 session. It is scheduled to last about one hour and 15 minutes. We have reserved some time towards the end of the webinar for Q&A session as well. Please submit your questions in the Q&A module, not in the regular chat box. While posting your questions, please kindly state your name and organization or institution. We will try to accommodate as many requests as possible, either in writing or orally during the webinar. If you have any problems or technical issues, please send a message in the chat box to ask for support. That's all for housekeeping issues. Now, I would like to take a moment to give a brief background information on FAO Engineering Agriculture Trade Talks. As you will already know, FAO supports its members' efforts to formulate trade policies that are conducive to improved food security, by strengthening evidence and analysis, providing capacity development, and facilitating a natural dialogue away from the negotiating table. In this separate, we have been organizing FAO Engineering Agriculture Trade Talks in collaboration with the Marcus and Trade Division, with a view to share information on relevant and timely topics at the intersection of trade and agriculture. These trade talks are based on an approach that we call the three eyes. Informal, which refers to exchanging information, ideas and views without any attributions and reporting. Interactive, which refers to providing a natural platform for dialogue and engagement among stakeholders. And inspirational, which refers to sharing knowledge and ideas for use in policy and negotiations accordingly. Excellencies, distinguished delegates and participants. Let me now briefly present today's topic. As we are all aware, the world is facing multi-phase challenges which have been negatively affecting food security situation globally. In particular, those challenges are posing significant difficulties for the most vulnerable countries and populations in the world. For example, the recent rises and volatilities in the price of food, agricultural inputs, especially fertilizers and energy has significantly affected import dependent countries. These challenges and risks highlighted the need to consider import related vulnerabilities concerning food security. With this as background, FAO is currently working on an empirical approach to capture dependency on imported food and associated risk factors from the perspective of an importing country. And today, FAO will present this approach in the context of the Near East and North Africa, a region that is overall highly handed on imported food. And that may therefore be especially exposed to shocks affecting key global suppliers of food commodities. To this end, we have Mr. Jakob Roshan Dorfer from FAO with us today. He is an economist in the trade policy team of FAO's markers and trade division. After his presentation, the following speakers will share with us their insights on the topic. Dr. Ahmed Diyab from the Permanent Mission of Egypt to the World Trade Organization, Mr. Ahmed Mukhtar from FAO's regional office for Near East and North Africa, Mr. Kibrum Abei from International Food Policy Research Institute. We will now hear more from Jakob about empirical approach I have just mentioned. As I indicated earlier, please post any questions in the Q&A model. Your questions will be answered by the presenter and panelist during the session or at the end of our meeting time permitting. Please, Jakob, the floor is yours. Thank you very much. Let me just share my screen. Okay, so this should work. Well, thank you very much for the introduction. It's great to be here. I would like to just briefly accept my thanks to the colleagues in Geneva to organize this session and to other panelists for taking the time to attend and to discuss a topic that I think is of great importance for a large number of countries. So the title of my presentation today is Food Imports, Food Security and Vulnerability, Empirical Indicators with an application to the Near Eastern North Africa region. And I should just highlight that this is very much a work in progress that is currently under review, but that will hopefully also become public facing in the form of technical note in due time. So the main goal or the purpose of this work is to provide a data informed or data driven approach to assessing how vulnerable or exposed a country's food supplies are to shocks affecting its imports. So what we would like to understand is how critical imports are for food supply in the country, and also to be able to identify associated risk factors that could potentially also be addressed by public policy measures or reform. And in line with this, this goal, this work and also today's presentation is structured around four key guiding questions that provide a bit of a framework on how to think about these import related vulnerabilities. So starting from a very basic questions, how important are imports for a country's food security, but also the diversity of its food supply? We'll then talk about how diversified our country's global sourcing relationship. So how many trading partners are they? How important are each of them? We'll then talk a little bit about whether we can say something about how stable are the supplies that come from a country's trading partners. And number four, in case shocks occur, how easily can a country or its traders switch to alternative source countries? And what I will attempt to do here today is to provide a data driven or empirical answers to each of these four questions in the form of cross country comparable indicators for those countries that we refer to as the Near East and North Africa region, sometimes also referred to the Netherlands just as an outside of region or global benchmark. Just before proceeding, I want to just make a few contextualizing comments on this. So first, and I think this is something that will become quite apparent throughout this talk is that when assessing whether or not we would want to think, we should think of a country as exposed to shocks affecting its import, jointly considering answers to each of these questions is important. For example, we may find that a country is highly dependent on food imports, but that at the same time, these imports come from a very wide range of different trading partners that have been very reliable and supplying to global markets in the past. Second, to facilitate cross country comparison in this presentation, I will usually speak of aggregate food converted into calories rather than of individual commodities. And last and just to mention this, this presentation is really mostly concerned with discussing results rather than data and empirical methods. So with these comments, as background, let us now proceed to the first question in this framework, and that is how important our imports for countries food security and the diversity of its food supply. And the intuition here is that in the context of vulnerability, everything else being equal, being more reliant on sourcing food from global markets would render an important country more exposed to either global price swings or trading partner or trade route specific shocks. And so to answer this question, I want to introduce the first central indicator in this framework, which will come up quite a bit, which is the so called import dependency ratio. Now, the import dependency ratio tells us the share of the total domestic availability of calories that is sourced through imports. So for example, considering Egypt on the slide, roughly 40% of calories that are available domestically are sourced for imports on average. A value of one here would mean that all calories that are available in the country are sourced for imports, while a negative value would mean that a country is a net exporter of calories. So with exports exceeding imports. So I promised little information about data and methods, but there's one methodological point that I need to make here. It's really important to keep in mind that not all commodities that are imported