 Good morning, afternoon or evening depending on your time zones and welcome to the first issue of the FAO in Geneva nutrition dialogue series jointly organized with the Food and Nutrition Division of FAO in collaboration with the FAO Brussels Liaison Office. My name is Dominique Burgeon and I'm the Director of the FAO Liaison Office with the UN in Geneva and I will be moderating today's session. Before starting our event allow me to share some details regarding the logistics and housekeeping for this virtual session even if I'm sure that by now you are all experts in that. This webinar will be in English only with no interpretation. It will be recorded and will later be available on our website along with the various related resources relevant to this session. It is scheduled to last for about one hour and 15 minutes. Since this is an introduction to our nutrition dialogue series, the high level launch, there will be no Q&A session today. We have reserved some time towards the end of the webinar for potential short interventions from permanent missions and partners whom we kindly asked to let us know in advance using the Q&A module, not the regular chat box. Kindly state your name and organization or institution and we will try to accommodate some requests. All participants are encouraged to make suggestions also using the Q&A module on how they would like this dialogue series to evolve. Issues they might want to be discussed or more general comments you might have. If you have any problem or technical issues please send a message in the chat box to ask for support. That's all for our skipping and I would like now to take a moment to briefly introduce our distinguished speakers today. We are honored and pleased to have with us today a number of distinguished speakers whom will convey the perspective of their respective organization on the issue of nutrition and more specifically on how it relates to the transformation of agriculture systems. We will hear remarks from Mr. Maximo Touero, Chief Economist of FFRO, Ms. Lynette Neufeld, Director of the Food and Nutrition Division of FFRO, Ms. Gerda Verburg, Sun Movement Coordinator and UN Assistant Secretary General, Mr. Chen Yanjie, Counselor at the Permanent Mission of China to the UN Geneva, Dr. Jane Wambugo, Assistant Director of Agriculture in the Minister of Agriculture of Kenya, Mr. Wilhelm Olpoff, Deputy Head of the Sustainable Agriculture System and Fisheries Unit of the European Commission, Dr. Francesco Branca, Director of the Nutrition and Food Safety Department of WHO, Dr. Lawrence Adat, Executive Director of Gain, Mr. Kuhn DeKouni, Economist and Policy Analyst in the Trade and Agriculture Directorate of OECD and finally, we'll have some closing remarks from my colleague, Mr. Rashad Del Rafaaji, Director of the FAO Liaison Office in Brussels. Thank you all very much for agreeing to be with us today. Unfortunately, one of our speakers, Dr. Wilopes from Mexico, National Center for Disease Control, has had a last minute emergency change in his agenda and won't be able to be with us today. Excellency is distinguished delegates and participants, your colleagues. Before moving on to our distinguished speakers, I would like to spend a few minutes setting out why we have focused this dialogue series on agriculture system transformation to support healthy diets while also supporting development outcomes across the SDGs. It is not well established, as you know, that unhappy diets are a major burden on human health and development. Without focusing on food as a critical contributor to better nutrition, we will not achieve the sustainable development goals. With the latest addition of the SOFI, the state of food and nutrition security in the world, showing that an estimated 22% of children under 5 are affected by stunting and 6.7% by wasting, nearly 30% of women affected by anemia and adult obesity increasing in all regions, there is definitely and clearly a lot of work to do. What excites us at FAO on this series are the numerous possibilities of addressing this problem through agriculture system transformations. This is at the heart of FAO strategic framework 2231, which calls for better nutrition, better production, better nutrition, better environment and a better life. And I ensure key partners in this endeavor such as WHO, Sun, Gain and others are equally interested in that. We know these possibilities exist because they are being developed, tested and implemented every day. They are out there in the field programs and national and subnational policies. It is the purpose of this open-ended dialogue series to share examples of these practices and policies from around the world. We believe they will provide a rich source of learning to inspire us all to make the most of the opportunities to transform agriculture system for better diets and nutrition. The series actually aims to increase awareness of this concrete example to inform policy dialogue and feed policymaking while strengthening cross-sectoral dialogue and collaboration between members, partners, Geneva and Brussels-based organizations and entities and beyond. Importantly too, the dialogues will show that making change in a great food system has the potential not only to improve nutrition, but that designing the intervention and policies common in an intentional way also supports other development outcomes such as resilience to shocks, environmental sustainability and economic development. With that, I now hand over to Maxime Autorero, FAO chief economist who will speak about better nutrition as a core element of FAO's work. Maxime Autorero is yours. Thank you very much Dominique and thank you all for being here. Excellencies and colleagues. It's great to see you all again back together in this such an important topic for us. So as we know the progress to meet a great nutrition goals is insufficient. Today the world is in a very different place to where it was seven years ago when it committed to the goal of ending hunger, food insecurity and all forms of malnutrition by 2030. Yet progress towards ensuring access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food for all people all year around or to eradicating all forms of malnutrition has been slow. In fact, today there is no single country which is on track to meet all global nutrition targets and the situation is getting even worse because of what we are facing with the war in Ukraine. Close of one in five children less than five years of age are estimated 45 million suffer from wasting both highly concentrated in low and lower middle Indian countries. At the same time overweight and obesity are on all the rise in all the regions in the world and the challenge that we are facing today because of the increasing prices will of course deteriorate the quality of the diets of people. Nearly 2.37 billion people did not have access to adequate food in 2020 and increased of 320 million people in just one year. The high cost of healthy diets and persistently high levels of poverty and income inequality which was growing and has grown substantially during COVID-19 I normally show a graph of Sub-Saharan Africa and how inequality has increased across all countries with very few exceptions is alarming and this continues to keep healthy diets out of reach for around 3 billion people in 2020 but we expect this number to increase even more in 2021 in the news of the publication. New projections confirm that hunger will not be eradicated by 2030 unless something changed substantially what we called bold actions and this needs to be taken to accelerate the progress at least to put things on the path and on track and especially actions to address inequality and access to food. Conflict, climate variability and extremes and economic slowdowns and downturns are the major drivers slowing down the progress particularly where inequality is high and as I mentioned before the COVID-19 pandemic made the pathways towards achieving sustainable development goals even steeper. Radiating poverty and hunger the first and the second SDG and for us SDG 10 also inequalities