 Welcome to Rethinking Global Food Security. My name is Rajiv Shah, I'm the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, and I'm thrilled to be our moderator this morning. Just so everyone's aware, our session is being broadcast live and is on the record, so that includes comments from our outstanding panel as well as the audience today. And we look forward to a lively and important discussion. And this, of course, is an important discussion because the World Economic Forum over the last several years has really taken a lead role in bringing companies, governments, civil society partners, farmers, climate experts, and scientists together to explore how we can rethink global food security, how we can end hunger and widespread malnutrition, support economic growth and development, and address climate change and climate adaptation, building more resilient, climate-smart agriculture as we go forward. I'm particularly excited about our panel this morning, and I'll take just a moment to introduce our outstanding speakers. Minister Akin Adesina from Nigeria just won the Forbes Man of the Year Award in Africa, and we will hear about why. The CEO and chairperson of the Dupont Corporation with 66,000 employees around the world is Ellen Coleman, who is here to share her leadership examples with us. Mr. Eje Virjakar, the chairman of Bharat Krishak Samaj, represents more than 100,000 farmers in India and is representing really the farmer voice today because that's so important in making policy judgments and solving the challenges of hunger and extreme poverty around the world. Dr. Shingan Pham, who needs no introduction to this community, is the director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute and a renowned expert on global food security also chairs the Global Development Council for the World Economic Forum. And Michelle Lease, the creative partnership-oriented CEO of Swiss Reef, and we know that risk and insurance are critical to helping farmers and agricultural systems modernize, improve, and grow. You know, today, as we sit here, our global population is 7 billion people. And as we enjoy sessions at Davos and good company and discussion, 850 million people actually don't get enough food to eat every day. That's not even counting the additional several hundred million children who suffer from what we call hidden hunger. They're stunted because the food they get is not providing adequate nutrition for them to grow their brains to develop and their lives to be fully realized of their own human potential. In addition to that challenge, by 2050, our population will be more than 9 billion people. And we have to ask ourselves, how can we produce enough healthy food and ensure that the distribution of that food reaches everyone so that we can have a more just and equitable outcome even as we deal with tremendous changes in our environment, our climate, our core production systems. Agriculture around the world accounts for more than 70% of all water use for all purposes. So how agriculture evolves in its water use efficiency will also define the availability of other critical resources for our planet. To tackle these difficult questions, we've assembled this panel with the basic understanding that almost every economy that has modernized and moved lots of its population out of poverty and diversified its labor force has done so by transforming its agriculture. And the lessons from those transformations can inform our path forward even as we address important new challenges in rethinking global food security. With that, I'd like to start with Dr. Adesina. McCain, maybe you could describe your views on agriculture really being a business and what that means for you in the context of Africa. Well, first of all, thanks, Wright. I think the fact we have to bear in mind is that I am not scared that we will not be able to feed the world by nine billion people. Remember that in the 60s, that was exactly what everybody thought, that the population was rising so fast that we were not gonna be able to do that. But what they forgot was the power of science and technology. So I actually think that's gonna be very crucial in feeding nine billion people that R&D plays a major role and I think we can push that productivity frontier out as a first thing. The second thing I think is to recognize that in doing that, the 65% of all of that arable land to achieve it is actually not in Latin America, it's not everywhere in Asia, it's actually in Africa. Now, in unlocking that, however, we must change how we look at agriculture in Africa. Agriculture is not a development activity. Agriculture is a business. So we've got to unlock that particular potential looking at agriculture as a business. But as we do that, we must also bear two things in mind. One is that we have a rapid urbanization and we have a lot of relic about migration. And so within Africa, globally, we have to improve our marketing systems that's able to provide enough food, safe food, quality food at a lower cost for the population. The second point I wanted to make on that is just the impact of shocks. We know that today, I mean, when I was Minister of Agriculture 2012, we had our worst flood in memory. And we're gonna have a lot of these extreme weather, floods, droughts. And so whatever we do, we have to build a more resilient agricultural system that can deal with the issue of flood, that can deal with the issue of droughts that we have. But of course we must not forget that at the end of the day, malnutrition is a big issue. And I think you're right, Raj. If you look at the numbers, that one, there's no reason why any child in this world would not achieve their food potential. And I hope that in the course of the conversation, we can really come to that because it's really not acceptable that we have the level of on that nourishment we have in the world today. And I think we have to do that. Thank you, Akeem. Alan, Akeem started with talking about science, technology and the role that that plays in agriculture. Dupont has been improving the science of food production for quite some time. Could you share your vision of how we will tackle global food security in the future? You know, it's interesting because when, you know, I first got involved in this five, six years ago as I was chosen to lead the company. You know, agriculture, it's so different region to region country by country. And one of the things that our team did was to understand that we talk about it differently so much that there wasn't a common language when you talk about food security or insecurity. So one of the first things we did was partnered with the Economist Intelligence Unit and try to create a standard framework with which we think about food security. What are the factors that go into availability, the quality, you know, price, affordability, things like that and how different countries have different issues around that. So the Intelligence Unit created a food security index and it can help us understand that the issues in Nigeria are very different than the issues in India