 Thank you all for joining us for today's virtual congressional briefing on the coming crisis, preventing a hunger catastrophe amid COVID-19. I am Rebecca Middleton, the executive director of the Alliance to End Hunger in Washington, DC, and I will be your moderator for today's event. The issue of global hunger is always one of great importance. However, with the recent UN reports that the number of people experiencing severe hunger worldwide is expected to double this year due to COVID-19 related causes, we must all pay especially urgent attention to this historic need and how we can work together to address it. The Alliance to End Hunger is grateful to co-host this important and timely briefing with our partners at FAO's Washington office. As many of you know, the Alliance and FAO have a long-standing partnership and have hosted many events together over the years, including several congressional briefings in person on Capitol Hill. This is our first virtual briefing, and we are finding one advantage of a virtual event is that we are not limited by room capacity or geography. Over 1500 people from across the globe have signed up for this event today, truly extraordinary. Before we begin, I would like to share a few housekeeping items. We will have the speakers each share comments, including statements from the FAO Director General, the IFPRE Director General, and the Director of FAO's Emergency and Rehabilitation Division. We will then be joined by Senator Dick Durbin, co-chair of the Senate Hunger Caucus and Representative Jim McGovern, chair of the House Hunger Caucus. To those not familiar, caucuses are groups of members of the United States Congress that meet to pursue common legislative objectives. We are grateful Senator Durbin and Representative McGovern can be with us today. Following Dominique's comments, we will have a question and answer session. Please submit your questions at any time through the question and answer box on your screen, and please also include your name and organization. Thank you Senator to introduce Finlanda Sharon, Director of the FAO Liaison Office Washington for a brief welcome. Thank you Rebecca. At the very outset, let me thank the House and Senate Hunger Caucuses and Alliance to End Hunger for having collaborated with us in organizing the Congressional Briefing today. We are gathered to discuss the findings and implications of the 2020 global report and food crisis. This report is the result of a joint consensus based assessment of acute food insecurity situation around the world. It has been prepared by FAO and 15 partner organizations, including AFPRI, USAID, FUSENET, UNICEF, WFP and others. The data and the report shows that the number of acutely food insecure people in need of urgent assistance in the world is rising. In fact, 2019 has recorded the highest number since this report was first published four years ago. Needless to say, COVID-19 has added multiple complex layers to this already onerous situation threatening to perhaps double the number of hungry people. Major world disasters always produce multiple ripple effects, like a powerful tsunami that trigger one shock wave after another, each producing injury and mayhem. In the case of COVID-19, the first wave has been the global health crisis. Today we have nearly 5 million plus confirmed COVID cases worldwide. Even before the mayhem from the first wave has abated, the second wave of economic recession resulting in joblessness and increasing poverty has hit, causing untold miseries around the globe. Riding on the back of these two waves, the third wave of food insecurity is hurtling towards us, bringing a hunger catastrophe in its wake. With contracting demands and likely supply shocks and movement restrictions, human starvation looms large on the horizon. Policies to ensure that farmers are able to plant in harvest, that the produce reaches the market, and that the consumer is able to access basic food and has the money to purchase them must be put in place. From farm to fork, if we are not able to adapt and strengthen our food systems, the results could be cataclysmic. Where are the protracted and emerging hotspots of hunger? What is being done to reach those in acute food crisis? What new policies are required and what will be the financial implication of these policies? How do we find a way out of this conundrum in which the intersection of health, economic and hunger pandemic has landed us? Agreed, COVID-19 has thrown a humongous challenge. But has it also given us an opportunity to revamp and strengthen our food value chains and food systems? To explore these and other issues, we have an illustrious panel of speakers at our congressional briefing today. Allow me to extend a very warm welcome to our director general, Chudong Yu, to this webinar. We are honored to have his presence as also those of Dr. Swindan, D.G. Ifpre, and Dominique Bergeron, director of emergencies at FAO Headquarter in Rome. Joining them are Senator Dick Durbin, co-chair of the Senate Hunger Caucus, and Congressman Jim McGovern, co-chair of the House Hunger Caucus. Both Senator Durbin and Congressman McGovern have long championed the cause of the less fortunate and have been crusaders in the fight against global hunger. Perhaps at this stage, it would be appropriate for me to place on record the bipartisan support of the U.S. Congress and especially the hunger caucuses in our endeavor to combat hunger and malnutrition worldwide. We are also joined by Ambassador Tony Hall, Executive Director Emeritus at the Alliance, who earlier in his career has also served as ambassador of USA to the Rome-based agencies and whose experience in this sector is second to none. We are indeed very fortunate to have all of you with us. Last but not the least, I extend a very warm welcome to all the 1,500 plus registrants who are joining us online for this webinar, especially those joining from the Capitol Hill. With that, let me hand the proceedings back to Rebecca to take the discussions forward. Rebecca. Thank you, Melinda. Our first speaker is the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's Director General Chu Dongyu. Director General Chu has served as FAO Director General since August 1, 2019. A scientist by training, most recently before coming to FAO, Director General Chu served as China's Vice Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. His vision is founded on the belief that freedom from hunger is a basic human right, and that in the 21st century, we have the capability to eradicate chronic food insecurity. While challenge is loom, Director General Chu's cardinal principle is that problems can also be the source of progress. We are very grateful to have Director General Chu with us today from Rome, and I now turn it over to him for his comments. Thank you. Thank you, Rebecca, and the dear colleagues of France. Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for inviting me to this briefing today. I also appreciate the support of the hunger caucus to this event, as well as the efforts of the alliance to end hunger. In particular, it's a company and a vocation to achieve the sustainable development goals number two. Let me also express the recognition for the efforts of the US Congress to alleviate world hunger and malnutrition. I believe that briefing and open dialogue are essential in this challenging time. I have recently participated in similar exchanges at the US Security Council, the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations, G20 Summit, G20 Accredible Minister meeting, and also Ministers of Africa Unions and European Union Commissions, and World Economic Forum, and both public, private, and social, academic, all, and others. I'm therefore pleased to participate in today's exchange and look forward to a fruitful meeting. Ladies and gentlemen, FL in collaboration with a number of partners recently launched the 2020 edition of the Global Food Crisis Report. Before I present you with the main findings, let me make some general observations. Today, we have sufficient food available in both salaries and also high value commodities, even giving the major disruptions affected by the high value commodities by COVID-19. The COVID-19 pandemic is causing the global GDP to shrink. According to the World Bank, the world economy is likely to face the recession that could push 40 to 60 million people to extremely poverty. This means a significant level of the unemployment in the agricultural system, and one-third of all jobs are at risk, thereby disrupting food systems and supply chain globally, and make this food a excessive crisis. The world will see an increase in number of the poor and hunger, as well as those facing acute food crisis. If necessary, interventional strategies are not put in place today, and in addition, the main findings of 2020 Global Food Crisis Report tell us that we are facing the COVID-19 and already very critical food insecurity situation. What does the Global Food Crisis Report tell us? The number of people experienced acute food insecurity in crisis always has reached the highest level of the past four years. In 2019, more than 135 million people across 55 countries and the territories experienced acute food insecurity. The majority of those are living in one of the three contests. 77 million are affected by the conflict. And 34 million are affected by the climate change, and 24 million people are by economic turbulence. The report also indicated that 183 million people were in the stressed conditions. They are at a substantial risk of slipping into crisis or acute hunger if faced with a shock. In the 55 countries affected by the food crisis, the nutritional study of the already vulnerable children is extremely concerning. In those countries, 17 million children suffered from acute malnutrition. 