are key to an essential for meeting all other goals and ensuring healthy diets for all is part of our commitment of SDG 1, 2 and 10 and everyone deserves more than just sufficient food for energy needs. Everyone everywhere deserves a healthy diet that enables them to live healthy and productive life. As development economies I cannot overemphasize the interlinguages between these goals. Zero hunger and healthy diets for all integrates and links food security, nutrition and sustainable climate resilient agriculture. To make progress on sustainable development it is therefore essential to make progress on nutrition. Similarly achieving this goal will depend on progress across many of the other SDGs including those aimed at clean water and sanitation renewable energy education and gender equality. The SDGs are individuals. Now our agri-food system transformation needs and is required at this point in time and is a necessary condition for changing current trends and accelerating progress towards the meeting the SDGs and global nutrition goals. Transforming agri-food systems is essential to achieve food security, improve nutrition and put healthy diets for each within each for all. When transformed with greater resilience to major drivers including those mentioned already food systems can provide affordable healthy diets that are sustainable and inclusive and become powerful driving force towards ending hunger food insecurity and nutrition in all its forms. We have been working intensively in the report that we did with other agencies on the repurposing of subsidies and the huge opportunity that we have there to make the incentives towards supporting commodities that will allow us to have the different groups of foods that we need to achieve healthy diets. Nutrition is one of the greatest development opportunities in the world today but better data and evidence to inform actions more coherent policies in many sectors including food and agriculture, health among others and increased investments are needed. This nutrition in Geneva series represents an important opportunity for dialogue to identify and address barriers that are constraining the progress for the greater collaboration among those working with a common focus on nutrition. Central to that focus is the need to inform coherent action on agri-food system transformation. In recognition of this challenge, nutrition is now core of FAO work. As you know the new strategic framework of FAO has four better, better production, better nutrition better environment and better life, leaving no one behind and the sequencing has a logic. We need to produce and to produce the diverse sets of foods to be able to have better nutrition but we also need to be sustainable and to be care of our environment so that we are in a sustainable world. These four betters are the aspiration and organizing principles of FAO work for the coming decade. Organizing FAO's work in the manner that represents a bolder step towards breaking down the silos that have kept the food, agriculture, nutrition communities working in parallel rather than in synchrony. A factor that has constrained progress in nutrition for too long. This change places nutrition as a central to the achievement of FAO mandate with implications to our normative data related and country implementation work. Colleagues, today we observe a food crisis or a potential food crisis because of what is happening in the war in Ukraine. Prices were already up even before the war in Ukraine but if you look historically the problem in the 70s was related to starchy foods to staples to cereals. If we look to 2007 to 2008 again the problem was related to cereals. If we look at 2011 the problem again was related to cereals and if we look today we are again showing that our cereal export world structure is still very concentrated and any chop will create a problem. But an interesting question to ask is is just cereals the problem? We are not looking at more healthy diets we are not looking at more diverse food and more availability of other food groups, not just cereals. So that opens I think a great opportunity on this terrible situation that we are living to start rethinking what we need to be focusing when we are talking of a more resilient world. If we want a more resilient world we want to have better access to healthy diets at least to the least cost ones. And for that we need to change completely the way of thinking we are concerned that there is a choke in the reduction of cereal production but also looking at other commodities and trying to see how we can have access across the world to different diversities of food. For sure cereals are important but there are other different food groups that are required to be able to achieve healthy diets. The potential power of collaboration cannot be overemphasized. We welcome this dialogue series as an opportunity to share our aspirations evidence and experience here from members and other organizations on the challenges they face and the progress they have made towards our comment goal of transforming agri-food systems. We are pleased to see so many here and look forward to a fruitful dialogue and it's a real pleasure to me to see all these friends and colleagues here and all of you so that we can start really moving into action and looking at the big picture because we cannot be deviated by the short chokes that we are facing. We need not to change our vision on the agri-food system transformation but at the same time of course trying to increase the resilience for us so that we can face similar chokes in the future which I hope won't have but we know that they could happen in the future. Thank you very much. Back to you Dominic. Thank you very much Maximo for your intervention and for reminding us that better nutrition indeed offers one of the greatest development opportunities in the world today as well as I think of course the importance of interlinkages interaction and trade-offs in our effort to achieve the SDGs and of course positioning that in the current context the current situation that we are facing today. Thank you again Maximo and I know wish to give the floor to Miss Linnett Neufel, the director of FAO's Food and Nutrition Division will say a few words on FAO's nutrition strategy. Dear Linnett, the floor is yours. Thank you, thank you. As you've heard already, nutrition is now central to the achievement of FAO's mandate and now explicitly articulated as one of our poor results areas along with better production better environment and a better life. We will hold ourselves accountable to the pledges made at nutrition for growth, the Infragis Summit and the Food Systems Summit and as part of the UN Decade of Action for nutrition to provide guidance for that work and the achievement of those commitments FAO's members approved in 2021 our vision and strategy for FAO's work in nutrition covering the years 2021 to 2025. To achieve better nutrition this better nutrition pillar we must leverage all entry points across agri-food systems to enable people to access and consume healthy diet. The strategy articulates our core areas of work in nutrition better generation consolidation, accessibility and use of data and evidence to identify and inform actions convening and dialogue to enhance policy coherence and collective action across key areas that are currently constraining progress and accompanied by action to strengthen capacity and governance, increase concrete and achievable commitments. Through this work we will bring a nutrition lens to increase the potential of all areas of FAO's work to contribute to healthy diets. In agriculture, working with those who are concerned about soils in fisheries, in trade in the climate and in all of the other areas that entail FAO's areas of work. To do this we collaborate closely with UN agencies in addition to our internal colleagues within the FAO and across all regions. But we work closely with UN agencies and many stakeholders at global, regional, national and grassroots levels that share our common agenda for accelerating progress