or in China or in other places of the world and allows industry to engage in a way that hopefully creates meaningful outcomes and understands that in Nigeria has certain issues that we need to reflect on from a seed standpoint and that's gonna entail a different set of sciences or technologies to solve in other places of the world. And to that end, you know, we've worked with USAID on things like the Advanced May Seed Adoption Program and this is a way for us to engage with small holder farmers over 35,000 to date to really work on seed distribution and enable them to have access to things like hybrids as opposed to open pollination varieties and double their production. And we're gonna assign after this meeting an MOU with USAID to extend that further beyond Ethiopian Ghana or the two countries we're doing today. And you know, it's by clearly understanding the on the ground issues and by using programs like the Advanced Maze Program, you can make progress and certainly 35,000 is a small number of small hold farmers but it's a start and we can scale from there. But then you have to go back further and think about things like, you know, there are other crops like sorghum which are a mainstay from a consumption standpoint. You don't really have the nutritional value. And at the other end on the R&D side, we're working, you know, with people like the Gates Foundation and the Howard Buffett Foundation along with the organization called Harvest to really biofortify sorghum. And in part in it, qualities like vitamin A and other things that create nutrition so that as it's grown, it can create a better outcome for people in those areas. So there are a variety of ways we're approaching it but to me it starts with that common language, common definition of what food security is and what the needs are and then you can gear the programs to be successful in the individual countries. Well, Ellen, I just want to thank you for your leadership because creating that common language and entering these partnerships with us and others really does help bring the technology that DuPont can offer often to some of the places where food production is very, very low and can very quickly and rapidly rise. And of course for that improved food productivity to take place quickly, farmers are the key to success. And Ajay, you represent a huge number of farmers and I'm curious as you hear this conversation, what is your aspiration for the role that farmers should play, not just on the farm but also in policy environments making decisions that can help reshape food security for the future? Food security is, I think so, it's like a jigsaw puzzle where there are lots of pieces and unfortunately most of those pieces don't reside on the farm, they reside elsewhere. And that's one problem. The second problem is that a lot of the people in another 50 years, I think so over five or six billion will be living in cities. And it's that, it's those people who are living in cities who influence the policy on agriculture or what is expected of farmers. And farmers are not deciding policy. Now, urban populations across the world could be Tunisia, it could be Egypt, it could be anywhere, they want lower food prices. And as a consequence every government wants to stem the urban unrest, civil unrest that unfolds when food inflation increases. So to the extent that they're not even discussing reduction in subsidies in the developed world because if subsidies reduce, the price of food goes up. Price of food goes up and urban unrest increases and it even changes in democracies like India. It could convert, it could change the government in power. So that's one of the things. And second thing is that farmers want to be able to sit across the table and decide policies. Now, when we talk about global food security as a farmer, I don't think in terms of global food security. I think in terms of the security, food security of that individual farmer family. If you can make himself sufficient to grow his own vegetables and his own produce, you solve 60% of the world problems. But we are always focusing, we're talking about global issues, agriculture is local. And we need to think on trying to get that individual, small farmer food security. And it's a very easy way to do because you don't need to use fossil fuels to transfer grains from across borders, across regions. And I'm not talking about between continents. I'm not even talking about within regions of our country. Every area, every farmer can afford to grow his own. And that's where we need the help of the private sector. We need the help of the public sector and we need these PVPs. Well, thank you. And thank you for also highlighting that so much of the challenge is about smallholder farmer productivity improvements because sometimes when we talk in big global terms, you think you need very large food production systems, of which you do. But we also know that the bulk of the world's farmers farm on relatively smaller plots and can be an engine of productivity growth that reduces poverty and improves social outcomes even as they contribute to addressing global food security. Schengen, you've studied smallholder farm productivity and understand the larger policy dynamics at play. What concerns you about climate pressures and food security? And what should we be thinking about if we're trying to rethink how to feed the world, reduce hunger and malnutrition, but do it in a climate sensitive manner? Well, thank you, Raj. Good morning. Just give you some numbers. Right now, we still have 850 million people who are suffering from hunger, or called hunger nourishment. In the meantime, as Raj mentioned, a second minute ago, that there are lots of people who are suffering from lack of micronutrients, we call it hitter hunger, two billion people. Hunger is very costly. Every year, we lose 2% to 3% of GDP. And addressing hunger has very high return. Our study, Ypres' study shows that every donor invested in addressing under-nutrition or hunger, they will have $30 in return. Where can you find that kind of investment? So $1 invested, you will have $30 in return. Obviously, addressing hunger, malnutrition is a moral issue, but it also makes a lot of economic sense. Right now, we are debating about a post-2015 agenda. We know that we have not achieved MDG-1 goal in having the number or percentage of hungry people. We're not on track. Even having that reducing percentage by half, we still have a large number of hungry people. So when we move to develop post-2015 agenda, yes, sustainability is a must, but we have to make sure that the post-2015 agenda is people focused, particularly hunger, hungry people. And for that, we have to make sure that post-2015 agenda link agricultural food production to natural resource management, addressing water issues, and addressing other environmental issues. So here, I wanted to play that for the post-2015 agenda. Our target, our vision, to try to eliminate hunger and malnutrition by 2025. Sooner than 2030 or in our generation, our lifetime proposed by our Secretary General of the