75 million children have started growth due to the chronic malnutrition. This clearly demonstrates that once again, the leading drivers of food crisis are persistent in insecurity and conflict. Along with the growing intensity and the severity of the climate-related economic shocks with Yemen, remaining the largest food crisis in the world, the food insecurity situation in the West, in the key conflict-driving crisis. Currently, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and South Sudan. In addition, Yemen, Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, Uganda, and Serbia are at the same time facing the worst desert locust crisis in over 25 years. Kenya is facing the most serious one in 70 years. The current situation is unprecedented and threatened to the food security and livelihoods in the region, and could lead to further suffering, displacement, and potential conflict. The increased security of the drought-economic shocks are main drivers in countries such as Guatemala, Haiti, Pakistan, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe. Now, the magnitude of the effect of the COVID-19 on food security is still uncertain. It's clear that people in food crisis contexts are ear-equipped to cope with this additional shock. We know that there will be direct impact on the people's health and lives while the health system is already weak and overburdened, and malnutrition levels are high. And there will be indirect impact such as disruption of livelihoods, food supply chance, access to the food, basic services, as well as humanitarian assistance. Uncertainty of the future impact of the pandemic, combined with the restriction on movement, sorry, employment, limited access to the food, and the erosion of the already fragile livelihoods might generate this content, fueling violence and conflict. Ladies and gentlemen, naturally, much of the focus of today has been on the health risk associated with the pandemic and on preventing the global health crisis. However, it is increasingly clear that attention must be turned towards preventing food crisis and the increased resilience. It is clear that without the age action, we face a enormous crisis that the already straddle the humanitarian community was struggling to respond to. COVID-related restrictions and related threats to the processes risk of pushing many more into acute food insecurity. As the pandemic involves in food crisis countries, food access is a serious concern and food availability crisis could also emerge in both rural and urban areas. Trade is disrupted because of trade restriction or logistical problems. We will have a problem of food availability, despite food reserves and the harvest being sufficient today. It is in this time that the international cooperation become especially better. If farmers fail to access the market beyond the immediate area, their incomes will decline, reducing their ability to invest in future food production, like petrified seeds and fertilizers. If a plant is seeded, I miss, food production will drop, and so will this availability of food. Last month, together with the Africa Union, we organized a meeting of African and Crunchy Ministers to discuss the potential impacts of COVID-19 and the opportunities to minimize these impacts and increase the resilience. All the ministers expressed the same concern. How can we make sure that the farmers and the headers can meet upcoming season and keep producing food so that we do not experience enormous rising in food insecurity? Our message is clear. 18 now is not only more human and cost-infected. It also protects the very livelihoods on which vulnerable communities are built. But we also need to ensure the health of the works through the appropriate protocols. A culture is a season. Planned and pastoral seasons have clear and defined the limits that are not subject to the spread of the COVID-19. Should this season be missing, much more cost-efficient work will be needed from the humanitarian community in the coming months and years. Ladies and gentlemen, the pandemic will end. The health crisis will be easy. But if we do not protect the livelihoods of millions of people today, the food value channel, we will have to rebuild them tomorrow at a much greater cost. To prevent the food crisis today, we must work together to address immediate needs and minimize the long-term impact of COVID-19 related lockdowns and the restrictions on food security and the food systems. Last week, I joined the head of 41 U.N. agencies in a virtual meeting of the United Nations Sustainable Development Group and the guidance of the U.S. Secretary-General. We are putting in the practice of the United Nations framework for the immediate social, economic response to COVID-19, shared responsibility, global solidarity, and age action for the people in need. The framework calls for the protecting jobs of business, food value channels, livelihoods to set in motion a better recovery of society and the economies as soon as possible for a more sustainable, gender-equal, and carbon neutral path. The way to the post the COVID-19 world, better than the older normal, so-called a new normal. We are also actively through the mechanism of a global network against the food crisis. Together with all partners including USAID, WFP, OCHA, and others. To be clear, FAO fully supported measures to prevent the spread of the pandemics. And we are committed to respecting decisions taken by the government and having revisited our programs on the ground to ensure that we are aligned with these measures and the needs. In fact, an important part of FAO work includes having to reduce the risk of virus transmission along the food supply chain. For example, by engaging our local partners to share the critical health messages around the social distance, hand washing, et cetera, with the rural communities. In the framework of a global network against the food crisis, FAO and WFP have established a joint monitoring system of risk for food security and food systems from COVID-19 in order to identify, initiate the critical and dispensary actions. The system will be based on the remote data collection on the introduction of innovative technologies for the data collection and the analysis. The risk of monitoring will focus on agricultural outputs, food insecurity, nutrition, and the humanitarian assistance. As a knowledge organization, FAO continue to offer its data and expertise to support the member state in the projection and the preparedness. Tools such as agricultural marketing information systems, AMRS, and food and agricultural policy decision analysis, FNPDA, and our big data tools and the FAO hand-in-hand geopartial platform provide valuable timely information on developments in the world food and agricultural markets have the countries in the decision making. FAO also hosted the committee on world food security, CFS, a unique multiple stakeholder platform that they promote global policy coherence on food security and nutrition, including the COVID-19 major impacts. Ladies and gentlemen, the challenge in front of the international community is considerable. The protection of existing food value chain and the transformation of food systems is in the hand of the members. Decisive action is needed. We stand ready to strengthen our collaboration with all members and partners, with donors, recipients, and with the most valuable. FAO as a professional specialist agency will continue to fulfill its mandate in providing technical expertise and policy advice to the world. We are transforming FAO to a digital organization with strong feet on the ground all across the world. Supporting farmers, pastoralists, fish folks, and many more. I believe that there is much that we can partner in for the good of the farmers and the consumers everywhere and for the future of the next generations. Let's accelerate investment and the input and build a hunger-free world with our great effort and passion. Thank you. Thank you all. Over to you. Thank you so much, Director General Chu. We are so fortunate to have two longtime congressional anti-hunger champions with us today to provide their insights into this moving global crisis. We are grateful they've been able to make time out of their busy schedules. First we will hear from Senator Dick Durbin. Senator Durbin is the 47th U.S. Senator from the state of Illinois. He is the state senior senator and the convener of Illinois' bipartisan congressional delegation. In addition to his other duties, Senator Durbin serves as the democratic whip, the second highest ranking position among the Senate Democrats. First elected to the U.S. Senate in 1996, Senator Durbin is co-chair of the Senate Hunger Caucus and sits on the Senate Judiciary, Appropriations, Agriculture, and Rules committees. Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to join us today, Senator. The floor is yours. It appears we lost the connection with Senator Durbin, so we will actually, Congressman McGovern. Okay, I'm here. Thank you for being so flexible. We will go to you and hopefully Senator Durbin can join us when he's able to reconnect. So it is now my pleasure to introduce Representative Jim McGovern. He has represented Massachusetts Second District in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1997. Congressman McGovern currently serves as chairman of the Powerful House Rules Committee. Additionally, he is a senior member of the House Committee on Agriculture. Sorry, House Committee on Agricultures, Subcommittee on Nutrition and Oversight, and chairs the House Hunger Caucus. It is so good to see you, Representative McGovern. Please go ahead with your comments. Well, thank you very much and I'm happy to be happy to be with you and I want to thank all those who are sponsoring this event today and I'm happy that the Senate and House Hunger Caucus can join you as being sponsors of this of this event. I'm calling you from my house in Worcester, Massachusetts, and I should let you know that about five minutes before I got on my daughter, 18-year-old daughter, maybe when she was reading about this event and all the incredible people that were participating, made me change into a dress shirt and a sport coat because she thought I looked too casual. So in any event, I'm happy to be with you and I hope everybody as well. Three years ago, we were talking about how we were seeing progress in moving towards achieving the sustainable development goal of ending food insecurity in the world. Three years ago, we were raising concerns about seeing some of the first increases in global hunger and food insecurity with a special emphasis on the number of refugees and internally displaced people. Last year, we were charting the impact of climate change, conflict and natural disasters on an alarming spike in the number of people facing food insecurity. Well, welcome to 2020, COVID-19 and the new vocabulary that comes with confronting a global pandemic. As I'm sure others have noted, we were facing 821 million people hungry and 135 million people facing acute hunger, the most severe category before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Before the pandemic, the world was facing locusts and conflict and new waves of refugees. Now, there is the potential that we could all be facing a food security catastrophe of epic proportions. Even here in the United States, we see people lined up for blocks as far as the eye can see and cars backed up for miles just to pick up a bag of food from a food kitchen or a food pantry. And that's in the richest country in the world. We're seeing hunger spots popping up in parts of the developing world which have not traditionally been recognized as food insecure. While global stocks appear to be stable, we know people are suffering. And why is this happening? Well, it's happening in Asia and Latin America and Africa for the same reasons that it's happening in the United States of America. People are staying in their homes, often with strict orders not to leave. And what do you do when you run out of food? In some places you have to, you face arrest or starvation. People have lost their jobs and their livelihoods. So even if they can venture out, they oftentimes have no money to purchase the food. Many governments are attempting to provide food baskets, but distribution is spotty and uncertain. And sadly in some places, easy prey for corruption. In some countries people are tying red flags or white flags to signal to their neighbors that their families have nothing to eat. Grateful for a shared loaf of bread or a cup of rice. And as we've seen here in the United States, transportation, warehousing and supply chains are breaking down. Farmers and produce are being destroyed. Many grocery store shelves are empty. Local markets are unable to function. And everywhere people are torn between food for survival and risking their health by exposure to contagion. If more economies go deeper into recession, greater hunger will surely follow. If farmers are not able to plant their fields when the season demands them to, then greater hunger will follow. If farmers cannot harvest their crops and save their seed for the next planting, greater hunger will surely follow. So what I like most about today's discussion is that it is framed not around despair, but exploring how we can prevent catastrophe. How do we strengthen local and regional markets? How do we make sure nutritious food is available for all, regardless of economic class or whether you live in the city or in the countryside? How do we stabilize and strengthen supply lines? Before the pandemic, our special rapporteurs on the right to food have repeatedly described how the world doesn't lack enough food. What we lack is the political will to ensure that food is distributed equitably to all, that everyone has access to affordable and nutritious food. Indeed, every time I have spoken before this audience, I have reminded everybody that hunger is a political condition. It is simply the lack of political will in the United States and around the world that is responsible for its continued existence. Along with all of you, I'm not ready to surrender to a world where more children die of malnutrition and starvation than will die in the pandemic because we gave up and we walked away from them. I know here in the United States, many local and federal officials, NGOs, farmers, restaurant owners, and employees, immigrants, essential workers, churches, and anti-hunger advocates have come together to create new mechanisms and strengthen existing ones to make sure that no one goes hungry during this crisis. And at the federal level in Congress and with the administration, I believe we haven't done enough in the package that the House of Representatives passed last Friday. It contained some important measures to help deal with food insecurity here in the United States, increases mostly in SNAP and other nutrition programs. But that faces an uncertain future in the Senate and with the White House. We have done some stuff. We've increased some SNAP benefits and provided greater flexibility on how to use those benefits, like online purchasing rather than in person. We've provided more funding for women and children's nutrition programs through the WIC program. Significant funds have been targeted to our food banks, food pantries, and central kitchens that are reaching tens of thousands of people every single day. And we are supporting partnerships between local farmers and food banks, farmers and restaurants and central kitchens, farmers and the general public, so that food is not wasted or it is not destroyed, but it reaches kitchen tables and families in need. You know, need is a great driver of innovation, of thinking of rethinking how to approach old problems in new ways and great need can lead to great innovation to breakthroughs and how we guarantee access to nutritious food for everyone. You know, a key question on how we respond to these challenges is how donor nations are going to maintain, let alone increase their support of key international aid agencies and partners. Many nations are in an economic tailspin. They have fewer resources than they would any more localized crisis and quite naturally their top priority is providing food and care for their own citizens, but we cannot descend into a dog eat dog world. Last week, the bipartisan co-chairs of the House Hunger Caucus and the Food is Medicine Working Group wrote to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue and Acting USAID Administrator Barca, and we asked them not to abandon America's longstanding leadership in fighting global hunger and malnutrition. We asked them not to reduce funding for our key global food security programs like Food for Peace and McGovern Dole Program and Feed the Future. We asked them to maintain the free flow and trade of agricultural goods and markets so that supply chains are not weakened and that food can reach those areas most in need. At the beginning of March in our very first emergency response package, Congress provided a billion dollars in additional funds for global emergency aid. So I was very disappointed that, again, what we did in the House Heroes Act that it has no additional funds for international food and humanitarian aid and I promise you that I will be working with Senator Durbin, who is an unbelievable champion on these issues, and Senator DeLehi. And I hope that such funding will be included in any final package that moves forward in the Senate and in the House. Now each of us has a role to play in confronting this global pandemic and food security crisis. And I look forward to working with all of you, not just today's panelists, but all of you in the audience participating in this discussion as we confront this historic challenge. Let me just say one final thing. You know, this pandemic, I think has highlighted here in this country, the United States, the great inequalities and the great inequities that exist in our system. And, you know, when people say to me, I can't wait till we go back to normal. My response is I don't want to go back to normal. We need to do better than normal. In a country like ours, normal, when we were at the so-called normal stage, we had close to 40 million people, food insecure in Hungary. When we look globally at the challenges in terms of food insecurity in Hungary, going back to normal is not acceptable. We need to look at our systems domestically and internationally. We need to be able to think out of the box. We need to be able to be bold and forward thinking and make these systems work better. We have to do better, not just in this pandemic. We have to do better than we were doing. So I appreciate everybody's commitment to this, and I look forward to working with you. And again, thank you so much. And again, my congratulations to the sponsors. But also, again, I want to just say what a fan I am of Senator Durbin, who, you know, for many, many years has been a champion of all these programs that have done so much to literally save lives of people here in the United States and around the world. All the best and be safe. Thank you so much, Congressman McGovern. Senator Durbin, we're grateful that you were able to reconnect, and I've already given your formal introduction prior to Congressman McGovern's comments. So just reiterating Congressman McGovern's statement about what a tremendous anti-hunger champion you are, and we're so grateful you can be with us today. Can you hear me now? Yes, thank you, Senator. Well, here I am, and following Jim McGovern. Like Jim, I'm wearing a tie, just to impress you. I'm sitting at my desk here in Washington. He's lucky to be back home. I wish I were too. But I want to thank him for his leadership. What an exceptional person he is. His commitment to issues like this really speak to his heart and soul, and I'm honored to be allied with him in this effort that we all share. How did I get started in this business? Well, I started working for a fellow named Paul Simon, and Paul Simon had a world vision that included feeding the hungry, wrote a book about it, had a brother named Art, who was head of bread for the world. And so I was schooled at an early political age in this issue of world hunger and