 What kind of world do I want to live in? I think about this question a lot. For our generation and for specifically my group of people, which is refugees, the circumstances might dismantle any vision of the future that we have. You're trying to rebuild, you're trying to make a future for yourself and then the climate-related disaster comes and you start again. It's not about how it's affecting you, it's about how it's affecting your entire life. The first step to understand is that we're all a part of it. None of us are going to be left out by the crisis. We're at a stage where if we don't act now, really there won't be very much left. There are generations that will never see certain things that we grew up seeing in real life. We have to start treating this like the emergency it is to achieve the 17 sustainable development goals. We have to go from an intention to a serious commitment. Business leaders really need to rethink how they conduct their business and invest in creating systems that are climate-friendly. The action I would like to see is accountability. Structures being put in place where countries aren't just asked to do something, but they're kept accountable to the decisions that they make. There has to be that strong collaboration between government, between corporations, between youth activists to drag change forward. The world I would want to live in is a world where imagining the future is not a privilege. I want to live in a world where people do not give up on hope. Hope that a positive change is possible. The fact that you're listening today means that you are willing to make a change. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening to all of our panelists and participants from around the globe. I want to welcome you to the Scaling Innovations and Technology for Food Systems Discussion. My name is Tara Nathan. I lead MasterCard Worldwide Social Impact Business that innovates commercially sustainable digital tools to give marginalized individuals access to basic services. I will serve as your moderator for this August panel. Joining me today we have in the first session an all-female panel. I'd like to welcome, we have the Honorable Maria Juliana Ruiz, the Honorable First Lady of Columbia, Honika Faber, President of the Food and Refreshments Division at Unilever. Dr. Purovi Mehta, the Head and Deputy Director for Agriculture for Asia of the Gates Foundation. Welcome to all of our panelists. There are myriad challenges with today's food systems from land use to greenhouse gas emissions to food insecurity. Today we're going to focus on sustainability of food systems, primarily economic sustainability, with the farmer at the center and how operational or other factors can drive to that sustainability. How innovations, both technological innovations, but also pricing go to market, product innovations can transform food systems to improve farmer incomes and drive towards the SDG zero hunger by 2030 goal and ultimately create an inclusive, efficient, sustainable and nutritious food system. I think we all recognize here that a fundamental shift is needed to create sustainable food systems. Governments must improve policies for implementing innovative solutions. Private sector companies must bring their expertise and technology to innovate solutions to food system challenges. And of course donors need to de-risk innovation. Many of these changes are underway from precision agriculture to smart logistics and integrated supply chains. Yet adoption and usage of technology and these innovative approaches that can improve food security at the base of the pyramid has failed to scale. Broad adoption and usage will only happen if innovations are economically viable, especially for the farmers. And one of the fundamental challenges that we want to talk about to here today is the lack of an operational mechanism for collective action. Whilst I think we all have seen there are multiple thought leadership for a for thought leadership negotiation government policy making. We seem to lack a mechanism to coordinate the actual implementation and scaling these innovations and that's why the World Economic Forum and partners like Mastercard and those gathered here today. Are creating country led food innovation hubs around the world. These hubs bring together the myriad actors required to drive collective action and build sustainable food ecosystems. The hubs focus on adoption and scaling of innovation. Today we'd like to deep dive from the various perspectives of leaders in government civil society, private sector and the farmer, most essentially, on what is needed to build sustainable food systems. Critically we want to hear today about the gaps to collective action and how we can enable and scale ag innovations. This session has two parts. We'll begin with an opening plenary, which will be available later for the public to view through the World Economic Forum website. Before moving to a panel where we will discuss how to take this vision to action in the second half. I have the honor to moderate this panel for the opening plenary so again welcome to our esteemed panelists. With that I'd like to turn to our first panelist, the Honorable Maria Juliana Ruiz. You are very well known for your work and passion driving collective action for the well being of children, and especially the eradication of malnutrition. Columbia is also one of the first countries to initiate a food innovation hub. So if you could, I would love to hear more about the