UN. Well, thank you, Shengen, for raising the 2015 debate because the world is debating this year whether or not we can set a credible goal of ending hunger by 2030. And if that's going to happen, it's only gonna happen with the kinds of partnerships you're seeing come from the leaders on this panel. One of those partnerships is an extraordinarily innovative deployment of Swiss Rees capabilities in providing micro-insurance to pastoralists and small-scale farmers in places where they're very, very vulnerable to climate shock. And Michelle, one of the most amazing experiences I've had is meeting some of those nomadic pastoralists during, in the midst of a drought, when so many of their other neighbors were sort of struggling with staying in their homes and talking about going to camps for food. This was in Northern Kenya a few years ago. And they explained to me that because a community within that group had partnered with Swiss Rees and USAID, they were able to survive that shock. Tell us what you're doing to bring the capabilities of Swiss Rees to take risk out of the system for farmers and what have you learned from some of these experiences? Probably we need to speak a bit globally about food security. We've heard that there are probably, there's enough on this planet on average to feed everybody, but as a statistician on a curve, I'm not limiting myself to the average and I'm analyzing also the tails. And I must say Africa is probably a continent in which analyzing the tail and analyzing the extreme case is extremely important. The population there will grow, will double in the next 50 years, and there is no reason not to believe that Africa won't be exposed to the same climate change challenge than the rest of the planet. So what are we trying to do? We are, of course, we are, as an international ranger, working quite a lot in agriculture insurance and rations in the rest of the planet, but we are trying since 1990, I would say, to develop an insurance market for agriculture risk in Africa. We are doing that in a very classical way in which we are simply covering the risk which are affecting the big scale commercial farming project, but the point that you did mention, Raj, is more affecting the fate and the situation of the small farmers. And it's probably not massively important in the debate about food security worldwide. It's, in my view, extremely important about the equilibrium of these countries in Africa, the situation of these families, and probably also can play a role in the urbanization trend that is observed because very many of the people who are simply leaving the camp to go to cities are simply leaving because they cannot leave anymore where they used to be. So what we are doing is we are thinking out of the box, trying to find systems which allow us to escape from some of the nightmare of the insurance industry, the visit of experts and things like that to something which is extremely digital, extremely agile and which pays to these farmers extremely quick if their crops is suffering the consequence of natural disasters. We want actually to establish stabilized market, open market in Africa, and we know that below $150 million probably it's not a stabilized market. And in order to make that, beside the technology that we put on the table, we are working with governance, we're working also with communities. And I must say the project New Vision for Agriculture and Grow Africa is playing a very important role in that respect. We want simply through this project create a market-based, multi-stakeholder approach to the risk and delivering food security, but also security to these farmers. So what we are doing, we've committed until the end of 2017 to provide to 1.4 million small orders, small farmers with crop insurance covers in Africa. 1.4 million 2017, you may ask yourself what does a reinsurer to do there? I believe it's also an opportunity probably to create a new generation of people who do see insurance as something definitely positive and simple and helping them to face some of the difficulty that sometimes they have to face. We have moved from 2012 to 2013, 275,000 farmers to 300,000, so we are on track. And we're putting on the table $2 million per year. It's not an enormous amount, but the game there is really to create something sustainable and in a way everything which is in micro insurance insurance has the big advantage. You want this client not to be your client anymore in 30 years because they belong to a class in which they can have access to normal insurance. And that's what we are trying to do. And in all fairness, it touches food security, but it touched in my view also the political situation of these countries and the fact that these people are probably having a positive view about what insurance can bring to them very efficiently. And Michelle, let me just ask that when you set the goal of say we're gonna reach 1.4 million smallholder producers in Africa with insurance. Are you then building a business to address that target and achieve that goal or from your perspective is this more corporate philanthropy? No, definitely what we want to achieve, what we put on the table is the amount that I did mention, we want to start the pump because we believe that's the way in which things can go. Philanthropy for a set, then in 50 years we can sit again and tell you that we are at 10 millions but they are still waiting for the support that we want to start the pump and that's the amount that we believe is needed in order to start the pump. Excellent, well thank you. And Ellen, I'd like to use that to come back to you. You've recently made some important business decisions about building your business in Africa for example with certain acquisitions. Do you approach this as a business proposition or how do you see why is DuPont and why are you as its global CEO? So focused on building these business opportunities in markets that might not be as high revenue as other parts of the world for you. You know, we have a very diverse company but agriculture is the first into any market. So we've been operating in South Africa for a number of years in agriculture and when you think of the diversity and the complexity within Sub-Saharan Africa, what's something like the acquisition of Panar, we bought a local seed company who was active in many different countries. It brings to us local germplasm. So, you know, germplasm that thrives in an environment that we can then bring our science to help reinforce, make better and stronger. It brings an infrastructure around operating in those countries that we can build from. And so it helps us get up that curve a lot quicker. And, you know, and it is a marriage of bringing science and technology that we've developed whether it's in Iowa or in India or China and starting to accelerate that development in Africa. And yeah, it's an investment phase now. But, you know, you go to where the growth is and if you look at the population, the statistics that were mentioned earlier, you look at where the land is that where there's the greatest opportunity for