really came to learn a lot and, of course, have a lot more to learn in the future. But I also came to realize that it's just a cruel irony to think that we're facing hunger in a country as prosperous as the United States. How can that be? The most developed country in the world, people go to bed hungry, being denied basic food security. You think to yourself, how does it make sense where we throw away half of the edible food in this country? How does it make sense for us to be in a position where so many people are falling short of having the basics of feeding themselves? You look at these lines that Jim mentioned earlier, and people report how tough it must be for families that never once went into a food bank except to make a donation. Now we're coming into a food bank looking for food to put on the table for the kids and to keep their family together. It's just a reminder of our vulnerability and the fact that we can make our system better, that we have a great largesse when it comes to production. We just don't have a great largesse when it comes to distribution. And if it's tough enough in this country, imagine what it's like in underdeveloped countries and those that are facing greater hardship than the United States. We know that in my state of Illinois, this current economic crisis has increased snap participation by 300%. I still can't get over my colleagues and I run into them all the time who just get all torn up and all twisted and knots over the notion that somebody might end up with food that they might have some questionable right to. And we need to enforce the rules to make sure someone doesn't end up with an extra bag of rice or beans before it's all over. I don't get that. I don't understand that. I'm hoping that there is no abuse and fraud. There's bound to be some in every program. We know that. But I'm hoping that we also understand that when people are needy and wanting things just to survive, we got to show a caring side to our nature and work together. Now I look at the world challenge that we're facing and I'm sure you're going to talk about it in the course of this. To think that we're going to double the number of people who are facing this kind of food insecurity in the world in just a short period of time to a total of a quarter of a billion people around the world. You know, we're going to need the traditional sources more than ever, World Food Program and others that have come through. And we're going to have to do something on our own that makes sense on a bipartisan basis. You know, I look back to the early era when I was still in school and George McGovern would step up and make an alliance with Bob Dole or Hubert Humphrey or whoever happened to be around. And they've decided we're going to find a program that the farmers like a lot, the shippers like a lot, and the poor people need a lot. And they would come up with great ideas, bipartisan ideas together. I'll never forget George McGovern right now. A guest column in the Washington Post years ago, he was over in Rome at the time, and I think it was under the Clinton administration. And he suggested an international school lunch program. And I thought, why didn't anybody ever think of that before? I called him over in Rome and said, George, I like this idea. Let's talk about it. Great he says, I'm coming out to Washington in a few weeks and we'll get together. And so sure enough, we set up a lunch that he did in the Senate dining room and invited me and Dan Glickman and a number of people to come in and to hear this. And there suddenly was a table of Dick Luger and Bob Dole. You could tell from the start this was going to be a winner. And it turned out to be a winner, a winning program. And McGovern and Dole, feeding the young people around the world as an attraction for them to go to school and get basic nutrition. It just made sense from every different angle. Could we do it again today? Could we put together a bipartisan group to deal with world hunger, to deal with hunger here in the United States? It's a much tougher time to do it. I can't explain to you why, but that's the state of American politics. You're going to help us bridge the divides and gaps in this world of politics. A friend of mine said the other day, this coronavirus is not going to break us, but it's going to teach us those parts of our lives that are broken, that need to be fixed. Certainly when it comes to feeding people in the United States in need, but certainly around the world, and the famine that is looming is a reminder we have very little time to get it together. It's broken. We can do better. Thank you for coming together today to remind us that there are people who still care. Senator Durbin, thank you so much. And thank you in particular for sharing that story about the bipartisan effort to create the McGovern Joel School Feeding Program internationally. That's really inspiring, and I hope that we can get back to that type of effort going forward, particularly given the extreme needs. So thank you again to Congressman McGovern and Senator Durbin for your leadership, the chambers for your lifelong commitment to any hunger and also for your leadership of the respective caucuses in your chambers. Thank you for making time. I know you have a lot going on. And we're very grateful you could be with us today. We are now joined by the International Food Policy Research Institute Director General Joe Swinnin. Dr. Swinnin became General of the IFPRI in January of just this year. So it's been an interesting start. I'm sure not quite what he expected. Prior to joining IFPRI, Dr. Swinnin was Professor of Economics and Director of the Leica Center for Institutions and Economic Performance at KU Lubin in Belgium. He was also Senior Research Fellow at the Center for European Policy Studies in Brussels. Dr. Swinnin is a Fellow of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association and the European Association of Agricultural Economists. He also served as President of the International Association of Agricultural Economists from 2012 to 2015. Dr. Swinnin is published extensively on agricultural and food policies, international development, political economy, institutional reforms, trade, and global value chains. Thank you so much for being with us today, Dr. Swinnin. Over to you. Thank you very much, Rebecca, for this introduction. Thank you also to colleagues of the Alliance to End Hunger and FAO for organizing this event. I also want to thank the honorable members of the United States House of Representatives and the US Senate, honorable co-chairs and members of the House and Senate hunger caucuses and particularly the speakers, Congressman McGovern and Senator Durbin, who gave a very strong impression of the situation in the US and in the world. And I was very impressed about the problems here in the United States as they explained them. I also want to thank the honorable Director General of the FAO, Shudan Yu, who gave a very good overview. I thought about both the problems and the contributions of the FAO in this thing. This is what I want to thank you for the invitation to contribute to this very important event. Okay. Now the time is limited so I would basically like to start with maybe making five points up front and then I'm going to use a couple of slides to document some of the details. One is that cause COVID is causing problems because it has two separate effects and both are very are quite traumatic one is it cause an economic recession. And it also causes the disruption of our food systems and so to address or to come to better outcomes we have to address both aspects of this problem. The second one is that the impact of COVID is affecting all of us but that affecting not all it doesn't affect all of us in the same way so it's really difference between different social groups and as I will document the poorest of the world and the poorest in countries are typically affected the strongest. So that also means that our response to the COVID crisis should disproportionately be focusing on the poorest people. Third item is that it's also not the same not hit not homogeneous across different sectors and different supply chain different food system just quite a bit of difference. How some kind of some sectors and some supply chains have turned out to be very vulnerable to COVID and others have been much more resilient and that basically allows us to draw a lesson and to see how we can basically improve the situation in the more vulnerable systems. What we also saw and that's my fourth point of what we see is that there's a lot of creative and entrepreneurial activities going on right now I think Congressman McGovern identified some would explain some of what's going on the US. We see this globally. Okay, and so this is very important to understand we should learn from the best practices both for private and public sector activities. And then my final key point is that I think we are at the transformative moment in history. This is not just anymore about crisis management. This is really about the challenges but also the opportunities to move to a more resilient food system in the future. Let me now go to my slides. Okay, I hope this works. So we have on the second slide. I basically just just to draw your attention at IFPRI we have very early on basically made this a point of our priorities in terms of research and right now we have blocks series of about 35 different blocks related to COVID impact and global food and security and poverty. These the current the most recent blocks have targeted on some very specific issues related for example nutrition to gender to disruption of informal trade, etc. So I really encourage you to go and look at our website to look for more detailed information on some of the general things I will be only to cover briefly here. So as I said already, it's really a combination of a standard economic recession which we actually quite know quite well how that affects food security and nutrition security. And disruption of food