society so thank you so action alignment and accountability so we hope for a very successful food action alliance and thank you very much thank you thank you so much