productivity improvement in agriculture. There's just tremendous opportunity there in the long term and we think it leverages off of our skills globally and it's just a natural next step for us. Well, thank you. And Ikeen, in order to attract companies like DuPont and Swiss Rea, but also there, I think there are now more than 70 companies partnering with the forum as part of the new visions for agriculture effort and grow Africa. You've had to make some policy and institutional reforms to just create an environment that allows business to flourish but also directs donor partners like USAID and others to put resources into efforts to help small holders in particular. Could you tell us a little bit about the reforms that you've championed and what do you think the results of that have been? Are there lessons for the rest of us? First and foremost is, you know, as I said in the beginning, that agriculture is not a way of life. It's not something you do for a hobby. It's a business. And so the first fundamental thing I had to change as a minister was to change the mindset around agriculture that it's a business. And so business that works for the smallholder farmers. Also linked to that is that we got to really understand what the role of government is and what the role of government is not. The role of government is not to be in the business of agriculture. The role of government is to have enabling environment around agriculture. Whether it's good policies, institutions, infrastructure, regulatory environment, that's the role of government. But the private sector is the engine of growth. And so we decided in Nigeria that we have 85 million hectares of land. No more than 40% of that is being utilized. In fact, as Eileen was saying, in terms of optimalization for good genetics and all that, no more than 10% of that is being utilized. So clearly we want to make sure that is a private sector that is unlocking that. Now, to get advantage of that, I'm actually quite shocked that most of Africa, we don't even know our customers. We don't know the number of farmers we have. We can call all the statistics, but we don't know them. They're like ghosts, you know. And so we decided that we were going to actually know our customers. We conducted the first ever national registration of our farmers so that today we've registered 10 million farmers that we have biometric information on them. The other thing that I had to deal with is how do I get those inputs? The high quality seed and fertilizers in the hands of those farmers. Well, fertilizers in Nigeria, for example, you know, it's like a pipeline, you know. Government buys it, it goes into the pipeline, it never comes out on the other side. And so somewhat leading with corruption of 40 years, it took me, under this precedent, 90 days to end that corruption. We took the government out completely. And we said, well, like Coca-Cola, like Pepsi, like everything else, said your seed and fertilizers, build your supply chains to reach the farmer, not the government warehouse. And so we did that. And then we developed what's called an electronic wallet scheme, which allows us to use mobile phones to reach our farmers directly with subsidized inputs and fertilizers. Now, within two years, that we have reached six million farmers, which has allowed us to improve the food security of 30 million people. But this year we are going to use 10 million farmers. And just think about what that does. It empowers the poor, it empowers people, cuts out all the corruption within the system. I think that's very important. Now, in times of what has happened right for the impact, I think working with Grow Africa, the new Alliance for Aged Culture, that you have been actually leading so well, as follows, number of seed companies, and I think Ellen, you know, Nigeria is your next stop, is number of seed companies in Nigeria grew from 10 to 70 in two years. Investment by the private sector in fertilizer manufacturing, because we opened it up, it went to five billion dollars, and that's from our own local companies, Aliko Dangoti and all that. In times of private foreign direct investment in our space, with Grow Africa and all that work, four billion dollars of private sector investment commitments in the sector. But the real taste of the pudding is in the eating. When your own largest investor, I mean importer, Aliko Dangoti goes into agriculture, and our banks are lending to agriculture today than they were before. When I became minister, close to 0% of the total bank lending Nigeria went into agriculture. Today, 4.5, going to 5% is going into agriculture. So what I'm saying really right is that we have made that shift, and the results are there that agriculture pays, and there's a lot of money to be made by smallholder farmers, and we are developing inclusive business models that allows our farmers to create wealth and not just simply manage poverty. Well, thank you, Akeen, and you mentioned Grow Africa, and I just want to take a moment to highlight that both Grow Africa and now the forum is considering moving forward with Grow Asia, which would work in Myanmar, Vietnam, and Indonesia, has come out of years of our collaboration here that basically says we need companies to make more investments in a more focused way against smallholder farmers. We need civil society and scientists to measure those outcomes and make sure that the real benefits are moving people out of poverty and solving malnutrition. And in order to facilitate that, we need governments to show the kind of leadership Akeen you've shown and been recognized for appropriately and take on some of these difficult reform issues so that you create the space for the private sector to be successful. But you also said that agriculture is a business, but I don't want to imply that public investment is not important, and I think Ajay, maybe you could speak a little bit too. India has a very strong public interface in Indian agriculture, some of it highly effective and some of it perhaps less so. What do you think is the role of government and public investment in supporting agriculture that reaches smallholder farmers and gives them a shot in a fair and equitable manner? I think public sector investment is crucial. It's very important. There's no way we are looking without it because the private sector will have a tendency to go to areas which are perennially irrigated. They will make less effort to go to rain-fed areas because the more profits will come from where they're able to sell inputs. So government is required to give regulation and governance. For example, unlike other industries, agriculture can only be successful, like even as the minister's saying, when people have enough to eat, then they will grow surplus, but when they grow surplus, they need infrastructure, they need markets, they need food processing. Now, all these are different ministries like in India and other places. So till they are not packaged as a deal, it's not gonna work. So the government has to be there for giving governance and for making sure that