systems of which we basically have less understanding. Here are some outcomes of the some of the model runs that we have done in at IFPRI and they're largely consistent with some of the model predictions of other institutions. Okay, so what we predict is that basically it could lead to an increase of extreme poverty in the world of almost 150 million people in addition. Okay, so most of these will be in Sub-Saharan Africa and a very significant share also in South Asia. What we know is that with the shift to poverty of course food security worsens and nutrition security worsens. And so what you see in the right panel is that the right hand panel is that you see that there's a shift within so in general people consume less food because they're poorer. But the types of food that they consume are typically becoming less nutritious. So you see declines in fruit and vegetables in meat and in dairy, for example, and basically an increase in basic staples, which is clearly a move from a more nutritious but also more expensive diet to less expensive but less nutritious diet. In terms of the food system disruptions, what we see there is that these disruptions are actually, this is very different on what we experienced with the supply with basically the food price spikes in the 2007-2011 period with a lot of people who we remember still very well. In a way it's much more similar to what happened during the transition processes in the 1990s in Eastern Europe and in the former Soviet Union where you also saw collapses of supply chains. And so the difference is that if, for example, in the 2007-2011 period prices went up, which was very bad for Europe, a lot of poor farmers actually benefited from the system. This is very different today. With the collapse of the supply chains and the food system, both consumers and producers are hurt at the same time. Now what we see is that this is not happening in all the supply chains similar. So what we see, what you really have is a crunch of one particular production factor, which is labor. Okay, labor is crunch because of the disease itself, but also because of the lockdown policy reactions to it. And that means that those supply chains, those food systems which are using more labor, okay, are more labor-intensive or more labor-dense if you want. Or elements of the supply chain, which are more labor-intensive. Those are the ones which are basically attacked if you want or much more vulnerable to the impacts of COVID. And so that means that typically in developing countries where supply chains are more labor-intensive, in general, both the harvesting, the processing, transport, etc., are basically much more affected than in richer countries where some of these supply chains are actually very capital or knowledge-intensive and therefore much more resilient. But also in rich countries, we see that things like food and vegetable harvest, where a lot of migrant labor is used. Also, for example, in the US meat processing factories where a lot of labor-dense systems are also very much disrupted through this thing, okay. But there's much less impact on, for example, large-scale grain production where we have big tractors using the field, etc. So this is important to understand, particularly if we have to come up with solutions to that going forward. Poor people are disproportionately affected because of a number of reasons. One is obviously the economic recession is affecting them very strongly. Just listen to what's happening in the US, what was just told by Senator Durbin. They also spend typically a much larger share of their income on food and then rich people do, and so that makes them especially vulnerable on the food and nutrition side. The third point is that, okay, what do poor people have? What's their asset base and their production factor? It's essentially physical labor, okay. Rich people have, they have a house or they have a factory or they have some land or they have all kinds of things. Or basically they have a lot of high-skilled labor. So I can work from home behind my computer, I can use Zoom and Skype and whatever to continue to work. Poor people only have physical labor, they have to go out, okay. So that means they're especially hurt because of the production side as well. COVID causes more disruptions in private food value chains in the developing country because they're more labor-intensive, as I explained already. And what we also see is that poor people are more affected by the impact of COVID, the disruption on the public programs, on social security programs, on food programs, school feeding, for example, nutrition, etc. And then the last point is that typically in developing countries, the capacity of governments, okay, the fiscal capacity to support the poor is slower than in richer countries. Here are some, an example, okay, we have, if we have done now a whole series of country studies and I'm just going to show one given the time here. And so there we see that, so you show before, we saw that the numbers which I presented earlier, that's global averages, okay. If we go inside some of the developing countries, the numbers are much bigger, okay. And this is data from Nigeria from the economic cost of the five-week lockdown. And we see that a national GDP fell by almost 40%, okay. The agri-food system is relatively, I wouldn't say better off, but not as strongly falling and because the concentration of the collapse if you want an income is really in the services sector and food service and less so in agricultural production system. Part of that is also because part of the agricultural production are basically smallholder subsistence farms, and these in a way are less affected because they just use their own labor for their own food, okay. And so the lockdowns are affecting them less. But you see there's been a 30 million people increase moving into poverty in Nigeria alone over this short period of time. The hoarding that we see across the world, we see families hoarding. So look, I'm sure all of you have seen on TV or in the news media, basically pictures of empty shelves and supermarkets because consumers are hoarding. Well, governments are doing the same thing. And so typically what you see in countries which are traditional exporters of food, they are, they have been imposing export restrictions basically make it more difficult for importing for countries which are importing food to get access to that food. We have done a number of studies on this and we find that the rice market is potentially the most affected market by these restraints. I have on the right hand panel here there's a list of countries which are more send most sensitive most vulnerable to these import restrictions. And on top you see a lot of countries from Central Asia and that's because they're traditionally importing their grain from Russia, Ukraine Kazakhstan which all have been importing imposing export restrictions. My next slide slide summarizes a number of policies of policies needed to avoid the food crisis what has been done so far and what we should do more. I don't have time to go in detail through all of these and I think that the director general from FAO has already identified a whole series of these things. So important is economic stimulus programs social safety nets, focusing on nutrition not just on providing galleries green lanes for making supply chains, functioning as good as possible, smart social distancing transparency. And we've seen that there's been significant good policy reactions already there's been important large scale government investments in basically in economic stimulus programs and social safety nets. The WTO and the G20 have called to avoid export restrictions but there's also many direct general. And so there has been a big amount of money made available for loans to Africa loans and basically provisions to Africa by the IMF in the World Bank. We can do more we can invest more make more funding available and basically also basically eliminate the trade restrictions etc. I'm happy to go into more detail if you're interested. Let me end then by coming back to one of my opening remarks is that I think this is a transformative moment in history. It's going to the food systems will never become again as they were. I see a lot of creativity and innovation in restructuring these value chains both in the private sector in the public sector, and I think it creates all kinds of challenges right now but I think it's also an opportunity to create more resilient food systems for the future. Thank you very much. Thank you so much Dr. Swenon. Our final speaker is Dominique Bourgogne, director of FAO's Emergency and Rehabilitation Division. Mr. Bourgogne has over 20 years of professional experience with FAO in various functions in the field and at headquarters. In July 2011 he was appointed as FAO representative in Bangladesh, overseeing one of the largest country programs of the organization and putting into practice the concepts of disaster risk management for food and nutrition security. In November 2012 he was appointed director of FAO's Emergency and Rehabilitation Division. Mr. Bourgogne also leads the FAO work on increasing the resilience of agriculture based livelihoods to threats and crises. Thank you so much for joining us to talk about the findings of the 2020 global report on food crises and the anticipated impact the COVID-19 pandemic and related economic crises are expected to have on extreme hunger in the coming year. Dominique. Thank you very much, Rebecca. I hope you can see the presentation. I would like to start, of course, by thanking the House and Senate angle focus for organizing this congressional briefing. I think this is indeed the third edition. It is indeed coming at a very timely moment as we are facing multiple crises. I would like to start really by also thanking USAID and US government colleagues for the quality of dialogue and the partnership we have on this important issue. And before starting, like also to sort of pre-fascinate my