automatically produced will also end up as food for human consumption. So for example, weeds as a as a major food commodities also often used as for other purposes, such as feed for animals in many countries, including in the Nina region, according to the data. In terms of key messages that I think we should take from this graph, I think there too. First, all countries in the Nina region are net imports of calories as indicated by positive values for the import dependency ratio. And the second key message is that being in net import of calories is not necessarily unusual. So the Netherlands as a global outs or outside of region point of comparison is also net import of calories. And so are in fact, many other countries such as the UK or Italy. For a brief excursion beyond the role of imports in the aggregate supply of calories, we can also take a different angle. So we could, for example, ask whether imports matter for the diversity of a country's domestic food supply, and are thereby conducive or maybe even essential for the goal of fostering more diversified or healthier diets. And so this is a notion explained explored on this current graph. First, the bios show us the number of different individual food items that are available in the country, according to FAO supply utilization account data, and dark blue of those items which are either domestically produced or imported, while in gold, we see those items that are only available domestically because they're imported. So for example, in the case of the United Arab Emirates, we see that only about 50 individual food products are produced domestically with the country managing to significantly expand the variety of available food items through the import channel. A second point that I want to make on the slide is that the golden circles here indicate how diversified food supply in a country is overall. And lower values here mean more diversification. The Netherlands is scoring really well in this regard. While a distinct pattern across the Nina region is that overall food supply is relatively undiversified with a large role for wheat derived products in particular. So the key message in summary from this slide is that imports may not only matter for the overall supply of calories. They may also play an important role in enhancing the diversity of domestic food supply and may thereby be very important for more diversified diets. Okay, so considering again, aggregate food supply and turning to the second question of this framework, being a net import of calories may not necessarily mean that the country is exposed to import related shocks. So for example, if the importer sources food from a wide range of different source countries, shocks that affect exports from one individual supplier may not be that problematic. And this leads us to the second sort of like natural question in this framework. If a country depends on food imports for domestic availability, how diversified are its global relation, sourcing relationships? And in this graph, we consider exactly that we jointly look at import dependency for calories, combined with information on how diversified a country's global sourcing relationships are. So on the y axis, we see exactly the same indicator as presented previously, the import dependency ratio. Again, higher values indicate higher dependency on imports overall. And on the y x x axis, this information is now complemented, complemented with information on how diversified a country's global sourcing relationships are. And in short, like higher values on the x axis indicate that the country's import relationships are less diversified, and more concentrated on perhaps a few important source countries. Last, as complementing information on the current state of food security in the country, the size of the circle is proportional to the share of a country's population that has been estimated to be undernourished. So for example, in Jordan, which has the largest circle in this graph, the prevalence of unenourishment in the population was estimated to be around 16.9% in the recent state of food security nutrition in the world report. And so when we combine this information, we could say that countries that have bigger circle sizes and that are more towards the upper right corner of this graph could be considered as more exposed to shocks and supplier countries that affect their participation and export markets. Expanding on these aggregate results, I thought it would be it would be prudent to briefly highlight that this type of analysis capturing source country concentration can of course also be conducted for individual commodities of interest. So for example, in both Egypt and Morocco, the two countries that are on the slide here, we derived products of prominent food supply. And at the same time, both countries are substantial net importers of wheat. And on the top side here, we see the share of individual supplier countries in Morocco's total imports of wheat in 2021. We also see that the top three suppliers accounted for circa 65% of total wheat grain imports. However, in addition to that, there were active trading relationships with some more source countries. The bottom figure shows the same data for Egypt. And here the three top supplier countries accounted for roughly 87% of total imports of wheat grain in 2021. And there were only fewer additional trading relationships with other additional countries. Now, let me briefly make two important comments on these findings on these on these data. So first and foremost, I think it's critical to highlight that governments usually do not directly import grains or other food commodities themselves. However, they may shape the decisions that importers or traders make through economic and end or trade policy. And expanding on this in the context of the NENA region, many governments actually make international purchase purchases by issuing public tenders for grains. However, these tenders are then bidded for and fulfilled by grain traders that observe tender criteria specified by governments. And in these cases, government policy that defines the criteria for these tenders may affect import pattern, which is a point that I hope we'll return to at the end of this presentation. The second point that I just want to make here is that is is one about trade offs or the cost of diversification. So specifically wheat from France or Canada, which as you can see in the slide, the two prominent source countries from Morocco is more expensive than wheat origin, for example, from the Ukraine or Russian Federation. So while Morocco may show more diversified sourcing relationships here, that this does come at a certain monetary cost. I'm turning to the third question in this framework. Again, for intuition, being a sizable net import of food and sourcing only from very few suppliers may also not necessarily be an issue or risk from a vulnerability point of view. So for example, we could have evidence that the countries that supply to the importer have been very consistent, consistent in participating in global markets in the past, which may lead us to infer something also about their future participation and behavior. And so taking this idea to the data on this slide, we see how diversified a country's relationships are on the y axis. This is exactly the same data as presented previously with higher values meaning less diversification. The circle size expresses dependency on imports for domestic availability. And the new element shown here on the x axis is an indicator that captures or that expresses how consistent the individual countries that make up the supplier network of an individual linear country have been in exporting food to global markets over the past 25 years. So higher values on the x axis mean that a country sources significantly from countries that have been sort of like less consistent or less stable in supplying to global markets in the past. And so to elaborate on the results with one intuitive example, I believe is the Netherlands here shown