all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle fit in. As far as India's concerned, I'll just take the example of minimum support price because that's what's crucially discussed. We have a minimum support price. So that's a step that the government has taken to ensure better prices for farmers. But then there is a sector of food corporation of India which actually procures all the food grain. Now that's a monopoly that the government of India has. And I am basically against all monopolies. They could be off the private sector, they could be off the government. So the government could have a program where they decide on something, but the implementation has to be left to the private sector. The private sector has to deliver. And the private sector will only deliver if there is governance and if there is regulation that is enforced because in lots of countries there is legislation which is not enforced. In lots of countries legislation itself is missing. So taking that lesson, Shingen, can you tell us as you look around the world, do you think policies and governance in the agriculture sector and across the board governing food security are getting more enlightened and more effective? Or would you argue that maybe in some parts of the world we're actually seeing a counter trend? I know during the 2008, 2009 food crisis we saw massive increases in certain commodity prices that had huge impacts for hunger and extreme poverty around the world. And a lot of it was self-inflicted. A lot of it was countries saying, okay, there's a food shortage, we're gonna implement an export ban. And you have a certain number of countries do that on a few commodities and all of a sudden the global system for food security really does fall apart very quickly. What are you seeing from your global purview? Well, it's a mixed picture. And we do see some positive development that is the developing countries have increased the investment in agriculture and improving infrastructure, improving your system, improving the research system extension and some of the issues that Akim also mentioned. However, we have also seen some of the sort of setbacks particularly in terms of so-called subsidies versus other support. And as you mentioned about farmers need to support the inputs. I would argue that instead of subsidizing their water, food and others, electricity, why don't we provide direct income support? So in this case, farmers will be able to gain from more income and a farmer will be able to optimize their input use. Unfortunately, both China and India, you mentioned, many of you mentioned China and India, have moved towards more subsidies, direct input subsidies, not income support. That is also directing against WTO. So I think there are lots of issues, particularly knowledge gaps we can address to see what will be the best option to support farmers, particularly smallholders. I think our friend, if that president is sitting over here, I think we don't know the smallholders much. Smallholders is not just one person. They are so different. They need a different strategy. They need a different policy option where we can support them. We needed to do, Kanai and I discussed, we needed some sort of survey to really understand what's going on in the smallholder sectors. Then we can target our policies much better. Good, and Michelle, when you hear that, how do you, and you said you're gonna try to reach 1.4 million smallholders in Africa with insurance price? How do you actually learn about where they are? How do you reach out and connect to them? Some of the ones that I've seen that are part of our Swiss Re-USA partnership, you've worked with NGOs to actually have that last mile of connectivity and help connect your very big company to some very remote communities. But what's your strategy for actually getting to the farmers and crossing that last mile? Well, the access is definitely depending on people who are near to the communities and we are depending on these people. What we bring to the table is not the access to the community as such. It's the simplification, if I may say, of what could be an insurance cover. You have now technology which allows you by satellite to define if in an area things were flooded, where was the drought, what was exactly the extent which allow you to be very, very reactive and very quickly reactive. But it's obvious that we need the support of the government. We need the support of the communities in order to, as you say, access to these extra last mile. But without, I would say, the technological progress that we can bring in order to define if an area is really deserving an insurance payment, I think this access to the community will help us very much. But definitely we depend on local government. We depend on communities. And you know, insurance is there in order to support, if I may say, the business of the farmers and to make sure that they are not victim of volatile events. And we know that volatile events are coming each time more. And in some case it can be totally disastrous. So that's our contribution. Now, if government decide in an initial phase to support by subsidies these kind of insurance product, we don't have anything against that. I believe the way towards a perfect free market in that aspect is by the way not rich in many countries. In almost all mature countries, you also have these kind of subsidies. But the way in which we can collect the data, the way in which we can again start the pump of making something which is working by itself without excessive subsidy or excessive support by military organization is something which is for us extremely important. And to be honest, it's not restricted to Africa. It's not restricted to India. It's not restricted to China. You also have a lot of subsidies in other places of the world. Yeah, but I want to say that back to Schengen's point about this is your subsidies, just to get it clear. You know, I think we have to be realistic. You have developing countries that subsidize their very rich farmers. When it comes to poor, least developed countries that have to actually subsidize their farmers, they are the ones that actually need it. Subsidies are not in rich countries. Now, we start making apologetics about whether we shouldn't even subsidize. Now, of course, we must subsidize. We must provide support. The question is how are you providing? Make sure that it is targeted to those that need it, as I explained in how we use the e-wallet in Nigeria. So I think we really should get that right. Secondly, on the issue of shocks in 2012 in Nigeria, when we had our worst flood in history, that opened up our eyes to the need to have risk transfer institutional arrangements to help our farmers. And so I think that things like flood insurance, things like weather index insurance are going to be very crucial going forward. But the key issue is how you go to scale. And again, you cannot really go to scale with weather index insurance unless the government plays a very active role in the early phase of it in supporting the smallholder farmers to pay the