presentation by saying that my presentation today will basically primarily focusing on acute hunger and food crisis context. So basically here I'd like to provide a little bit of background. And saying that when coming to the World Human Rights Summit in 2016, there was a realization that the humanitarian needs had been exponentially increasing in the last decade. As a matter of fact, the humanitarian needs increased from three to 20 billion per year with 40% of the total going to food security related activities. There was therefore at that time a clear realization that we needed to do business differently. And this is why leaders from the EU, FAO and WFP decided to launch the so-called global network against food crisis. And really here the objective was really to tackle both the immediate food crisis as well as to work at the root causes of this food crisis. And this is why there was a process that first we need to build the evidence to provide decision makers with the evidence on the food crisis and then be able to really hopefully gradually change the way we are doing business. So essentially the report on food crisis focuses on acute food insecurity, which is the type of food insecurity that is due to shock and which requires basically humanitarian assistance. Typically it's a situation people are facing where they have to cut on the number of quality and quality of meals and even a time in more extreme case that they have to get rid of there. They have to sell their belongings to cover these food needs. The global report on food crisis is based on the IPC, the integrated food security phase classification, the Khadra harmonized in the Sahel and West Africa region, but so on fuse net juice and other sources on formation. It started back five years ago with three partners, FAO, WFP and EU. And now as you can see and as was mentioned by previous speakers, there is a wide range of players, including international organizations, but also regional organizations that are contributing to this. And here I would like of course to highlight the net and USAID, but I would like also to mention the recent addition of UNHCR contributing important data on, for example, the population. As was mentioned this year, we have 135 million people in food insecurity, but what I think this slide shows is that for the last four years, we have always had over 100 million people in acute food insecurity. This shows that of course humanitarian assistance is absolutely critical. We need to be able to avoid further deterioration, but in the meantime, as previous speakers have said, we need to work on the root causes. We need to manage to reduce this 100 million basis that is always there and that can only be tackled by working on resilience building on the so called humanitarian development piece nexus. So now I go at the number, I mean it was mentioned indeed that this year we have almost 135 million people in 55 countries or territories are in acute food insecurity and as was said, this marks the higher number in the four years since the launch of the global report on food crisis. And I would highlight again that these were pre COVID number and pre even locust average in many regions of the world. As you can see Africa remained the continent with the most affected by food crisis, accounting for 54% of the global total number with over 73 million people. This is followed by Middle East and Asia where 10 countries account for about 43 million people. For example, we have yes indeed a number of countries in the nearest but also have countries like Myanmar, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan that are affected by acute food insecurity in 2019. As was mentioned, the three largest food crisis in terms of number of people are in Yemen in the Democratic Republic of Congo and in Afghanistan. So when you look at the drivers here, I think it's very important to clarify that looking at the primary drivers, which does not mean that is the only driver, it only means that in a given country, it is considered as the main one. These drivers often act in combination. We see, for example, now that many countries that are in, for example, in conflict situation are also hit by extreme climate events and even, for example, by locust but even now by also by the COVID crisis. So it means it's really an accumulation of shocks that is pushing people over the hedge. And what I should have said on the previous slide is that as part of the 135 million people, we have actually 27 million people that are in IC phase four. It means one step away from phase five, which is, as you know, catastrophe type of situation. So you can see the main driver has remained conflict and insecurity in 22 countries, which again shows how relevant it is for us to the global network and the context of the global network to engage with the One Security Council. On the 21st of April, the FAO General and the WFP Executive Director engaged the One Security Council on a debate on the link between conflict and food insecurity. As you can see also main driver is climate extreme in 25 countries, all five in Africa, and then economic downturns and economic shocks in eight countries, including Sudan, Haiti, and a couple others. When you look at the 10 worst food crisis in the world today, we need to look at from two angles. One is in absolute terms. And there you can see that we have a great food crisis Yemen, the more democratic of Congo and Afghanistan with over 10 million people in acute food insecurity. But we need also to look in relative terms in percentage of the total population. And there we see that we have countries such as South Sudan where 61% of the total population is in IPC3 plus lives in acute food insecurity, 53% in Yemen, 37% in Afghanistan. And there are two countries that are not in this list because they are not in absolute terms, they don't have such high number, but where percentage wise, they have a very high number, very high percentage of the population that is in acute food insecurity. And this is in particular the case for Central African Republic and Zimbabwe today. But the 135 million is only the tip of the iceberg. I think it's important to realize that we have also 183 million in 47 countries that the matter of fact live in IPC. So Calvary is a phase two, which is in stressed food security conditions, they are one step away from this acute food insecurity. And it means that they are in a fragile condition and the shocks such as the one we are experiencing for the moment may put them over the edge and significantly increase the number of the inaccurate food insecurity. The goal of the global report on food crisis was saying is to provide to inform decision making and to inform programming. It's to provide decision makers everywhere on the hill in Washington, also in all countries of the world with the evidence they need to make their financial decisions but also their programming. Therefore, in the context of the report, we have also been looking at financial flows and all the work we are doing in the context of the global report over the last couple of years is influencing that. And what we see here, we have two graph. The first one shows the evolution of humanitarian assistance for food security and agriculture and nutrition in 32 countries. And here what we see is that basically there has been a continuous increase in the state growth in the assistance going, the volume of assistance going to for humanitarian assistance to food security and nutrition from 5.3 to 6.5 billion dollars, which I would say very coherent with the trend of the global report where we have been able to, where we have kept, we've been able to demonstrate that there are always over 100 million people in acute food insecurity. The second one, the second one shows basically the use, the deep inequalities that exist between the recipient countries with similar level of needs in terms of acute food insecurity. For example, if we compare Yemen, Democratic Republic of Congo and Afghanistan, the three of them over 10 million people in acute food insecurity, you see that the volume of humanitarian assistance going to Yemen is much bigger than what goes to Democratic Republic of Congo and Afghanistan. Even if you compare three of the crises, Syrian Arab Republic, Sudan and South Sudan, you see that even the volume of aid that is going to Syria with 6.5 million people in acute food insecurity is greater than what goes to Democratic Republic of Congo and Afghanistan. So it shows, it highlights really inequalities and it provides evidence to fight further investment decision. So now, if we go really to the impact and the channel of impact of COVID food security today, as was mentioned, food availability is not converted as a problem at global level, generally speaking, for a moment. But, however, it's clear that availability and prices might be an issue at local level. In this context, when it comes to food security, the initial focus has been and is still in many contexts on access to food. A combination of localized price increase, increases combined with reduced income opportunities is leading to increased food insecurity, especially among vulnerable groups, as was for example revealed very recently by the Afghanistan phase classification analysis that was done a couple of days ago. For people in food crisis context, who primarily depend on agriculture, I think it's important to keep in mind that the 135 million people that are in acute food insecurity, a majority of them up to 80% depend on agriculture for their livelihood. For these people who are already struggling with a variety of shots, the concern is not just one of food access, it is increasingly as the director of general said, an issue of availability of production. In this context, farmers are being hit as both consumers, producers. As producers, they cannot sell their produce, or when they manage to sell, they get low prices, their incomes therefore drop. As their incomes drop, the percentage of the household budget going to