to achieving healthy diets for all. With a particular focus of those who live in situations of vulnerability. Without healthy diets we will not achieve many of the SDG targets or global nutrition targets as has been mentioned. As Maximo also mentioned, we more than ever need this evidence informed actions across agri-food systems because of the urgent needs that are now coming to light in result of the COVID situation and the situations of conflict in the Ukraine. Agri-food systems encompass everything from ecosystems inputs to production, processing, transport, storage, food environments and ultimately consumption in the disposable of food. A plethora of factors influence these systems including environmental, climate, technology, infrastructure, political and economic, sociocultural and demographic. Currently many of these factors do not favor healthy diets and on the contrary many work in the opposite direction evidenced by the continued increase in the prevalence of overweight and obesity across all regions and the stalled progress to address many forms, most forms of under nutrition. As was mentioned already, 3 billion people cannot afford a healthy diet from modeled estimates but in many contexts and in many cell groups particularly those vulnerable to malnutrition we don't know what people are eating. We do not have that data and we do not have the data around the unique contextual factors that drive dietary choice in population. This is woefully scarce across almost all countries in the world and something that FAO is committed to addressing as part of our nutrition strategy. We are also committed as we mentioned to identify those entry points that allow specific actions to reach populations strengthening the linkages for example between production at local context and school feeding program where we know both the need for better diets exist and the opportunities exist for linking agriculture food systems production distribution to where those foods are consumed. FAO's work covers most of the drivers that limit nutrition across all of those different contexts and bringing a nutrition lens to all of these areas of work is urgently needed and a solid commitment at FAO. The many national dialogues and other activities surrounding the UN food system summit last year brought many of these issues and opportunities to the forefront in a manner unprecedented to date. We have the opportunity now to continue and accelerate that momentum. FAO's food and nutrition team have come together with the Geneva Brussels offices to convene this nutrition in Geneva dialogue series. Member states and many organizations in both cities are increasingly focusing their action and taking action in agri-food systems to ensure healthy diets and nutrition. We are looking forward to hearing about your experiences, the challenges that countries and organizations have faced and how you have addressed those challenges and to identify new opportunities for collaboration and coherent actions. We invite you to engage actively in this dialogue series to continue that momentum towards everyone everywhere accessing a healthy diet that enables them to live a healthy and productive life. Thank you very much Linnet for your comments and again thank you also for the close partnership with your division and of course the Brussels office in this series. Thank you also for emphasizing the critical role that more efficient inclusive, resilient and sustainable agri-food system will play in enabling healthy diets for all and achieving better nutrition. I would now like to give the floor to Mr. Gerda Verburg the Sun Movement Coordinator UN Assistant Secretary General will cover the topic of partnership and multi-sector action. Gerda, the floor is yours. Thank you very much Dominique and thank you very much for the leadership of FAO to organize this very important seminar today. Why nutrition? It is important it is one of the priority areas for FAO right now but many people asked me and yesterday I was still visiting Mali and I closed my visit with a meeting with the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister asked me why should we invest in nutrition and I explained to him that an investment in nutrition is an investment in healthy people but also in smart people because the right nutrition is treating the body well and developing and maintaining and supporting the cognitive development. Without good nutrition you get malnourished people stunted children and stunted and malnourished people will create a malnourished economy for decades and very often in countries the cost of hunger and malnutrition is between 5 and 15% loss of GDP now turn it around and think about the financial business case or the economic business case and you can see that investing in good nutrition and preventing all forms of malnutrition will speed up the GDP, the growth of socioeconomic development of a country with 10-15% and it creates prosperity and peace and stability so that is why nutrition why is partnerships important, are partnerships important because nutrition is not a single issue it requires collaboration from the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Health the Ministry of Social Protection Water and Sanitation Family Affairs Education what have you more also the Ministry of Finance the Ministry of Planning you need to bring all the pieces of this important puzzle together this is one of the reasons why SUN was created the scaling up nutrition movement because 12 years ago there was a report from Lancet from the Lancet report that said the global society or local society will ever be able to end hunger and malnutrition because you all have a siloed approach only by working together as different sectors and different stakeholders you will be able to do something about it at the same time one of the conclusions was ending hunger and malnutrition is a matter of political will so it requires also ownership and investment from a government so it's not only sectors that needs to come together need to come together it is also the private sector it is the civil society it is UN organizations that need to work together and hand in hand and they are doing it more and more but it's also the donors and investors who need to align behind priorities so country ownership, multi-sectoral and multi-stakeholder approach that is what nutrition requires and guess what this is also what investment in nutritious food systems and nutritious agri-food systems require multi-sectoral approach and multi-stakeholder collaboration to implement and scale up so it is an investment in people and people's nutrition it must be an investment in the planet the nourishing of our planet and maintaining the environment or adapting to climate change but it's also an investment in prosperity and in jobs along the food value chain so what to do these days and especially in these dire situation first of all make sure that humanitarian support is combined with social protection otherwise with only providing food stuff you might create damage for years the second point what to do is is to bring the different sectors together to look at how dependent the country is from imports and many countries in Africa are dependent of food imports for 30 percent 40 percent and some countries even for more this has to end a country like Mali is investing 15 percent of its national budget in importing food what if you could transition this 15 percent into investment in a nutritious and sustainable food system in Mali itself and the different stakeholders the private sector, the farmers the consumers organizations and civil society told me we stand ready to sit with the government but then we need to be able to discuss what are the requirements what is the framework and why how can we to have the oversubsidizing of imported food so that we as food producers in Mali in the country itself are able to produce in a competitive way and the consumers don't need to pay a price that is too high so this is all needed right now and at the same time because the transition of food systems need to be