premiums. Otherwise, how can a very poor farmer pay the... You pay 28% for loans from banks and you put on top of that the insurance premium. And so really we must not abandon our farmers. As public policy makers, it's our responsibility to fully support our farmers in doing the way that makes sense. But I also think that we need to also to adjust point about infrastructure. For us to be able to do the crop insurance, we need agro-metrological stations. You look at many of our countries in Africa today, the number of agro-med stations we have is lower than the number they have in one university college in the United States. And so we've got to invest a lot of public infrastructure on that. But last one I want to say is related to the issue of a women in agriculture, regardless of which part we're talking about, right? It's the fact that majority of the farmers we have really are women. And so the issues of dealing with resilience has to do with how do they have access to land, guaranteed access to land, access to finance, very important. Extension services in most of our countries are still led by men and how do you get such systems to serve women farmers? And I think that if we are going to be really equitable as public policy makers, we should say, for finance we set up a bank financing system that supports women farmers. I mean, why not? Women, I think from all the work that has been done in Bangladesh and others, shows that women don't default. It's the men that actually marry more whites when they get more money. So we really have to support our women farmers, thank you. Well, go ahead. I just want to comment on Mr. Schengen's comment that, yes, he said nutrition is a very big problem, but the solution that I gave earlier is better to make that farmer self-sufficient to grow his own vegetable needs. That's the only way to end hunger and nutrition. You cannot end it by transferring food. And regarding subsidies, because it's a very touchy topic as developing countries are concerned, I completely agree with him that we need a price policy. Now, what hinders price policy? Like I said originally, that solutions don't lie on the farm. Now, I'll just take a minute. And I'm talking about subsidies in the United States to cotton farmers. Three billion dollars of subsidies are given to 25,000 cotton farmers. Now, I'm relating it to food security. If those subsidies were removed to those cotton farmers, there would be a reduction of 12% in the cotton production of the world, which would ultimately lead to at least 50% rise in the total cotton output. And that relates to something like $7 billion for seven million farmers in India, which is like $1,200 or $600 per farmer. Now, if those cotton subsidies were removed in the United States, the cotton farmer in India would make $1,400 per head, and he wouldn't need those subsidies. So those solutions don't lie on the farm. They don't lie sometimes with the governments themselves. And like I said, the governments are not interested in debating WTO to its conclusion. And that's creating its problems. It's not the quantity of the subsidy that you're giving. It's how that subsidy is distorting the market for small farmers in developing countries, how they produce is being underpriced because of that. Those issues are also important when we look at food security. Well, thank you, Ajay. And I think it's a very important point that we know public investment in agriculture is critical. In fact, that's why when President Obama took office and made this a top developmental priority, he increased the level of support we provide for agriculture in lower income countries through a program called Feed the Future from about $250 million a year to now $1.2 billion a year. And I know that policy reforms everywhere in the world are required to continue to scale our progress. But just through that increased investment alone, done well, done in partnership with countries, done with private companies, and focused on women farmers where we measure actual income gains, farm household, gender in a gender disaggregated way, we know that we've reached seven million farm households helped move 12 million children out of a condition of being malnourished and done it not by handing out food, but by giving people the tools and the capacity and the connectivity to move themselves out of poverty through their own enterprise and effort. And with that, I recognize we have an outstanding group in the room here today, a full house, and we'd love to get some questions, comments. Anybody want to challenge anything you've heard, please just put up your hand and someone will bring around a microphone for you to make a contribution or ask a question. I think there's in the back there, why don't we start over there. Very interesting discussion, thank you so much. I work for EBRD, who is one of the public institutions also working in food security in our region. My question would relate to the moderator's reference to negative spillovers in terms of export quotas in the case of shocks in major producer countries. We know that food production is very much unbalanced in the sense that there are major export and major importance. And what seems to me that there is really no good coordination, international coordination of addressing this type of spillovers. So naturally, there is a big shock with climate policy in Russia or Ukraine and there is a natural tendency to impose immediately export quotas, which are bad for everybody, including the countries themselves, of course, on the long term, and maybe about also a temptation of corruption which these schemes bring. So my question is why the G20 doesn't put this on the agenda. This is such a kind of bed and butter, policy spillover issue that could be addressed. Well, thank you, that's an excellent question. Why don't I direct that to Schengen, who I know has done a lot of work on this, I think in the context of both the G8 and the G20. Excellent question. Yesterday I was in a panel with Australia Prime Minister and he outlined the priorities of G20 discussion and Australian presidency. It's very unfortunate that the food security was not there, particularly the trade policy. We know that trade negotiations, particularly WTO negotiations, has very much focused on imports, tax imports, give the tariffs. We got export side, particularly export restrictions. In 2007, 2008 food crisis, export bans accounted for a large, large increase of rice price and to some extent wheat price. Today, I know many countries have restrained the use of export bans. However, if there is another food crisis shock, I'm afraid many countries will continue to use export bans as a tool to protect their domestic consumers and damage their domestic farmers, because farmers lose opportunity to use high income. So that's the issue. We need to push G20, WTO and other trade agreements to focus on export side as well. Good. Next question. We come in the front row here. Thank you. My name is Yusuf Ali. I'm in the food sector. Just to say I want to know. Now India is one of the largest export growth, rice