food crisis, they cut on non-food expenditures such as health and education, and they have very little left to invest in agricultural inputs for the next season. It is very important to highlight also to realize that with all this now is exacerbated by the economic recessions which was mentioned and which we are starting to fill in a number of countries. This need to support availability very much central to, for example, the number of engagement with the Ministry of Agriculture all over the world that really highlighted the need not to miss the forthcoming planting season. Of course, food crisis countries, we are extremely concerned with the risk of further deterioration. There is indeed a growing risk of famine in certain trees and even potentially of multiple families occurring at the same time. When we look at the number of the global report, I mentioned the 135 million people and I indicated that 27 million people are already in IPC phase four, one step away from famine. And then you have the 183 million that are on IPC2 and that can slide into that situation. It's also important to refer to the work that has been done by FuseNet, the FuseNet global security area that was issued in April this year, which forecasts an increase of 294 million people in acute food insecurity in 29 countries. Representing an increase of 25% for these countries from last year and 55% with respect to the spike years. The FuseNet analysis also indicated that particular concern facing some countries, especially in Nigeria and South Sudan and Yemen, what the risk where they indicated a potential risk of famine. FAO, when it comes to FAO, I think it's important to mention that we are fully engaged right from the beginning and that we are part of course of the UN integrated effort. As you may know, there are three critical and complementary components of the UN effort to save, protect people and rebuild livelihood. First, monitoring response. Second, the health response by WHO and third, the UN framework for the immediate socioeconomic. Here, my presentation is focusing on the global humanitarian response plan and FAO component of this humanitarian response plan, which is focusing on 34 countries and for which we are looking for about $350 million. Our response is articulated around four pillars, one that deals with global data analysis. I mean, the impact of COVID is still largely unknown, and therefore what we want is to have a degree of gravity to understand what's really going on at country level. And this is why as part of a corporate effort led by the Economist of FAO, we are gathering data, focusing globally, but also focusing on this food crisis countries, understand what's going on, using, for example, the food insecurity, experience scale and other tools to really get this granularity of understanding and make sure that we are able to program, reprogram our activities in the best possible way, ensuring best value for money, and above all, doing our harm. The second component is focusing on maintaining production, including through ensuring ongoing humanitarian assistance and scaling to ensure farmers can take the opportunity of the fourth coming season. This is done using a variety of mechanism, including, for example, the use of casualties when required. Our third component is equally important to production support. We are ramping up support to post-production activities, like harvesting, storage, small-scale food processing and conservation in these countries, which are important. And then the fourth component is really working on ensuring food chain actors are not at risk of virus transmissions. We see, for example, that this is now the start of the planting season in the Sahel soon. People are used to work together. How can we help disseminate messaging to make sure that there is no risk of transmission? The same in terms of the funding of the markets, we have large activities going in countries like Afghanistan, for example. FAO, of course, for the moment, we are maintaining our operations. We are adapting our operations. For example, in Somalia, more than the use of mobile money, only since the beginning of the crisis in March, we have reached 200,000 people with this mobile modality. This is a program that benefitted from USAID support. And then in South Sudan, as we speak, in the middle of the COVID crisis, we have been able to reach 4.8 million people in time for the planting season. And I think it is important to realize that with significant support from USAID last year, we were able to conclude about 25% of the total food product of the country with the people producing themselves. It means at much reduced costs. The final thing I want to say today is that when we are talking of what FAO is doing today, when talking of the drivers, we say that it is often a combination of drivers. The critical one we are dealing now is the disaster block upsurge we are facing that started in the Arabian Peninsula that is now affecting East Africa. We have supported the country. We are at the side of the government, augmenting their casualties. The situation deteriorated in late December 19. It has been declared four project priorities. We have been able to mobilize resource and capacities along a two track approach, aiming one to call the impact of the disease, but then to control the locus and the second to be able to increase livelihood report to help the communities that affected and that are particularly many indigenous. Now we need to sustain our efforts in the Horn of Africa. We need to, in the meantime, scale up our support to West Asia. That is also very much affected by the locus for the moment, especially Iran and Pakistan. And we need also to consider, prepare and prevent for locus upsurge that may happen in the Sahel in the coming weeks and months. That I would like to thank you and of course we will take some of the questions. Thank you. Thank you so much, Dominique. We have time for just a few questions for our speakers and thank you to everyone who submitted comments. Unfortunately, we will not have time to get to all of them today, but we do have time for one question each for director general to director general Swindon and Mr version. So we'll start with director general to how is FAO responding to the findings in the global report director general I believe you're still muted. Yeah, you okay. Thank you. Yes, you're good. No, it's okay. You're good. So first of all, thank you for all your efforts and also listening the speech of director general for if pre and due to the time limit I just to give you the highlights. Thank you for all the questions. I will ask my colleague to answer properly from the Washington office and also the department relevant department divisions. We are committed to work with a global network to address the more well down drivers of food crisis as identified in the 2020 global report as well as emerging threat like COVID-19. So the FAO is part of a global humanitarian response plan, which is under UN current in cooperation closely with OCH is under the UN headquarter. And we are an especially an increase of need for a culture based livelihood support in the 13 countries. You yesterday we had a meeting with OCH to brief all the member countries. We are pleasure to our firm commitment, continue to have the millions of valuable people. You know, the last year since I come to the office, August, we initially the hand in hand initiative. We are mainly focused on the most available countries regions about a 53 countries in the world, and the food crisis conflict the regions in namely small island state. Last, the list of developing countries and landlocked countries for the crisis countries and the some big countries with the high absolute number of the poverty. So, honey, honey, initially we want to bring all the key players at the U.S. system level, and also public levels are member countries. We encourage the donor countries about the recipient countries and also private sectors. We invite all the important companies, national companies who are related to a culture production of food systems to support the countries who need most. And of course, academic institutions like universities and the academies and build up the system partnership with the venerable countries. And the last and not least also several organizations. So, and for the time being, we mainly focus on the better data for better decision. As I mentioned that we are now the work inclusive with WFP on the data collection and the analysis. And also the coordination and the technical support because FAO is a UN professional organization. We only offer the technical expertise, consultations and policy advice and also information dissemination. And partly also capacity buildings, trainees and so on. So, we are willing to shift the more resources together with our donors to have the most valuable countries and the peoples. As Dominic already mentioned, we started since December, we already focus on the east home of Africa and to stop the upstaging of the locus. And with strong support with donors from America, USAID and the European, at large and Russia, China, Asia and the Bill Gates Foundation, you name it. So they appreciate that all this quick reaction before pandemic even we are welcome that we can serve the more food the estimate about the 720,000 tons of food that we serve that you to we have an especially action and the only one action. And third, I think it's we move from a house and food images to the resilience. You know the smart culture or climate change smart culture is an essential. We closely covered with the World Bank and others to to have the people to in the vulnerable regions and to resilience and mitigate to the climate change. I think for all those FL we are ready to to work with the member countries and also to to try to minimize the, the, the severity of the further crisis. And, of course, we will have to do more and more tangibly. And also we wanted to build a more coherence with Congress in different