in dark blue is a country that sources mostly if not only from countries like France, Germany or Belgium that have shown a very high degree of consistency and exporting in the past. That is also true if to a lesser extent, for example, for Morocco, for which I will show just another slide in just a moment. While for example, countries like like Libya is a country that sources a lot of its food imports from countries that have in the past, according to the data that we have been somewhat less consistent in supplying to global market, which could be due to a variety of reasons such as crop failure or government policy aimed at curbing exports with the reasonable intention of securing supplies domestically. As just mentioned, I thought it could be helpful to briefly just zoom into one of the individual countries and look at the case of a single commodity for this type of analysis. So on this side, we see a case that I presented previously already. Morocco's wheat imports in in 2021. On the left axis, we see the shares held by individual suppliers in Morocco's imports of this commodity. While on the right side, in the right axis, we see the indicator that captures how consistent individual suppliers have been in supplying wheat grain to global markets in the past. And so I believe the key insight here is that also partly explains the overall result for Morocco that we saw in the previous slide is that France and Canada, from which Morocco sourced around 45% of its wheat imports in 2021, have shown a very consistent participation in global export markets in the past, and more consistent so than other key global suppliers of the same commodity. So just as an example, India, which is here on the far right, which did account for roughly 4% of globally exported wheat in 2021, making it an important player in that year has shown more variable export participation in global wheat exports over the past past two and a half decades. The final slide on this third question illustrates that we can also consider individual or country level factors that may affect how consistently a country's exporters can partake in global markets. And so this might be, for example, factors like the frequency of unusual climatic events, such as droughts or other catastrophes, but also government policy that may be aimed at restricting export participation of a country's traders, such as, for example, bands as considered in this slide. And so just as one example, on this slide, I'm showing a constructed indicator on the x-axis that captures sort of like revealed tendency of the countries in an important country's supplier network to use bands on important food items. And so again, key and I think intuitive result here is that the Netherlands, again, as an, you know, global benchmark or outside of region, comparison country, as a country that sources mostly from other suppliers that do not have a recent history of using export restrictions is less at risk of having to cope with interruptions and supplier relationships caused by such government policy and by its partners. So reaching the fourth and already the last question in this framework, may I also want to ask the following in the context of import related vulnerabilities? So how easily can a country switch to alternative sources in the case of shocks affecting current suppliers? And the intuition here is that sourcing only from a very small number of supplier countries could again be considered less problematic from the perspective of vulnerability. If traders in the importing country can easily switch to other source countries. And so for this work, this ability to switch to alternative suppliers in the case of shocks is broken down into two broad components. First is the question, well, what would it actually cost to switch to other source countries? And here it seems that there are different cost dimensions that should be considered when thinking about how costly it could be to switch from our current suppliers to alternative ones. Specifically, alternative suppliers may be further away in geographical terms than current ones. There may be more expensive to trade with. So there could be policy barriers, barriers or even things like language. And thirdly, their products could be more expensive. So for example, again, in the context of wheat, Ukrainian wheat, for example, is traded at lower prices than wheat originating from the from the United States or from France. And just to illustrate the relevance of these ideas with an intuitive and real life example, at the beginning of the war on Ukraine, Egypt, like many other countries, faced the challenge of replacing wheat imports from Ukraine. And back then it was considered to source from India. And in this context, again, just intuition, it's for example, noteworthy that the nautical distance or the shipping distance between Egypt's Port of Said and Mumbai is around twice the distance between the Port of Said and Odessa in Ukraine. So just as an example, in this context, replacing imports from one source with imports from an alternative one would have come at a amongst others at a cost in the form of higher shipping expenses. In the indicators developed in this framework that we're working on these different types of costs that might be associated with switching suppliers are expressed in the form of metrics at the level of the importer. And so the slide on the right side here only shows one example for these done an overall cost of switching indicator for aggregate food on the x axis values further on the rights indicate higher trade costs associated with switching suppliers. And the key results here that first in terms of agricultural trade costs, it would be more expensive for most Nina countries to switch suppliers compared to the Netherlands. And additionally, Nina countries that face higher cost of switching tend to tend to have less diversified sourcing relationships. The second question that I just quickly want to touch upon is the question about the country's financial ability to cope with higher cost of food imports. And the key issue for net food importing countries in this context seems to be whether they're sufficient foreign exchange earnings in convertible currency, so USD or euro, to pay for imported commodities. And so again, just for intuition, a rich oil export in country may have less difficulties in coping with rising food import bills. So in the context of thinking about or identifying vulnerabilities, one issue we should probably consider in a country assessment is the relationship between the value of a country's food and other essential non food imports on the one side, and the size of its foreign exchange earnings generated, for example, for merchandise exports, but also for other sources of external finance, such as remittances or through services exports like like inbound tourism. I would like to like to close with just a few ideas on how to potentially reduce food import related vulnerabilities in Nina countries. And I would hope that we can pick upon some of these later on when we have a discussion. First, I think a relatively distinct future of many Nina countries is that governments themselves are often very much involved in purchasing food commodities internationally, especially grains. So for example, in the case of Egypt, data for 2021, which suggests that the general authority for supply commodities, which is, in my understanding, Egypt's main body for purchasing wheat internationally accounted for around 40% of the country's total wheat imports in 2021 through its tender program. It's a one opportunity to reduce the cost of imported food and reduce vulnerabilities in the short to medium run would be to consider the specifications put forward in such public tenders, for example, with respect to quality requirements or terms of delivery. In a similar vein, exploring options to leverage private sector participation may also help reducing risks, for example, by getting more agents or more traders involved in importing activities. Second, I