started already and speed it up and I think the follow up of the food systems summit last September needs to be speeded up at the country level in the food systems pathway and the transition finally in all you do and all your government does or your country does make sure that you pay extra attention to women because women and girls have a special need for nutritious, special nutritious need and in every crisis women and girls are hit hardest longest and most. Thank you very much Thank you very much Gerda for providing us with this with your perspective for reminding us of the importance of the return investment of investing in good nutrition for the importance of partnership which really takes a whole of society at once with the support of the international community reminding us among many things of the importance also of social protection and of course always to keep in mind the gender dimension so thank you very much for that and it is now my pleasure to give the floor to Mr Yan Lie, councillor at the permanent mission of China to the UN in Geneva will give us the perspective of his country on the topic Mr Shen, the floor is yours Thank you very much Direct Dominic Berger Distinguished guests Ladies and gentlemen Good afternoon I'm briefly honored to have the floor today The security is an important guarantee for world peace and development and an important foundation for building a community with a shared future for mankind and promoting the sustainable development of mankind China attaches great importance to food security President Xi Jinping solemnly proposed the Global Development Initiative at the general debate of the 76th United Nations General Assembly taking food security as one of the eight key areas of cooperation We hope all the people can be kept away from the threat of hunger and more countries and regions can improve sustainable agricultural production capacity and achieve common prosperity It shows the sincerity of China to join hands with other countries to tackle the problem of global hunger and is a positive action for maintaining world food security China makes great efforts to enhance agricultural production and has always regarded both the decline to the people as a top priority in state governments With 9% of the world's terrible land China has fed more than 1.4 billion people and realized the transition from inadequate food to enough and a historic shift to eat well Over the years China has carried out agricultural cooperation with countries and regions in need and promoted technologies and experiences in green production processing warehousing logistics and trade In the process of building the Belt and Road China and the countries along the Belt and Road have actively carried out cooperation in the field of food Chinese researchers have trained more than 14,000 professionals from relevant countries on high rate of rise through international training classes China's food security is inseparable from the world and the world's food security also needs China We have created the miracle of self-sufficiency on food and are reading to actively participate in the governance of world food security China will continue to work in solidarity with the food and agricultural organization and other countries to make new contributions to promoting the healthy development of the world's food industry and maintaining world food security Finally, we greatly appreciate the non-relief contributions made by the food and agricultural organization in this regard Thank you Thank you very much Mr. Shen for highlighting your country's efforts both domestically and on the international scene Thank you very much for that I would like now to move to our next speakers We will give first a country perspective and then a perspective from a regional organization the European Commission their thoughts in that regard First, I would like to move to Dr. Jane Wambugu Assistant Director of Agriculture in the Ministry of Agriculture of Kenya Dr. Wambugu, the floor is yours Thank you for this invitation. My name is Jane Wambugu I'm a Deputy Director in Agriculture and I head the Agriculture and Nutrition Unit in the Kenya Government Ministry of Agriculture Department I will share with you the role I have played to champion the agenda of transforming agri-food system to deliver on the healthy diets in Kenya This agenda requires involvement of all 11 sectors and to demystify the notion that addressing malnutrition in Kenya that have been geared towards improving intersectoral coordination enhancing political will capacity development and as well as strengthening the capacities of nutrition sensitive agriculture and food system as well as responding to the emerging nutrition needs due to the COVID-19 pandemic As I play a leading role in the agri-nutrition unit I've been working closely with other line ministries as well as partners the Food and Agriculture Organization WFood World Food Program as well as the UNICEF and other partners And based on this partnership and collaboration we have achieved a lot among the key achievements I wish to mention here is one of them is the strengthening the coordination We do realize multi-sectoral collaboration to sustainably address malnutrition requires proper coordination and for this reason as the chair of the Food and Nutrition Technical Working Group I've been playing a leading role in coordinating all 11 stakeholders for nutrition sensitive agriculture This platform brings together the government ministries including agriculture, the health education water, labor and social protection plus other development partners the UN agencies the NGOs, academia as well as research organization are part of this platform The purpose of this technical working group is to steer and coordinate development of agri-nutrition strategies plans, interventions both at a sub-national level and as well as national level There are key achievements that will bring out the improved political will for agri-nutrition In collaboration with this Food and Nutrition Linkage Technical Working Group which I share I've led the process of differing as ever national agri-nutrition implementation strategy 2020 to 2025 These offers practical guidance on strategic intervention for decision makers at national and sub-national level for implementing agri-nutrition programs The strategy is endorsed by the minister for agriculture and as well as the principal secretary for the State Department for Club Development and Agricultural Research The strategy accelerates key resource area number 10 of the Kenyan Nutrition Action Plan the guiding document for nutrition in the country and it commits to scale up nutrition in agriculture and food system as a sustainable measure for refuting malnutrition The other area that we have worked on is capacity strengthening nutrition implementation all of us are guidance to as an entry point for nutrition improvement through agriculture I realize stakeholders require a needed capacity strengthening using well contextualized technical materials Through the FAO technical support and collaborative efforts with the partners we are in an advanced stage of finalizing a standardized training package for nutrition sensitive agriculture and food system for the country Kenya. The package has been unleashed with over that a case studies from 25 partners who are implementing nutrition sensitive agriculture projects in the country it has been used to train directors and technical staff in the agriculture and health from 26 out of the 47 sub-national governments These efforts have yielded results and many sub-national governments have requested for support all in the process of investigating the national strategy to meet the sub-national needs There are a number of other successes but I wish to mention one of them having been the 1 million kitchen garden initiative which was in response to the cold COVID-19 pandemic it aims to address the sustainability of food production by empowering farmers in urban and peri-urban areas to produce nutritious food through my leadership and practical examples we have used