and other food products. Any new ideas to increase the exports from India to the rest of the world? Number one. Number two, I want to know the percentage of subsidies in different continents, different countries. You've got any figure from UN that the percentage of subsidies to the agriculturist in different parts of the world. Thank you. Ajay, can we start with you? I will just say that India's got to get more competitive to sell more rice. There's no other way about it. And so I will not comment on that. As far as figures are concerned, I really get scared of data because I find it very manipulated. Most organizations who use data, they use it to their own benefit. But as far as the question that was coming off subsidies, I was not talking about subsidies in developed world and the developing world. Even within the country, there is a lot of disparity in Africa and India. You can, subsidies within the nation are also being taken up by a small section of society. They're not creating equal opportunities for everyone. And I'll give you the case of India. Most of the subsidies are taken by farmers who have a source of irrigation. The dry land farmers, because it's a subsidy on cost, they don't grow that much, so they don't get that kind of subsidy. And for India, as a farmer's organization from India, we have been propagating that subsidies, whatever you give to the farmers, have to be inversely proportional to land-holding sizes. So as your land-holding increases, your subsidy reduces. So at least, because subsidies are not gonna increase, it's that everybody has a money problem these days. So those subsidies must be reorganized in a way that they create equal opportunities for small-holder farmers. Why don't we go over here. Good morning, everyone. Obviously, the food safety requires enough food supply. So we talk a lot about the food that comes from the farmland. I'm wondering if we're gonna consider getting the food from the ocean through the sustainable agriculture. So last year was the first year that seafood consumption, you can see the beef consumption. And we're talking about nutrition. I think protein is very important. So I'm wondering if FAO can help to invest to actually encourage the people to develop a sustainable marine agriculture to get enough proteins out of the water, which we have a large coverage. So just to see if you have any comments. And also, I think there are many countries in the nation that have successful stories about how they get develop a sustainable marine agriculture. Thank you. Do you wanna start with that? Yeah, sure. I think that we are under-investing in fish because fish is the cheapest form of protein for those in developing countries. And I think there is, of course, a blue revolution that is going on in the fishing sector. For me, I think we have to again come back to the public policy. I mean, the spillover questions that she raises. In Nigeria, for example, we have trawlers that come in from other countries coming to our own marine waters and just scoop everything off and then they go back and sell it back to us. So we've got to really look at the rules and regulations that guide this marine fishing. But also inland fishing is very important. For example, you take a look at Nigeria and the south part of Nigeria. What we have in our border is this water. So we have to support our fishermen. We started that last year in a massive way by giving a lot of support for our fishermen in terms of fingerlings, in terms of access to fish feed, in terms of access to nets and outboard engines that they can use actually in their boats. And we're registering all the boats so we can actually monitor that better. But link to that also is we need to recognize that the losses in the fish sector is quite high because of lack of coaching systems. So we have to improve the coaching systems to do that. And I will also add, in particular, the issue of piracy. Because we've got to solve that. We've got a problem in Nigeria and most of the other countries in Africa, Gulf of Guinea and all of that, where you have significant amount of piracy on our waters and we have to absolutely deal with that. I think that aquaculture is the one that we're going to have to focus on rapidly to feed the world and a lot of poor people in the world. And aquaculture is the fastest growing sector in the fishing industry today and we have to put more money into that. I'm actually going to take the prerogative of asking a question from someone in the audience. And Helene Gale from CARE is here. And Helene, I know there was a comment earlier about reaching women farmers in particular and this has been your leadership focus. Can you just talk a little bit about, in your view, after a number of years of making this a priority, do you feel CARE in particular or really the community overall is doing a better job of targeting women farmers and reaching kind of smallholder women as part of this effort? Yeah, thanks. And thanks to the panel for a very stimulating discussion. You know, and the minister from Nigeria started to talk about a lot of the different obstacles. The fact that extension workers are often men and aren't sensitive to the needs of women. Inputs like seeds and credit and other things just don't get to women. The multiple roles that women play, the fact that women oftentimes have, are more likely to grow nutrition consumption crops and not cash crops, which is good, obviously, in terms of household nutrition, but it does mean that they get kept out of the economic markets. And so all of those sorts of issues are the kind of issues that we've tried to address in some of the work that we've looked at. Now, I think in terms of have we gotten there, no, but I think part of it is the recognition. And I think people are now starting to realize that, you know, farming is not gender neutral, if you will, and that what we've been doing in farming has largely overlooked women, particularly smallholder farmers. And so I think that recognition, we started building in as you have USAID metrics that really help us to measure some of those things that are barriers and making sure, you know, as we all know what gets measured, gets done. And so putting the metrics in, putting some of the markers has been critical. But really looking at how do you go, you know, step by step to these different obstacles and make deliberate plans around the things that we know are barriers to women's equal access in agriculture. And, you know, I think we're starting, clearly we're starting to see progress in our work, but I think it's really starting to take shape and others are realizing in, you know, the data speak for themselves, the increased yield, better nutrition, all of the things that go along with it. So yeah, thank you. Thank you, Helene. And I think pivoting off that, maybe if Michelle and Ellen, you could both describe, you describe very specific target oriented business development activities you're pursuing to end hunger through agricultural development and investment and insurance. Are you targeting women heads