think where possible, exploring options to produce increased quantities domestically in a sustainable manner would be important. So as a very water scarce region, it would, for example, be prudent, I believe to consider more efficient irrigation schemes such as drop versus surface irrigation. And third, reducing food waste as well as losses along supply chains could improve over availability and thereby may have a mediating effect on prices. And finally, I think in the more long run, promoting more diversified diets, for example, through education campaigns or by reviewing the structure of existing substitute programs could not only more promote more diversified and healthier diets, but may also help in reducing import related vulnerabilities. For example, by increasing demand for products that have a different global production pattern than wheat. And with this, I'd like to share, I'd like to like to like to like to stop and close. Thank you very much for your attention. And I pass back to the moderator. Thank you. Thank you, Jakob, for this comprehensive presentation on the approach which has been framed around four questions you mentioned that are of relevance in the context of food import, food security and vulnerability, and as well as for your points on how to address food-imported vulnerabilities. We will now hear from Dr. Ahmed Diyab. Mr. Diyab is the minister's plenipotentiary at the permanent mission of Egypt to the World Trade Organization. He is the head of the economic and commercial office and chief trade negotiator in the mission. Mr. Diyab will share with us his views from a government perspective on important import related vulnerabilities and on how to improve resilience to shocks affecting imports. Please, Mr. Diyab, the floor is yours. Thank you very much for inviting me to this very important gathering and to be one of the speakers. Actually, I'll listen to what Jakob had to say and definitely what he mentioned or the presentation that he provided is actually very informative in terms of providing all kind of information relevant to the situation of net food importing, developing countries and LDCs, and especially in the main region, North Africa and specific. First, let's all agree that trade is very important and to contributing that its contribution to feeding the world is very important and no one can deny the importance of trade and its contribution to feeding the world. Some figures actually international trade in food and agriculture products increased from $500 billion in 2001 to reach over $1,610 billion in 2020. The growth in trade related, I mean in global trade and value has been fastest in some products, specific products actually, like all seeds, fruits, vegetables, meat and fish and this indicates that global food security, those products which constitute maybe the main dietary ingredients when it comes to food security in our countries are very important and global trade is increasing. So global trade in those products are very important and of course they will have their significant contribution to our food security. However, let me again share with you the fact that in a number of net food importing developing countries and less least developed countries food imports have been rising for various reasons. Part of which would be attributed to rapid population growth and in other countries could be attributed to a slow growth of domestic food production. In some countries, I mean the reason could be I mean attributed to both reasons or to both dimensions increase in population as well as decrease or slow growth of domestic food production. This is an important dimension that we have to consider when we get to talk about the strategies we have to employ when it comes to trade and its relation to food security. Again, for net food importing developing countries imports are of crucial importance. The level of imports and its ratio in the importing countries food security basket we believe should be based on an economic model that would provide insight into the principal structure relationship that would underlie the determination of food imports and their contribution in the country's aggregate food system and food security strategies. So having said so allow me to share with you, I mean how we think when it comes to developing or putting together the economic model and the variables that this model should include in order for us to define how important is food imports in our strategy in aggregate structure when it comes to food security and we have counted like maybe seven or eight variables or components of this model. First of all as alluded to earlier by Jacob in his presentation the percentage or the proportion of food imports with respect to the total food total import expenditures and of course this shall have its ramifications and implications on other imports. You allocate a big part of your scarce foreign reserve or foreign currency to buying food from Edward or importing food for I mean food security purposes then this will come at the top of financing other imports which are equally important when it comes to global to our policy objectives that are to pursue like development other development objects are objectives like industrialization and so on and so forth. And I will give you an example. In Egypt for example we have $89 billion worth of imports out of which 25 to 28 billion this is an estimate for this year are expected to be spent on food imports and other agriculture strategic agriculture and food products mainly wheat vegetable oil, sugar, meat. This is about 28 to 30 percent of our aggregate import bill. I think Jacob referred to this earlier as the important country's financial ability. The second part or the second item or variable there we should consider when we get to maybe put together this economic model to determine the level of imports and their significance. Has to do with the with the idea again that was explained earlier by Jacob that most of our food imports are almost universally done under the control of a state authority. The Ministry of Supply and Internal Trade from Egypt actually is taking care of this 40 percent as alluded to by Jacob earlier of our imports of wheat imports purchased via this or through this authority the General Authority for Supply Commodities even though they do that at market prices. So again the level of imports have to be related to the government policies that we employed with respect to purchasing food from a food and wheat is the case that we actually definitely wheat is very important that's why we have to source it through this organization. The third variable has to do with the food imports that are being provided on the constitutionary terms like food aid for example. Of course food aid might come at the account of local production and this could put local production at risk putting farmers at risk farmers incomes at risk incomes at risk and of course this has its own ramifications and implications on of course the internal context as far as food security is concerned. However the case of Egypt food aid is minimal and related to certain sectors and activities so we don't count really on food aid as a source of I mean to address our food security concerns. The fourth dimension that we have to take on board when we get to when we talk about this economic model has to do with decisions on the internal pricing of food crops to both producers and consumers because this is likely to reflect the possibilities for substitution in both I mean production and consumption. Wheat is actually given a very high priority it's at trance high on the latter of priorities for the food crisis that we are facing nowadays and as well to the importance of wheat in our day-to-day regime and intake. The fifth element has to do with economic and geopolitical conditions in trading partners which are of significance importance. 