practical and media media to demonstrate on establishment of water and space efficient kitchen garden technologies that this is ongoing and we have also strengthened the capacities of household so far we have reached 233 household who have established kitchen garden Ladies and gentlemen I am grateful to the partners who have been very instrumental in driving these achievements as a country we have seen a long way to go to scale up ongoing efforts and now I call upon our global partners to support in resources and in investment in this noble initiative that we are taking thank you very much for the time and the opportunity to present what our country Kenya and what we are doing to add ugly food system for transforming and for transforming them to help their diet for the country thank you very much Thank you so much Dr. Wanbugu for indeed highlighting your political will can lead to strengthening multi-sectoral coordination through the food and nutrition technical working group all this for nutrition sensitive agriculture leading to strategic planning and then highlighting the very concrete action through the one million kitchen garden initiative that you have highlighted thank you so much and I am now very pleased to give the floor to Mr. Wilhelm Althoff the deputy head of unit of the sustainable agriculture agri-food systems and fisheries unit of the European Commission dear women the floor is yours Many thanks Dominique and many thanks as well for taking this initiative I think it's timely it's relevant and you're in the best position to do this and bring many of the factors around nutrition food and agriculture together it's also timely because we know that the war in Ukraine leads to dramatic situations in the world and an increase in global food insecurity and malnutrition and this will no doubt lead to lots of additional interventions and initial initiatives and I just would like to mention two initiatives that the European Commission has taken recently one around the crisis in the Sahel and one in the Horn of Africa that actually happened yesterday and in both of these events we work hand in hand with humanitarian and development actors and have led these both of them have led to to increased pledges to address food insecurity but also the nutritional elements in it now although we have really short term pressing needs we should also not lose sight of the longer term objectives that we have and in the longer term what we would like to see and I think here we have a very strong common agenda is that our food systems world become more resilient more sustainable and that we see also the problems of healthy diets and nutrition within such a food systems perspective within the EU we have taken on the farm to fork strategy and started its implementation and this farm to fork strategy provides provides a really powerful policy framework in support of this urgent transition to healthy and sustainable food systems not only in Europe we think that much of the vision that comes out of it is relevant beyond the EU what this strategy also clearly illustrates is that the financial resources and putting finances on it is not enough one has to include the right policies investments can only work once one has the right policies and in that respect what has been triggered by the food systems summit is really relevant and I'll come back to that at the end of my intervention so systems thinking is important that means that our sector policies needs to be framed within such systems thinking that food systems tackle more issues they tackle issues around inequities around climate change about natural resource management and that all in combination with diets and better nutritional outcomes important is and remains agriculture and the way agriculture is being is being handled and produced and others have said before me so I won't dwell that the nutrition sensitive element of agriculture is a key element in this that implies that one has to think about how it enhances biodiversity for instance but also the diversification of production and in that respect from our perspective agricultural practices are important adapted to local context respectful of the environment and an important means to stimulate local production and varied diets we also recognize that in many respects more attention can be given in this diversification to for instance different sources plant proteins but also proteins coming from small livestock from blue food production particularly so there is a huge diversification agenda ahead of us but we cannot only think about production we also should think about the role of the consumers and consumer choice and in that respect one can also think of many different policy directions many of which are again part and parcel of the EU farm to fork strategy so examples around public procurement public food procurement about how to engage the private sector and to to stem to unlock their financing but also in restricting the advertising and marketing of particular type of foods and beverages for instance those high insaturated and trans fats in sugars and in salt and to use fiscal incentives around their use but also elements about nutrition labeling etc. and advertising communication and more of those measures so in a nutshell what we have identified in the EU farm to fork strategy but also broadly is a range of instruments that can allow consumers to have a bigger impact on the way food is produced and marketed so I said that at the end of my intervention I wanted to come back to the UN food system summit but also at the nutrition for growth summit at the UN food system summit many valuable initiatives have been taken and we are in a year of follow up and we recognize as well that FAO has an important role in hosting the hub and we need to see the translation of many of these initiatives in the national pathways but also in the global coalitions so as you we stand ready to support many countries in the implementation of their national pathways working as well in a number of global coalitions and we are particularly active in eight coalitions and that includes the coalition on healthy diets it includes a coalition on zero hunger it includes a coalition on school meals so we have quite a number of entry points on the nutrition side we would also like to recall that at the nutrition for growth summit the EU and its member states pledged more than 4 billion euros for the next couple of years to work on nutrition of which 2.5 billion came from the European institutions that summit was only four months ago and it seems like life has it's a lifetime ago now but we are really following actively in the follow up to this pledge we are working very closely with our delegations advisory service that translates many of the initiatives and the principles into very concrete projects and programs we provide actively training to our delegations plus counterpart staff on this so a pledge like the one that we made last year is not just something on paper it means something and it is becoming it's a life initiative in that sense so with those words Dominik many thanks again for the initiative I look forward to many more of these sessions and exchanging information on more depth on particular initiatives and I really valued the example from Kenya and I trust that we are also part of this initiative which looks very promising but it's a good way to exchange our knowledge to exchange our experiences and as I said at the beginning this year we'll have no shortage of events but let's stay focused that it includes our nutrition objectives many thanks again thank you very much women today Evan is just the high level launch of the series and we will zoom in many of the example to really inform policy making and further sensitize decision makers on that thank you we're more so for reminding us of the importance of the system thinking which is the key and for highlighting the you perspective in terms of the fund to fall policy to support the and sustainable food system and highlighting some of the instruments and like many speakers of course