countries, especially also the, the U.S. That's why that's a way we, you know, last September I was in Japan. So we had a visitor with Congress. So I wanted to make the build up the more coherence correlation to fight against the hunger and poverty. And that's, I said, that's my lifelong commitment to have the poor people to get rid of poverty and also to improve their livelihood to to to speed up, skip the implementation SDGs, especially SDG to SDG one. And even the pandemic and after pandemic. Don't forget our long term of SDGs, we have only less than 10 years. So time is short and we have to run against the clock and work hard and more efficient and have the people to really improve their livelihood as we should do. Thank you. It's over to you. Thank you so much. Director General Swinnen. What do you see as the role of the private sector in addressing these historic challenges. Thank you. I mean that's a very, it's a very good question very important question as well because most of a lot of what the initial attention is on and a lot of what was presented here today as well where we think about this and we focus very strongly on the policy arena what's the policy response that we should have. And that is certainly hugely important right, but the private sector can play a very important role in this and is playing a very important role on this, particularly if we think about the issue of the food systems and housing. So when you talk to respond basically representatives from the private sector I mean all of them are working very hard and very intensely in trying to come up with innovative new ways of reorganizing their food systems their food, their supply chains, etc. And so basically what I described to we have to learn from see okay which one are vulnerable which have been quite resilient can we use resilient models to apply to the vulnerable models and that's what they do and they're experimenting with that etc. And so of course when you have global multinationals which we have a number in the food area I mean they can even copy that from one country to the next one system to the next etc. But of course a lot of the food companies and the food system is a small producer, small trader, small retailers etc. And what we see okay and I think for that reason we don't know very much actually on what is going on from a systemic systemic basis as basically Director General and then Mr. Buño has also said we need better data because we don't know very well how a lot of these adjustments have taken place what work and what not. For example we just have a blog out on India and there it seems that counter to our expectation that seems that the informal retail sector in big cities like Delhi and Mumbai has actually been more resilient than the larger supermarket chains for example the modern sector and that is surprising because that's not what we expected. So I think the creativity the entrepreneurship there is is really important and that basically we should both stimulate that and basically learn from that I think. And so when you talk to people I think that is really crucial also to put a future we have to go to kind of if you think about the triangle. Okay, of resilience of sustainability and of inclusiveness of food systems and food change. I mean I think that's really important that this triangle is will turn into something where there's no longer trade offs, or we should minimize the trade offs and we should maximize the coherence between these three objectives in this triangle I think. Thank you. Thank you so much. We have time for one quick question to Dominique. How are you thinking about addressing gender inequality as a driver of risk as we prepare for and try to prevent the third wave impact of COVID-19 in the possible hunger crisis. Thank you very much. I'm really glad that the issue of gender comes forward and we agree that there is a clear divide in all different genders are experiencing the current crisis with of course the women bear the huge burden as caretaker as a large proportion of informal workers and small scale producers. This is true in wealthy countries but this is also true in the most affected countries by food crisis and we are trying to address that a variety of approaches. And here I have a particularly telling example that we are implementing in Senegal in the context what we call le panier de l'aménager in French, which is basically where women producers group have been able to access the market to sell their produce is where basically we are helping. We are linking these women producers group with women edit households that have malnourished children under five and basically we are providing these women edit households with food basket containing nutritious food like vegetable, milk and meat but this is one among many. We have also the team club that we are using in other countries where we are using global radio targeting women with messages on really how to deal with the current situation and especially also of course on the sensitization on social distancing etc at this critical juncture of the season in many countries. Thank you so much Dominique. To close today's session, it is my privilege to invite my friend and colleague at the Alliance to end hunger Ambassador Tony Hall to share a few comments and reflections about the current moment in the context of hunger over the past decades. Tony. Well thank you Becky and I just want to thank these excellent presentations. It's been tremendous to listen to you and especially the Director General Chu and Dr. Swinnin and Senator Durbin, Congressman McGovern two amazing champions for the hungry and in the Congress and I want to also thank the FAO Director in Washington, Van Lendren, Sharon, who's and his team, the FAO friends in Washington, they really helped Alliance put all this together. They have been wonderful not only on this but on so many things. I'm going to be very quick couple minutes because you've you've heard a lot of wonderful presentations and and I will I will summarize pretty much what I've heard, not all the facts because you have the facts and before you and a lot of these papers will be will be published and available but many of you have heard me speak before and you know I learned about hunger from my days in the Peace Corps and and I learned really about hunger when I was chairman of the select committee on hunger when I was in Congress. I won't go in but I into the story where I saw 25 children die one day in 1980 in Ethiopia and how it stunned me and I never got over that and but to summarize, while the virus does not appear to directly impact children as much as older individuals, the indirect long term impacts will hit children and families with children the hardest for years to come and children's well being their development and protection including their access to education food safety and health particularly those in vulnerable situations is deeply deeply concerning and while many of us in America are focused on the hungry poor in the United States and I'm focused on my old congressional district of Dayton, Ohio, I'm building a grocery store in Dayton, Ohio because we have a very large food desert. We have a tremendous problem in the plight of children in the poorest countries on the poorest households within countries and on girls within the poorest households, as well as devastating risk caused by the pandemic for children and humanitarian and armed conflicts. It demands our attention and our action and the world hunger crisis and demands the attention of the US government and those of us passionate about this issue we know that advocating for global food security policy is not going to be an easy task. And while world hunger has traditionally pulled political rivals together and policy and budget discussions discussions, the domestic effects of and response to the pandemic have drained the atheist countries, mentally, emotionally and physically. How we approach this pandemic will not only determine how fast we recover but will also shape our world for years to come. And as Congress from the government said to us, hunger is a political condition. And no matter how unusual the times or circumstances are we can save lives of those who are hungry. If we have enough political will to do it. I hope we can come together once again to approach this as a nonpartisan issue. It's not an issue of politics, but of one of simple human decency. I want to thank all of you. There's approximately 650 people on this phone I think the last time I looked are on this zoom call. All of you who never get a recognition for the tremendous work that you do. Thank you. A lot of concern and the help and the hurting. The hurting will come from you and come from the groups that are represented on this zoom call. And you know the fact is, is that we are our brother's keeper. We are our brother's keeper. And it's important how we conduct ourselves during this time and how we help our neighbors. And it's so wonderful to associate with you and had to be part of this wonderful team worldwide. So God bless you and your work in your health and in your family. Thank you. Thank you so much Ambassador Hall. With that we will close today's briefing I want to thank FAO for co hosting this with the Alliance and hunger. Thank all of our speakers and thank all of you for joining us. If you're looking to learn more about FAO's work there is another webinar tomorrow. This one's on protecting plant health for a food secure future. You can find a link to register on FAO liaison office Washington's website. Again, thank you all for being with us and have a good day. Thank you. Thank you, Rebecca. And thank you. Thank you, Ambassador Hall. And we, with our passion. And every day we can serve one ball of food. And then we can have all the poor people. And I know there's still we have a more than 400 audience. And I think that we can do our best. Yeah. To try our best. Thank you. Thank you for your contribution. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Rebecca.