77 percent of Egypt's wheat is imported from Ukraine and Russia. Supply shocks supply chain shocks and bottlenecks that emerged emerged after the crisis this crisis or the conflict erupted through that the concentration of imports import destination is a challenge that we have to deal with. Now Egypt has diversified we have made a strategic decision to diversify our sources. India was included to the list of country of origin for where we can import wheat. Variable number six is the degree of economic integration and openness to trade in both importing and exporting countries. Egypt is very open to trade we don't have I mean we have we we don't have measures to restrict exports or imports that could go beyond I mean emergency situations. We deployed export restrictions after COVID-19 and for a limited number of products then we had to evade them we had we had to stop them because we found that they are not helpful or they might not be helpful they have been helpful for the time they were deployed and after which we decided to maybe revert courses shift gears and open the market again. The other variable variable number seven is the degree of consistency and this is what very what's very well explained by Jacob in this presentation. The degree of consistency and concentration versus diversification of the supplier and the ability of course to switch to other sources, source countries. The challenges are enormous, currency challenges, language challenges, shipping challenges and definitely this is something that we take in consideration when we get to design the economic model and factor in the I mean trade or imports as a pillar in our food security strategy. Then health related challenges the pandemic has revealed a lot of challenges that we were we had to deal with. I mentioned something about export restrictions that we had to apply at a certain point in time with respect to certain products but again there are lessons from the pandemic that I believe should be taken into account when we get to design our future system food strategies and food security strategies. Actually those structural relations between the variables should be able to describe how food imports are determined and how their significance in a country's food security strategy and related policies especially in the most vulnerable and sensitive countries to food insecurity problems like the countries in the middle region and just to give you I will share some some some figures here to show the significance of the challenge we are facing in the middle region maybe in Africa in general and in Egypt and specific. Today despite the fact that between 20 and 2000 and 2016 low and middle income countries share of word exports agriculture exports increased from 29 percent to 39 percent and the share of imports increased from 21 percent to 32 percent but we can still see a pattern where net food importing developing countries and LDCs as a group are increasingly dependent on food imports over the past decade for example their combined annual imports of agriculture and food products have increased more than five folds from 8.7 billion dollars in 2000 up to 55 million dollars in 2021. LDCs joint agriculture at least developed countries joint agriculture trade deficit has substantially increased to exceed 29 billion dollars. The second fact is that Africa as a continent the continent of Africa imported about 85 percent of its food from outside the continent in 2018 this amount is expected to reach 110 billion dollars in 2025. Serial prices have increased maybe doubled over the last couple of years self-sufficiency in ratios for the various agriculture products exhibit an importance I mean the importance of imports for food security of a country for example in the case of Egypt for example I would use some figures when it comes to wheat our self-sufficiency ratio is 44 percent maize 56 percent red meat 52 percent beans and legumes 40 percent oils 5 percent feed 25 to 30 percent. So this means that during the period 2017 to 2021 Egypt's imports of wheat came from two major as we mentioned from two major exporters Russian Federation and Ukraine which both constituted about 77 percent of our wheat imports 85 percent of the maize imports came from Argentina Brazil and Ukraine 84 percent of Egypt's imports of some flowers originated in Russia and Ukraine 92 percent of Egypt's imports of frozen meat of bovine animal came from India and Brazil. Then we have to really put again on the table the idea of what will happen if prices increase we found out studies of course found out that carried out in different in different in different organizations maybe in Egypt as well found out that changes in what wheat prices have important implications widespread effects in Egypt it was estimated that a 10 percent increase in what prices would lead to a 5 percent increase in consumer prices. So now we can do like the calculations and see that see the implications of a the price when they increase from $230 to $480 and implications this should have on on consumers. Now I believe it's clear that having said so I mean and and gave you this they shared with you this those figures it's clear that agriculture trade is of significance importance to Egypt but trading itself this is the the fact that we all the lesson lesson learned is that trade by itself does not automatically enhance food security and basically for a country like Egypt which is a large a very big import of wheat for example which is a very important component of our dietary intake. So we had to think of maybe other options to diversify our sources to maybe rely basically on increasing our local production and diversifying sources expanding enhancing productivity all sort of things that would help us address our food security challenges and we found out that those challenges necessitated that I mean this does a diversification of supply as an additional policy to reduce risk for to food security and we found out that this as I mentioned shall include the diversification of production and market resilience it requires structural transformation in the supply side through targeted investments in certain in market infrastructure for example and in human capital together with government interventions to reduce institutional deficiencies such as lack of information employing new technologies may be working with international partners and trade partners to get the maybe what we call the capacity building need address our capacity building needs needs training transfer knowledge needs to address I mean this kind of like deficiencies that we have in the market but we were mindful of the fact that when we get to design our design our food security model we need to design this and take into account the non-market considerations of the importing country concerned this has to do of course with the subsistence farmers this has to do of course with the level of income of farmers the income of consumers and of course the allocation of this among different goods maybe food in specific and and their and food security comes to individual and to household together so I would say that for us to diversify our sources we thought as well of maybe the dimension of strengthening our original trade relations we are negotiating we have been successfully negotiating I mean agreements with our trade partners in the region the Arab world and the Africans and focusing on the regional trade we actually putting our weight on the African free continental free area the great African free trade area continental free trade area and it actually shall provide opportunities for the members its members 54 members to become more independent to address their food security challenges another strategy to diversify our food supply and resilience to external food market trucks is to strengthen the competitiveness of our domestic agriculture and food sector by increasing production and enhancing local productivity as I told you before as I mentioned before higher productivity actually would increase farmers incomes and provide food at lower prices to consumers the governments our my government is acting to attract investments