you refer to the U.N. food system summits and the importance of the national pathways and the global efforts so thank you for that and it is now time to move to two representatives of the Geneva based organizations who are partners in this series and we look forward to work with namely Dr. Francisco Branca the director of nutrition and food safety department of WHO and Dr. Lorenz Adat executive director of game Dr. Branca, Francesco the floor is yours well thank you I'd like to thank FAO for organizing this dialogue convening this document particularly Dominique and his team and WHO is happy to engage in order to show you why I'd like to show you one image and this image is really speaking to why food system transformation is needed to improve health there are at least five pathways for this unhealthy diet and food insecurity zoonotic pathogens you've seen it with the COVID pandemic antimicrobial resistance this is related to the way we grow livestock unsafe and adulterated food environmental contamination and degradation and occupational hazards and I can say that only two of these pathways which is number one and number three they account for one third of total deaths and disability so health should not be an afternoon but a structural objective so thank you we don't need this slide anymore our department nutrition and food safety department in WHO is dealing with multiple aspects from setting really food and nutrition elements in the global health agenda developing norms and standards for healthy diet and safe food and really supporting the codex alimentaries guide policy choices support country actions and monitoring the implementation of policies and the impact of the policies and I think we have really a good match with the strategy of nutrition that Lynette has described talking about policies indeed we believe that we need to be applied across the system and the food environment is particularly important so we're focusing on food environment policies I I think that we already mentioned the importance of the choosing the right policies and those right policies are the ones that we're recommending based on analysis of the effectiveness and cost effectiveness we have a series of best buys to improve the food environment and looking at information to consumers through appropriate and clearly understandable labeling restricting marketing of foods high in fat, sugar and salt making public food procurement the system to provide healthy diets but also having food adequately fortified having safe food throughout and using economic tools such as fiscal policies and subsidies to nudge the choices towards healthy food so those food environment policies are there critical but we need to make sure that they are implemented implementation requires partnerships I do agree that with Canada that partnership is critical we have first and foremost a partnership with other UN agencies FAO but also UNICEF World Program IFAR and others in the context of UN nutrition we've partnered with several civil society organizations an organization in official status and we are very pleased to engage with the committee of food security that is an incredible venue for multi sectoral and multi stakeholder interactions we believe that the UN food system summit and nutrition for growth really made a very important contribution to boost the action to improve nutrition and food security we ourselves are going to promote more partnership and together with FAO and UN nutrition we are hosting and promoting the healthy diet coalition WHO is keen to sustain the implementation of the UN food system summit we're contributing to the hub with our time with our staff, with our engagement and we believe this is the only way to complete our path towards the sustainable development goals we're still in the middle of decade of action on nutrition as was mentioned at the beginning and we are actively pursuing this so we are very pleased that by having this joint dialogues we can highlight the priorities for action and we can even more foster engagement and investment. Thank you Thank you very much Francisco for your comments, for your support to the approach and for of course reminding of the importance of the focus on food environment policies, their implementation and the required partnerships referring in particular also to the role of UN nutrition and even the CFS community on world food security. So thank you for that and let me now move to Dr. Lawrence Haddad the executive director of Gain Dr. Haddad the floor is yours Thank you Dominique and again let me extend my thanks to FAUT for organising this session, for inviting us of Gain and a big thanks to Dominique and his team for organising this. So Gain is the global alliance for improved nutrition, we're an international NGO we have offices in 15 different countries and we do two things, we connect food systems with nutrition, there are lots of people who worry about food systems but don't worry about nutrition and actually there are a lot of people who worry about nutrition but don't worry about food systems so we try to connect those two communities. We also try to connect the public sector with the private sector Governments have to be in the lead in terms of setting goals and strategies and norms and standards and enforcing those but the private sector is a big part of the food system whether it's farmers themselves, processes, traders supermarkets, wet markets, haulage advertising, storage refrigeration, you name it the private sector is fully embedded in the food system and it's an important partner. So we try and do that, we try and we do that through we do those connections through programs through policy and through research. The programs help us achieve direct impact to people who are malnourished and they give us an insight into the policy space that's holding back programs like ours and programs that others run. Our policy work therefore is focusing on relieving bottlenecks, making it easier for programs to scale and have a bigger impact and our research work means that we are really evidence-based we are doing the right things in the right place in the right way and achieving the right impacts and our director of research Lynette Newfields now has a FOWS new director of food and nutrition and we're very happy for FOWS and for Lynette. We do this all of this work is the purpose of all of this work again is to improve the production of safe, nutritious food for the most vulnerable for all but for the most vulnerable produced and supplied in a sustainable way and we do this by focusing on the demand side, the supply side and the enabling environment side the demand side is really important many of us take for granted that people want to consume healthier diets well many people don't it's not a question of income and affordability but for many it's not they just don't know about what is a healthy diet and what are the benefits of a healthy diet are. On the supply side we have to obviously make the supply of nutritious and safe food and the foods that comprise healthy diets are more affordable as Lynette said three billion people can't afford a healthy diet we have to do something about that and then we have to do we have to work on the enabling environment side that makes the demand and the supply bend towards nutritious safe food for which healthy diets can be derived in a sustainable way so to give you some three quick examples of some of the work on the supply side we work a lot with smaller medium enterprises in the food system smaller medium enterprises that are producing nutritious foods fruits, vegetables, pulses, dairy eggs some animal source foods fish those smaller medium enterprises they and we do this with FAU and many others they produce for domestic consumption not for export and they are severely constrained they don't have great business models they don't have great investable propositions they don't have great marketing strategies and they have poor access to finance and they're not very well connected either we work with Sun with the World Food Program the Sun business