opportunities for change you see in the food systems in Columbia, what needs to be solved. How can innovation help, and how can the food innovation hubs facilitate this transition. Sure. Thank you so much Tara. Good morning to everybody it's truly an honor for me to be part of this panel. So to answer your question I will probably start by the roots and is to say that agricultural activities, rural communities, local products and producers as part of the food system have become vital to Columbia's growth, both in economic and social terms, and I would like to share some numbers and an example of this is that nearly 3.3 million Colombians are employed in the agriculture and related centers. So this for us has also become a major target and a specific place to to work with and for it. This also has a specific relevance because this makes the sector as the second largest employment generator in Columbia. So this is truly relevant when we speak about development and sustainable development. Additionally, agricultural competitiveness is a priority for Columbia and innovation takes relevant part on it. You mentioned I've been passionate about nutrition, and I truly believe that if there's a, there's a aspect, a relevant issue where innovation where the youth can take and play a key role is presenting innovative solutions to very old and traditional problems in our countries. So as a personal insight I recognize the need to continue working from a multi-sectoral perspective on improving nutrition, especially of course on women and children. And this is because that for me has been my starting point in the role I'm leading right now, and is working on early childhood but with a specific target. And that has been to burst all the physical capacities, cognitive capacities of the children through nutrition at the same time that nourishing them with love and caring to guarantee that they're going to be able to fulfill and to achieve their goals of happy lives and productive lives in the future. Now in the national roadmap that thrive from the from the FCC national dialogues, we identified some cross cutting challenges and this probably goes straight to your question. And is that I probably mentioned just a few, the ones that I consider more relevant. And is that we deeply need to appropriate the approach of the human right to proper nutrition and do it from a differential and specific perspective, including territories and local capital. The second one probably would be the imperative implementation of the local public procurement law, because we have it, but we still need to implement it all over the territory, as well as a national food waste and loss policy. We, it was launched two years ago, but we still have a good way to work on in order to implement and and appropriate this policy. The third one that I would mention would be the strengthening of school fitting, and this is also related to that concept, probably holistic concept of nourishing mind and soul of the kids. And is that we need to strengthen in that specific period of development of the human being to be assured as I said that they're being able to acquire all the micronutrients they need for proper development. So, we need to put to continue working in that same sense in mechanisms to promote rural family and community agriculture, because this is also part of a very important step on the whole system. And another relevant issue for us would be to to once again from a policy perspective, implement a systems approach on that also promotes high level coordination and collaboration, which is crucial and for me has been proving that is the is the right way to go to work from a multi central perspective on transformation of our food systems. We have done so through the great Alliance for nutrition you have probably heard about it. That's probably one of the, of the topics have been more passionate about, and this great Alliance for nutrition allow us to convene different sectors, and the Colombian Intersectoral Commission for food and nutrition security has been very active in this purpose as well. I would like to share something that for us has been a trigger to continue working in this in this way as a multi sectoral approach. In the last year and 2020. In the midst of the pandemic within the difficulties we're facing. Colombia was able to report a decrease above 40% on debts due to malnutrition or association to penetration for kids under five years old. And this is not the goal, but for us was significant enough to to motivate us to continue working in this in this sense. So I hopefully answer your question. Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much for that great introduction and I think Hanukkah, who I will turn to next may have a lot of responses to this I think the first lady has clearly outlined the demand right on the government side and the nutrition of secure food systems in delivering what is sort of, you know the basis for not only healthy youth, healthy children but frankly a healthy workforce as she's described right. So Hanukkah with that I'll turn it over to you, the Hanukkah fiber the president of the fruit and refreshments division. Obviously Unilever has had decades of experience, not only in not only are you a leader in the consumer fast moving goods industry, but frankly really a leader in driving social change through business. I'm interested to understand from your perspective. How do you see Unilever playing a key role in the innovation and in the change