that would bring new production technologies into those I mean in certain sectors it's in certain areas and of course in a manner consistent with our food security strategy it's imperative to ensure that competition in the agricultural map market is very important and the degree of such competition will determine the possibility of small order subsistence farmers to participate in global value chain markets as more important and this actually is an area where we study up sorry I am interrupting you would it be possible for you to wrap up sure yeah I'm about I'm about okay thanks thank you so much I'm just what I want to say that when it comes to SPS for example measures and trade facilitative measures we are working hard with our trade partners and in that front as well for we our trade partners are very reliable but the real reliability depends on the global situation as effect the factors that I mentioned earlier on in my intervention so I'm not going to talk about this part I'm going to skip it because as I actually referred to this earlier and now with respect to the question regarding how easy can a country switch to alternative sources in the case of shocks affecting current suppliers we believe that in the case of shocks affecting current supplies it is not easy to switch to alternative sources noting that the importation of agricultural goods is in many cases subject to the assessment of technical and cemetery fit to cemetery conditions in the exporting country itself so such an assessment is important to avoid the introduction of certain diseases pasts in addition to the I mean in addition to taking into account the logistical constraints of the importing country in this case Egypt of course where we actually we have been in the case of Egypt would say that we have currently we currently have 22 approved origins of wheat after the outbreak of the Ukraine war the war on Ukraine Egypt added only one new origin that is India to the list it is not worthy that it is just before the outbreak of the of the of the world that we were very limited in terms of origins of wheat suppliers furthermore and finally this is the very last thing I'm going to say I would say that prices and transport issue costs are of major importance and they are a determined factor which would really hinder or open our abilities why the when it comes to diversifying our sources I'll stop here and thank you very much for giving me this opportunity thank you very much Mr. Diab for these pertinent insights and for addressing the questions Yakov mentioned in his presentation from a government perspective now we are going to listen Mr. Ahmad Mukhtar. Ahmad Mukhtar is working as a senior economist and leading the strategy and policy team at a failed regional office for new east and north Africa based in Cairo Egypt he will provide us with some remarks on import related vulnerabilities and on how to improve resilience to shock or affecting imports please Ahmad the floor is yours thank you very much Benad and a very good afternoon it's good to be back to my let's say previous home and the series that was started I mean we're very brief because a lot has been said by Jacob and Mr. Diab so I just build on these points now we know that there is a vulnerability in our region that's established what are the solutions there are two types of solutions that people could see the self-sufficiency which unfortunately a lot of people are still trying to do and second is the trade in our way now self-sufficiency we know that there is a limitation there is certain resource endowments that you have to be cognizant of and we cannot go beyond that although there are still some productivity improvement margins in some of the countries and in that if we adopt a regional solution for security we still have some pockets that could be potential suppliers but when it comes to trade I want to distinguish that most of the times what we have seen is that it is not exactly a trade solution it is a finance solution that countries apply to mitigate this vulnerability finance solution means if it is expensive I'll buy from the other market or other suppliers and you know even if it is a bit more expensive I can subsidize and we will go on now what is that are we using the trade potential in a way that is an ideal for example we have sources that have more resilience we have sources that are closer we have sources where we have the harmonization as I said they have just said I mean in case of let's say Egypt or some of the other countries it is not easy to establish for a new country to be a source of supply I mean look at the requirements that we have at the time of imports recently you know work done by our investment center and the trade division showed the huge diversity or difference in the procedures that we adopt at the time of importation and that in itself I don't want to call it NTM but of course it's one of the challenges that we are facing even you know the gluten requirements have six types of criteria in our region now so the point is that are we using trade intelligently and in that in particular are we using the potential of inter-regional trade which is unfortunately not true are we thinking about having a regional trade solution that is also something that we still need to work on there are interestingly quite a number of regional let's say platforms the League of Arab States the Arab organization for agriculture development we at FAO and the different UN agencies are also supporting escrow for example but the results somehow are not let's say optimal for the time being so what could be done let's say we have already heard a lot so not much for me to say but first is of course the diversification of import sources that have been said by the both speakers and I said the upside it is not easy agreed so that is very true but we have to do that I think this recent shock and shown us in case of Egypt you are probably better off because you have the biggest leading quarter you have no established sources but look at Lebanon for example did they have options to exercise after this crisis or you know some other country so when we talk about region we are really vulnerable from that perspective so we have to diversify then you know harnessing this regional potential but by that I think somehow we have to start thinking about establishing a regional food security approach where we think what could be done within the region where we think about these strategic reserves and these types of things which happens not really that idea but ASEAN the rice mechanism gives us one of the example GCC is trying to do a lot on that and then you know moving on to the next one which is food waste and loss food loss and waste which is quite significant in our region but I think that would also need a bit of long-term policy efforts particularly on consumer awareness last two points one I would say that the policy making on the food security in the region could be improved by having much more evidence and data-based policy or a bit more scientific and economic oriented rather than politics oriented and that I would link a little bit to this repurposing the subsidies or let's say having this fiscal pressures that the governments are having in terms of the food security now we totally understand the political sensitivities when it comes to some of the subsidies for example given to the bread prices understandable I mean this is one issue that is very difficult to touch upon but are we really efficient in all of the fiscal support who are in the country sectors that is a question that we have to ask for example after this recent crisis you know many of the countries have started and may be probably invested the Afghan also enlightened us even Egypt said to expand you know wheat production in a certain area by a certain percentage now as an outsider we may not know all of the information but one may ask that if Egypt is earning six billion dollars plus from the body culture would that be more profitable from an economic