network to connect those SMEs together so that's one example on the supply side on the demand side we're doing a lot of work with Harvest Plus and others on nutrient dense food staples which are going to become more important I think as the Ukraine crisis unfolds the challenge there is to convince farmers that this is something that they should produce it's just as profitable as regular staples it's derived from conventional breeding techniques and also to convince consumers that they should plump for these types of foods because they have high levels of nutrition they can generate the kinds of benefit cost ratios that Gerda was alluding to on the enabling environment side we do a lot of work with legislation in Bangladesh we were working with the government just recently to pass legislation to fortify edible oil with Vitamin D and Vitamin A which will reach tens of millions of people but we also as Lynette said data is the first casualty of any crisis and we're working with many government agencies to develop national and sub national food system data dashboards we have been in a follow up to the UN Food Systems Summit again which is a fair of Action Track 1 which is enhancing access to safe and nutritious food and in that regard we are working very closely with the governments in which we have country offices to support the development and implementation of their food system transformation pathways as Willem said very very important and with the Ukraine crisis in mind diversification is key diversification of the types of value chains and the lengths of value chains that are employed diversification in the types of foods grown can we place a greater emphasis on neglected often underutilized crops diversification in what people consume we know that's the best proxy for quality and of course diversification in the types of energy that is used to produce and supply and consume and prepare our final point really and by the way I should say Jane where we stand ready and we are working closely with the government of Kenya to do that and support your national pathway my final point Dominique is the word alliance is in Gaines name global alliance for improved nutrition and we take that very very seriously indeed and we look forward to working with all of you many of you we are working with and once we're not working with you as we go towards 2030 thank you thank you so much Lawrence for indeed providing us information on the work of Gaines the importance of being evidence based and to work on these demand side supply side and the enabling environment and providing us with examples and I think this is really be this will be really the core of the following events in this series is to illustrate all these aspects again to be able to inform and feed policy meeting so thank you very much for that and yes the word alliance was noted and this is what is all about and now I would like to actually to move to one of our last speaker and I give the floor to Mr. Kuhn de Koning economist and policy analyst in the trade and agriculture of OECD will speak about the food system approach as the basis for collaboration Mr. de Koning the floor is yours thank you very much and it's really a pleasure to be here and the challenge too to say something interesting coming as last speaker after all these other distinguished people so I'm here to share some insights I hope on this very important topic of nutrition and in the OECD we released a major report on food systems our very first report on the concept of food systems actually last year we also had the chance to engage with many of you throughout the UN food systems summit and a lot of our focus on food systems was around this idea of synergies and tradeoffs and as Lawrence mentioned just now people often tend to think of things in isolation but it is really important to look at it from a systemic point of view to look at all the interactions that happen but that raises the question how do you come up with coherent policies how do you come up with policies that will actually reinforce each other whether it's on environment on livelihoods on gender and of course on nutrition rather than as has historically been the case where you have the agriculture ministry doing one thing the environment ministry doing something else the nutrition people doing yet something else so how do you actually do that and we spend some time thinking and arguing about that in our report so the first big lesson for us is the importance of overcoming these silos and of at least realizing that there are many possible synergies and tradeoffs and it is a complex system historically people were not even aware of that fortunately that is changing now but we do need to put even more efforts to make sure that people talk over defense that the ministries of agriculture, public health environment etc. all the different policymakers actually do have a chance to get to know each other to talk about these things and to form a common view on these things so that is a really a first precondition to have policies that reinforce each other across all these different dimensions rather than counteracting as has often happened in the past but a second important caveat there is that we need to be rigorous too and this is a point that some of the other speakers have mentioned Lynette Neufeld in particular when she mentioned the importance of data because quite often what you see in debates on food systems when people talk about synergies and tradeoffs is that we often use ideas or assumptions and those may not always be correct to give you just one example in high income countries people often would say that agricultural subsidies contribute to obesity because they make food artificially cheap and therefore people eat too much and it turns out that the evidence doesn't support that in many countries agricultural policies are actually not subsidies they are protectionist import barriers and they often raise the price of food in many of these countries so that link between agricultural policies and obesity is not as obvious as people often think it is in rich countries at least so while there are very good reasons to reform agricultural policies fighting obesity in high income countries is maybe not the most important factor so it is important as this example underscores to be rigorous and that in turn means we need better data we need better evidence as Lawrence had also underscored and a third point which builds on that one is we need to dive when we are thinking about coherent policies we need to go into the specifics of specific policy instruments sometimes you will hear people argue whether or not there are synergies or trade-offs between for example farmer livelihoods and the environment but when we ask the question at such a broad level that is not the most interesting level let me give you an example to illustrate imagine if a country is using fertilizer subsidies to provide income support to farmers in that case it is likely that the farmer will end up using maybe more fertilizer than is needed which in turn can create environmental problems so in that specific example there is a trade-off or attention between helping the farmer and helping the environment but it is also clear that that is just an artifact of that one specific choice of policy instrument and we can easily imagine other policy instruments that would have a much better profile for example we could pay the farmer for ecosystem services and in that case we might actually turn a trade-off into a synergy so the question of whether there is a trade-off or a synergy it is not an abstract philosophical question we really have to analyze this for specific policy instruments now what do you do then when there are synergies and trade-offs of course everybody loves a synergy everybody loves a win-win situation but we do have to keep in mind that the perfect policy does not exist and we should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good in reality you will probably need a mix of different policy instruments and there are great examples here from