that is required to accomplish some of the challenges that the first lady has outlined. Yeah, great question. Thanks Tara and things to the first lady as well. It's really impressive. What's being achieved in Colombia, and especially in childhood nutrition so kudos kudos to you. What do I believe Unilever and another private sector companies can do to be agents of change in the food system. Well let me first say I believe we have an absolute responsibility to help change that system because it is broken many of the things were mentioned before on why it's broken. And I don't agree with people like Jeffrey socks who recently said that these companies should just think he said behave pay taxes and stick to the rules. Of course we should do those things. But the system will change faster if the private sector and companies like Unilever do more. So I think there's two things as a company. We need to do and we do it and they are public commitments and then delivering on them and collaboration. So public commitments are really important. You need to go out and set specific quantitative time bound commitments on how you're going to change the food system for the better. And we've done that as Unilever. We've committed to a whole number of things I won't mention them all but to a billion euros in plant based sales. Because the world needs to eat a little less meat and more plans to doubling the products we sell that have positive nutrition, including fortified products, which again the first lady mentioned. We've committed to having food waste in our operations. We've committed to reducing salt, sugar and calories in our products. We've committed to less plastic, which is another big issue. We've committed to more nature positive production to a deforestation free supply chain to a living wage for everyone in our extended supply chain. And of course we've committed to being that zero by 2039 11 years ahead of the Paris agreement. So we work really hard now to deliver on those things to report progress very transparently annually. Some of these things are going great summer going less good so we'll need to step on those harder. And we've also put it one billion euro climate and nature funding place to fund some of the investments that are needed to live on those commitments. So I think that's the first thing any private sector company needs to do. Because if, if we're not going to commit and deliver on some of the things the food system desperately needs, then who will. And then the second thing I think the private sector needs to do is collaborate with others in the value chain, usually was a big foods company but we're not going to change the food system on our own that's clear. We are working very closely with farmers with governments with NGOs around the world. And I think that's where these World Economic Forum food innovation hubs are very helpful. We just announced actually yesterday, a new partnership with the Farm to Market Alliance in Africa. Under the web innovation hub. And that really helped us to get in touch with the right partners. And together we're going to explore ways for African smallholder farmers in Kenya to grow more diverse, we call it future 50 foods that the world's to focus on just a few crops, which is that for soil and for nutrition. And so we're going to work together to see if we can both create a supply and demand of more diverse crops. So that's one example but collaboration is so important we are collaborating on the ground with farmers with governments with NGOs and so many places, including by the way with the Gates Foundation so I'm really looking forward to hearing from them today as well. Thank you so much, Hanukkah. It truly is impressive I think some of the groundbreaking work and sort of that Unilever does not only as an individual company but frankly as a role model for other private sector actors, you know, seeking and looking inside to make a change. Thank you for your participation. I'm going to turn to it's my pleasure to introduce our third panelist Dr. Purvi Mehta, the head of agriculture for Asia at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation needs no introduction, of course, Purvi. And I know you've been actively engaged in investing in technology and innovation for food systems across Asia, especially in India. In these decades of experience. What do you see currently as the gap. I think we're all talk calling for and talking about intersectoral collaboration. I think we know the problems well right. What do you see as the gaps, and how do you see us tactically moving forward towards filling those gaps and addressing them. And I really, really appreciated the earlier comments, of course, from the Honorable First Lady and also from Hanukkah. I think, you know, they've covered quite a lot of things on what is happening. purely from a developing country perspective, I think one of the biggest gap is we have not harvested the potential enough. And predominantly it continues to remain a low input low output system. And I think any innovations, any collaborations, any transformative ideas that that sort of contributes to turning that low input low output agriculture system to more sustainable input and profitable output system is going to be very, very important and when I say profitable output it is not just the question of the price the farmer, for example, or the producer realizes out of that produce, but at the same time also as as the first lady said, you know, optimizing the value of the