perspective or having the wheat that would be more profitable because one is the political to see you know let's say this stuff and other is economic so we have to find a balance on the trade off between the economy and politics as much as possible as I said we cannot ignore the political realities particularly in our region which are very very sensitive so repurposing subsidies I would say is the last point that I would like to leave for the discussion and we have to think where are we spending I will find existing this global market prices and not passing it on to the consumers is a good strategy but that is a short term strategy once again should we not have a mechanism that we can start using these cushions or these you know balloons that are getting smaller and smaller gradually rather than you know having the burst of value once and then pass it on to the consumers in a very very let's say hard manner so I'll stop here because these were just points I wanted to discuss because I know that we are just 15-20 minutes away but probably during discussions we can cover thank you thank you very much Ahmad for these interesting points and your reflections on possible solutions through to address those vulnerabilities our last panelist today is Mr. Kibrom Abei he is country program leader and research fellow in the development strategy and governance division at International Food Policy Research Institute in Cairo today he will also share with us his views on the topic please Mr. Abei the floor is yours thank you thank you for all the speakers who have said really that the ground for for further discussion Yaqob had comprehensively described it the landscape of trade and its implication on vulnerability to shocks so I don't have much to add but I just want to add one piece of information related to what vulnerability to trade shocks means in actual example and then I'll provide a bit of policy options some of them related to what had been already covered so let's let's take the the Russian Ukraine crisis which has disrupted with trade and let's let's see an example let's see this as an example to see the cost of diversification or the cost of vulnerability to trade and here we brought a data showing the amount of the quantity of wheat imported in the MENA region a cumulative amount across four years and in each month and you can see that generally the first figure showed that generally trade continued with with a slight effect you can see that the 2020 figure up until July is slightly below some of the years but still trade continued and countries managed to import what they used to import by diversifying from different sources for instance Egypt added a few other sources and some other countries added other sources but what does that mean to the import bill and you can see that when we see that the cost the value of import you can see that the cost of import had increased significantly for instance compared to last year it had increased by 50 percent and this is one example to understand the cost of the cost of vulnerability to trade shocks so you can see that up until July countries have incurred 50 percent more more cost to import to be compared to what had been the kid last year and the year before so this is one example both to show the a bit of the reserve resilience of trade but also the cost of vulnerability and the cost of relaying on very few countries and the implicit implication of diversifying or adding more and more market so that that's just one example let's come back to what are the policy options to greatest vulnerability to trade shocks and I'm I'm happy that most of these points have been covered and I think Jacob covered some of them and I think the second speaker Dr. Ahmad covered a good example of how to diversify food import and export and one way is to diversify to somehow integrate trade within the regions within the the neighboring countries and exploit the comparative advantage that different countries have got in terms of particularly within Africa and within the Arab world I think a second point that I would like to highlight and probably something that had not been covered is the need to rethink about consumer policies and the need to adapt policies that incurred production of healthy and sustainable dates diets so if you compare the amount of food consumption in the region it is about 150 kilo per per person and that's almost twice of the average the global average with consumption so so that what that means is there is a potential to somehow diversify with consumption and move from energy dense or calorie rich diet like dominated by we to either more diversified and perhaps even how the diets this is important partly because the region had also what we call the double modern of my nutrition where it's not only under nutrition or it's not only food insecurity but there is also a significant amount of obesity and overweight which is closely associated with consumption of with and with products of course there is a lot of discussion by different countries on how to increase local production or domestic production and I exactly echo what Ahmad said and instead of making political decisions better on what is what is useful in terms of ensuring for security but also it's good to also consider other considerations particularly whether these are economically viable sustainable particularly given that there is lumi climate change which is scarcity that is affecting the region what to say that is of course there is a possibility for expanding production in some countries but some countries may benefit from ensuring sustainable production rather than expanding more and more protection let me stop here and finally I would like to emphasize also what Ahmad said the value of research data to inform food security policies in this settings and that's I cannot emphasize that enough let me stop here and then yeah I'm happy to hear if there are comments and talks thank you very much Mr. Abay for your point in relation to the cost of vulnerability to trade shocks and possible pulse options to address them they were really insightful we are almost approaching to the end of our webinar but I think we can we can get one question or one more like two questions if the time permits I see that there is one question I would like to ask it right now I would like to read it it says like this we have heard a lot about import-related vulnerabilities and diversification in this session is such import-related vulnerability also shaped by the relationship of a country with the global economy through other channels so maybe we can start with Jakob to address this question and later on we can we can provide the opportunity to our with other panelists to refer to that question as well so Jakob, Laurie is yours thanks so much maybe I just share a few thoughts on on that particular question and I immediately pass on to the other panelists I think yeah so the focus very much in the current situation is mostly on the supply side on imports or food imports commodity imports what I think is presumably as important as diversification and securing import supplies is to think about how we finance that and then I think in that context the relationship of a country through other channels becomes rather important so for example with foreign exchange earnings which are relevant to source food imports we might want to think about the somewhat complicated situation of some of the NENA countries currently with tourism due to COVID-19 still being very much subdued that has not recovered since COVID-19 the idea that some countries might be highly reliant on a few commodities for exports as well and maybe a little bit of a different thought is that the notion that in some NENA countries for example Morocco or Jordan currently a high fertilizer price may actually also you know sort of like bolster or ameliate some of the foreign exchange needs that are currently occurring should I pass on yes sure is any of our panelists would like to take the floor to reflect more