Dr. Wambugu and Mr. Althoff on the wide range of different instruments that policy makers are thinking about and that is very important it also means that if we are trying to achieve many food systems goals at once and we have one intervention that for example does a great job at improving nutrition but does not really move the needle much in terms of for example livelihoods or gender issues that does not make a bad instrument we can think of other instruments to achieve those other goals so we have to think in terms of a mix of instruments that together achieve our food systems goals rather than trying to find the one perfect intervention another example of that principle is many people are now thinking whether we should use agricultural subsidies to promote the production of more nutritious food and Maximo Torero mentioned some of the work that has been going on on repurposing agricultural support in this regard and there are some studies that suggest that you could indeed use agricultural subsidies to incentivize production of more nutritious foods but the question is is that really the best instrument and for example as Lorenz that also mentioned it is not always a problem of prices there might also be demand side factors that explain why people are not actually making more nutritious food choices and even if it is a supply side issue it might not be something that is easily fixed with agricultural subsidies so it's again a case for keeping an open mind and for being very rigorous in terms of data and evidence and the last point I want to make is equally important and sometimes neglected we've spoken a bit about synergies now but unfortunately there are also trade-offs and ideally we do our best to find the optimal policy mix to make those trade-offs as small as possible but sometimes there will simply be trade-offs and we cannot achieve everything we want to achieve and in that case we need to make a choice and how do we think about those choices those are not simply things for scientists or people in international organizations, policy analysts like myself we cannot make those decisions we can provide the best possible evidence but then in the end if there is a choice that has to be a societal choice and that will depend on value judgments and so I'll just leave it at that emphasizing the importance of having democratic debate about these things thank you Thank you very much Mr. Le Corning for this very thoughtful intervention indeed and for detail lighting the importance of synergies and trade-off that need to be decision-making that need to be evidence-based and the importance of gain of system approach to develop coherent and specific policies so thank you very much for that I wish to note that there has been really a rich engagement in the Q&A module as well as in the chat box really gives us it's a big encouragement for us to continue with this series the speakers have also gave us so many directions we will need to further explore in the future events under this series so I think this has been extremely valuable from our perspective to have this engagement in writing as well as in the context of course of the high-level speakers remarks and now we are almost at the end of our webinar and I'm now very pleased to give the floor to my colleague Mr. Rashad Al-Khafraji director of the FAO liaison office in Brussels will deliver some closing remarks Rashad, the floor is yours thank you very much thank you Dominique the FAO liaison office here in Brussels is obviously delighted to be partnering in this important dialogue series to support the process of learning on this critical topic today we've listened to valuable contributions which tied together many threads of our discussion and gave us a lot to think about what an excellent opportunity to certainly work together learn together and also contribute together ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues and friends, the promise of agri-food system transformation requires regional, national and local champions what we heard today from Kenya and the European Commission shows that we have champions working on enacting change thank you for sharing your views and experiences with us today the OECD's analysis made it very clear it is not just about nutrition but about the whole development agenda this is something which will be featured throughout this series of dialogues we certainly look forward to seeing you again over the next few months as we highlight specific practices and policies directly from the field including food-based dietary guidelines urban strategies and food safety enabling healthy diets and achieving better nutrition for all is a challenge that no one single organization or institution can resolve and there is no one size fits all solution to deal with the complexity of this task and its sustainable implementation this is why partnerships such as the ones we have in the framework of this series launch today with WHO Sun, Gain and many others are key in this endeavor success also relies heavily on the engagement and political will at country level where the key outcomes are needed we will continue supporting the roll out of the FAO and Geneva nutrition dialogue series FAO is keen to offer platforms such as this one to discuss and share information on the good work done by countries and partners in the field these lessons and experiences are fundamental to build a new narrative on nutrition putting partnerships at country and local levels in the center of our action let me reiterate that this is just the beginning for the nutrition dialogue series and the coming sessions we will explore in depth the various facets of this issue and discover successful examples of important work in the field we will share FAO's experience and provide our partners with opportunities to share theirs keeping the main focus on concrete cases from the field some of the topics we are envisioning for future sessions food based dietary guidelines urban strategies food safety healthy diets in small island development states and others I strongly encourage our partners to be active participants in this endeavor and we look forward to receiving suggestions from you on topics to be covered and important field work to be featured together we need to increasingly bring nutrition into policy development and inform high level decisions in Geneva, Brussels and beyond the next webinar in this series will take place on Wednesday the 18th of May it will show how intervening and food systems can address the problem of acute malnutrition among children while also supporting livelihoods in Africa's dry lands and will draw from important field work in Kenya until then I wish you a very productive reflection hopefully also stimulated by today's proceedings thank you very much and over to you Dominique well thank you very much Rashad for these very encouraging and uplifting words dear participants this concludes our webinar today we had more than 150 participants who attended this launch event and I think this is a great start for our FAO in Geneva nutrition dialogue series before leaving you allow me to thank you all and our distinguished speakers in particular who dedicated some of their valuable time to be with us today their guidance and outlook is very much appreciated and will definitely inform when we move forward I would like also to thank our Geneva partners WHO, Gain and Sun for highlighting for us why this is such a key issue and for the work they are doing and for the partnership will even further strengthen in the coming month a big thank also to Maximo, Lynette and Rashad for their participation and to colleagues in the FAO food and nutrition division and the Brussels and Geneva liaison office for organizing this webinar last but not least our gratitude goes to you participants for taking time and joining this launch event of the FAO in Geneva nutrition dialogue series I thank you all and look forward to engaging with you in the near future and thank you Dominique and Rashad and team for taking this very important initiative Thank you Bye Bye Bye Troll Bye