produced food also to bridge the huge nutrition gaps I think you know we as a world have come a long way in in achieving food security. The next step is to really, you know, think about nutrition security in the context of the of the consumers. As Hanukkah mentioned and as as the first lady mentioned as well. I think one of the also very important aspects would be food security for the food security. World over especially in developing countries the, the, the largest number of malnutrient people also happen to be farmers or the rural population right. And so how do we link agriculture production with the with its largest output which is, which is also nutrition is going to be very important and more and more in developing countries I think there are two very peculiar things. One is the dependence on locally grown locally sourced food. So, so that's where it plays a very, very important role. And number two is a real need and as you as you mentioned Tara in terms of the missing ones. A real need is also to diversify our agriculture systems right. World over and especially developing countries predominantly there are eight to 10 commodities where our investments are efforts have been the highest which is which is usually around staple crops and staple food. How do you diversify that to to sort of enlarge our portfolio is going to be very important and while doing so. I don't think there is a trade off between either you grow nutritious food or you grow, you have more profitability. I think nutrition and profitability for the farmer must go hand in hand to make our foods or food system more accessible and affordable for the farmers. I think the food system hub for example or the food innovation hub plays a very, very important role in sort of decentralizing the risk that the farmer faces right now, and and also bringing in nuances in the way the systems have been operating right. The system which has been predominantly production driven system, what we produce is not just important, how that produce reaches to the consumer, you know so excess affordability, and also absorption is going to be very, very important. Thanks. Thanks so much. I'm just checking on time I think we're doing good on time so I'd love to take it back maybe and ask a question to all the panelists I think there's been a couple of really important themes that have been brought up here one is in this drive for sustainability and run and sort of modernizing or or changing the food systems it's about how do we get the farmer at the center. How do we drive profitability and how do we drive. Well economic viability essentially for that farmer at the center. So I would love to sort of hear from from from anyone, but maybe Hanukkah we can start with you and then maybe Dr metha would be interested to hear. What are the challenges for driving or for accomplishing that economic sustainability today. I think we talk a lot about commercial sustainability we talk a lot about profitability. What are the challenges to getting there from a private sector perspective and then from a donor perspective what are the challenges on derisking that. Monica. It's a great question and one that is very top of mind for us right now because we indeed you know we we we source all kinds of things tomatoes and onions and tea and soybeans and many more things we source them in many places around the world. And we'd love to get to. I think Dr call it about and I'll call the nature positive production on all of those, where the way it is farmed by our farmers actually improves the soil improves the water is CO2 neutral and all of that isn't happening today. So how do you get there. I don't think there's a one size fits all, but I'll give you one example where where it all has come together pretty nicely for us. We're sourcing of tomatoes in India. So in India we sell Knorr tomato soup and Kisan ketchup so we need a lot of tomatoes. Until about 2017, we're struggling with the quality of tomatoes, we can really get great tomatoes year round lots in season the tomatoes were bad farmers were struggling with yield and living incomes. So this just wasn't a great way for us for the farmers and obviously for consumers to get their tomatoes and ketchup and soup. So we kicked off a collaboration with a cooperative with Sayadri farms in Western India. We did a cooperative about 10,000 tomato farmers, and we did a couple of things we actually put a processing plant at their cooperative headquarters so that the distance to our production site was massively reduced. We helped them with sustainable agricultural practices to both be better for the soil, but also improve their yield. And we helped them get to better quality year round. We're now in year five, we're super happy with that collaboration meals have doubled for the farmers, which of course has a direct impact on their incomes, so they are well above living incomes now, we get better tomatoes, much more consistent quality year round. And as a result, a consumer gets a better product. So, that's a good example, but I'm telling you, that's just tomatoes in India. I've got hundreds of more of these combinations, and it's taken five years. So what's top of my mind for me, how do I accelerate this quickly to many more places many more crops many more countries with different coalitions because it requires collaboration. It's time for me but it's absolutely critical to the planet that this gets done in many more places quickly. Thank you. Thank you. Maybe a couple of crisp