on that issue if you allow me but I'm very briefly I think in the long term we have to understand that we cannot unfortunately at the regional level reduce the imports so we have to manage the imports that's the point now in managing the imports there are many aspects of course sustainability in financing the imports is one but secondly the solutions for example managing the food loss and waste managing the storage efficiency I mean recently we saw that some of the countries in our region were saying that we should have a food storage a capacity of 12 or 18 months now I don't think you know that maybe let's say the efficient solution or response to that but maybe a much more smart solutions towards this storage would be probably an important thing and one last thing is that by deploying the innovation and technology we still have a margin for improving productivity in many of the countries that we are lacking for the time being although we have less water resources and others but there is still a lot of margin for improving productivity thank you would another one would like to take the floor if not we have another question in the chat box so that I can go for go for it if you are okay so the question is what role do national food reserves play in regard to food import vulnerability sorry what role do national food reserves play in regard to food import vulnerability and mitigating supply shocks so the floor is open to our panelists who would like to go first I think I mean the best would be muster the arm but from a country you know who managed very well this short by the deserve but I would just say for safety wishes to speak all I would say that yes it does provide you some cushion but as I just mentioned in my previous intervention this is not the solution you know this is not the only solution we have seen a surge in enhancing the storage of the reserves capacity by some countries but in the longer term that would not be sustainable from a financial perspective and even from the produce perspective I mean you can't keep it wait for 18 months or you know some other stuff but I leave it to Vesad Yavar any other participants from the countries if you wish to speak Yes Mr. Diyap the floor is yours I think you are you are not made you need to now thank you am I audible now yeah so yeah with respect to the question that I have here how do what role do national food reserves play in regard to food import vulnerability mitigating supply shocks and I'll give this I mean I'll give you I'll tell you some share with you from some foods that we developed after the I mean after the conflict that had that and the implication of the conflict on our food security and prices of course the conflict is an emergency situation that followed an emergency situation and I'm referring to the pandemic price hikes I mean supply chain bottlenecks speculative pricing speculative markets and all sorts of disturbances have happened at the same time then we had to look at the reserves that we had and the stock that we had then we decided that well in emergency situations this stock we need to build our stock and I mean it's very important to have stock and of course this should be proportionate to the of course to the products that we are would depend on the population prices and everything again there are a lot of variables that we have to consider so having stocks is very important when it comes to food security having stocks is very important to import vulnerability having stocks is very important to mitigating supply shocks the important question here is how could we build I mean those stocks and to what extent shall we maintain stocks and have them with us under our I mean the governments of course control to maybe address and and face full security challenges from that perspective that we may be allow me to refer to the discussions that we had recently at the WTO with respect to the net food important developer country decision and how to help them face food insecurity in emergency situation the discussions are going on and I believe we will be able to agree some sort of short medium and long term solutions in the context of the committee on agriculture regular session and as well in the special session when it comes to food security of course we're going to base our sovereign idea of having stocks internally to face the problems that they may happen thank you as we are almost at the end of our webinar I must now close the PNA session I would like to thank you all the participants and all our panelists for their comments as well as like the questions from from the chat box now I would like to give the floor to Mr. Dominic Bujon and the director of the FLDS and office in Geneva and Mr. Bujon the floor is yours for for closing remarks well thank you thank you very much Pina and it has been I must say another very very interesting session today we need we have heard about risk and challenges associated with import related vulnerabilities and their impact on food security we also have very clear view share on and perspective on how to improve resilience to shocks affecting imports and I would really like to express to express our very sincere gratitude to all the speakers we had today for their for their excellent presentation and intervention in the way they they responded to the question as well as you would already know FAO as part of our work we assist members in multiple ways by providing evidence-based information this came out the need for such information came out in several discussion today and in depth analysis we also assist in terms of capacity development and we facilitate neutral dialogue away from the negotiating table in this period FAO Geneva and actually Ahmed who spoke on the session today in collaboration with the market and trade division started these dialogue series back in 2018 and this year we are pleased that we have been able to to hold eight sessions on a range of topics including soaring for fertilizer prices the role of trade in agriculture system transformation digital tools for agriculture trade amongst many while featuring presentations based on FAO knowledge and analysis on the topics on the topic in focus these sessions also provided an opportunity to discuss the potential implications of development in the agriculture and trade and food security nexus and identify ways to address challenges and opportunities this year we have also included the topic of fisheries in our series in collaboration with the fisheries and aquaculture division at FAO at quarter with a view to enhance the understanding of the current state of global fisheries and aquaculture and inform members and partners on the existing and emerging FAO knowledge tools and technical assistance available in this regard moving forward we plan to cover important subjects such as the implementation of the new WTO agreement on fisheries subsidies the transformation of aquatic systems and the promotion of the responsible and sustainable management of aquatic food systems FAO in Geneva will continue we have really committed to continue to organize these dialogues in 2023 on the timely topics of agriculture and fisheries trade in collaboration with the market and trade division at the quarter as well as the fisheries and aquaculture division and of course we are extremely grateful to our colleagues Jacob being one of the representatives of the market and trade division and we are grateful to them we'll be announcing the teams and date of the upcoming meeting in the in due course that in early January and in concluding I would like really to thank you all and again our colleagues in the market and trade division as well as in the fisheries division and of course my dear colleagues in the FAO office in Geneva for organizing today seven and I would like also to thank you all the participants for participating today in the Geneva agricultural trade talks and I think now is getting time to wish you all a very happy new year and a good early day season thank you very much and bye bye