comments from you. Have you seen examples in India of commercial sustainability of economic sustainability. How was it accomplished, and then maybe after you're done I'd love to turn back to the first lady for some closing comments. Yeah, thanks Tara. I think Hanika gave one example already. You know, there are there are a very large number of those kind of examples but at the same time there are also a very large number of examples where things have not worked out and it has not been economically experienced in so I think we need to learn from both of that right I mean we have large examples like the dairy cooperative moment to we have you know examples from from smaller commodities also. I think at the crux of any of these successful models as Hanika said number one is the collaboration and collaboration throughout the value chain right only working with say for example processing part will not work only working with production part only so collaboration throughout the value chains pre harvest and post harvest is where we have seen a lot of success. Number two is aggregation right I said cooperatives at smaller level also you know farmer producer organizations basically which is which is sort of an aggregation of 1200 1500 farmers together just giving them a larger economy of scale for them to make sense to the private sector they're giving them better agencies and so forth. I think what is needed from those those success stories really Tara is to use Hanika's word acceleration yes absolutely to tap into the potential but at the same time also inclusion. You know the opportunities at large how do we create you know platform for for more number of farmers all sectors of farmer landholder landless women farmer men farmer you know how do we make that very inclusive. And also how do we extend that to more number of commodities and not just very very usual commercial commodities, including say for example livestock sector I think so inclusion acceleration and diversification would be the three key areas in this one. Thank you. Back to the first lady you've heard I think some great examples of both private sector donor action as the host of the first hub food innovation hub World Economic Forum innovation hub. Maybe you can close out with some comments about what you'd like to see come to Columbia and the changes that it can bring. And just a quick thing to your first question, and is just to leave you with three main actions, and is that knowledge, which for me is absolutely connected to real facts. So communication and collaboration are for me also an accelerator in terms of getting to that effect of productivity and efficient and effective ways to come to those sustainable food systems. Now, your question. Towards how can innovation helps somehow, and definitely convince that innovation and technology has tremendous potential for the transformation. And as I said before from agricultural production to market logistics to nutrition, developing food systems that work for the people and the planet are essential. And there's something that I do believe could be also an expedite solution is and is that digital transformation and inclusive innovation are are critical. We need not only to train on digital skills. But we do need to train, especially the youth, if may I say, in how to use those skills, how to use the technology in solving traditional social problems. So, of course, their challenges related to food systems and nutrition, and they cannot be addressed by any single actor, I will go once again towards a multi sectoral approach. And because I'm convinced that that we need even to get to innovation on that co responsible and cross sector collaboration and iteration. So working on this approach to innovation and and foresee the opportunity of putting in motion. What we call the lab, and is a model that consists of three components I will probably just go through them very quickly, but basically is is to have this kind of laboratory of solutions in terms of of all the different steps in the in the sustainable sectors. And first, in that lab, a perspective we have, we're thinking on strengthening the community practices and this is to have different actors once again commit to working towards collective goals, all related to the system and and to nutrition. And this practice should include the national the regional government, the international cooperation agencies, the startups, which lately in Colombia we've seen many startups related to, to all the different steps of the ecosystem of nutrition. The second step will be a pipeline of products. As I was mentioning before, I truly believe that once we have the rude we decided the target, and we work with the heart and with the commitment of coming up with solutions. Things can be done. And the third step would be the consolidation of knowledge and learnings as the two previous components move forward. This is a model that has been implemented in Colombia by our agency of innovation and entrepreneurship which is called impulse. And we've been working together, trying to leave this as some kind of root in the country, not as a government project, but as a state's commitment. Thank you so much. This indeed has been quite a quite an informative panel. Thank you so much for my esteemed sort of all lady panel very proud to be moderating you. It brings us to a close on the first part of the panel. We really appreciate you sharing sort of not only your experiences but your vision for what the future can hold.