of households in those programs? And does your business plan account for the fact that we know that if women are the beneficiaries of income gains and improvements, that's most likely to improve the living conditions and future prospects of their children and their communities? Michelle? Yes, we're doing that, but we're not living that very culture. We made for women, 80 guarantees for entrepreneurs, women. We just realized that in many of these countries, the stability of the country is depending on women. I'm not telling that to be nice to you, Ellen. It's just the way it is. And definitely, these sustainability of these women entrepreneur for the next generation, which are their children and very often they take care of them is extremely important. So we are doing that in a lot of our microfinance, microinterest initiative, but it's by far not limited to agriculture. Thank you. And Ellen? Yeah, no, I think they've been part of the fabric of agriculture for so long, but I think that there was a real awareness that we and many have had to come to that the service elements of that needed to change and be different because they think about it differently and to talk about the extension services and men supplying the extension services for women and that sometimes works and sometimes you have to enable it. I mean, I think there's a lot of training that's involved of our own people to understand that it's a very different world out there than maybe one that they grew up in or think about. And so I think we've had to be more thoughtful about it. I think we've had to create much more awareness about it because that is the reality. And I think it's very important because I think it could be a very powerful point of change in helping the women rise into farming as an income, farming as an occupation, as opposed to farming just to survive. Okay, I just want to interject and say that three things we've not discussed and about food security is about land rights in Africa. So lots of people I believe in Africa do not have, unlike India where ownership is private and Africa, lots of people don't have proper land rights. So they don't invest in their own pieces of land because they're not sure if they will keep it. And one more thing is that when we talk about small farmers, mechanization is an important thing. And individual ownership of machinery is one of the greatest factors leading to farm debt because you cannot optimize, see small farmer has five acres, 10 acres, 20 acres and you just cannot own machinery to use for five days or 10 days in a year. So we need to figure out a way of collective ownership of farm machinery. And the private sector could give that service to the farmer. It's not necessarily just a cooperative, you could take out different ways because that's very, very essential. And one of the interesting statistics is that, I don't agree in data is that we spend $50 billion, I think it's worldwide on food and food science. You spend $1,750 billion on trying to make weapons to kill each other. And the world spends more money on cosmetics than it spends on agriculture science and that's how urban priorities are faced. Right, I wanted to raise the one issue which has to do with food loss wastage in the global food system. Today we have roughly 1.3 billion metric tons of food that is lost in that system. There are those that produce a lot and so they produce too much so they can't really eat too much so they lose it, obesity is on the rice, you look in other parts of the world, you see that the supply chain has a problem. And so we have to reduce farm-level losses. We have to improve the logistics in the way that food is get distributed. You find some areas where people can't even buy food by the expiry date because of income constraints. We don't have ways of storing food so investing in things like warehouses, having more warehouses systems where silos is very important, improving farm-level storage. All this is very important because it's not just about producing more food. If you're losing half of what you're producing, you're depleting the resources, wasting water, we have greenhouse gas emissions and so we are losing both sides of it. So in feeding the world in 9 billion that we talked about when you started, we must not just talk about productivity growth but how to reduce the losses all along that chain. In Nigeria, for example, we started something called staple crop processing zones where we are getting our private sector to come into rural areas to process and add value to everything there. So you're providing the infrastructure, power, water and roads. We have EFID as a big supporter of that. World Bank, USAID, DFID. In other words, instead of taking raw materials out because we have poor infrastructure, you lose too much of that. You bring the private sector into the areas of high food production and a set of food manufacturing plans to do that. So I think it's a key part of solving the global food problem. Good, thank you. I think we have time for maybe one last question. No, we don't. Oh, okay. We don't have time for one last question. I am gonna do this though. I do wanna very quickly in 15 seconds any one big takeaway for the year ahead so that we can rethink food security and hunger through the partnerships we've been talking about. Michelle. I think all countries have been farmers' country in the past. It's, everybody has farmers in his family. My grandfather was a farmer, then my son, my father was an engineer and then I got lost in the family becoming a mathematician. And I would say the transition, because the trend is clear. The transition has to be strong. The transition is important, not only for food security, for political equilibrium, the transition of these farmers' communities. Thank you. Sengen. We're ending hunger and a moral nutrition or animal nutrition by 2025 should be our target of the post-2015. So he's even, he's moving it up five years from that. That's right, well. And we admire that, Sengen. Right, and I think the small holders play a particular role here instead of providing subsidies, investment to create incentives, markets for these small holders. Investing in them the right way. So critical. Ajay. I think making the small farmers self-sufficient, especially those farmers in rain-fed area self-sufficient is very necessary. The way to tackle terrorism that's building up in the world or unrest is to make that farmer self-sufficient. You cannot make him survive on aid. You cannot make him survive any other way. Thank you, Ellen. You're doing just that already. So wish for the year ahead. I'll take the next step. Once we get this and incomes are rising, the issue becomes nutrition. It's not the number of calories. It's the kind of calories. And talking to the finance minister at Indonesia a couple of years ago, they pointed out that they're one of the top five in diabetes in Indonesia. And we think of that as a developed country problem. And so the conversation needs to include nutrition because it's not how much. It's what kind. And we have to measure it. Well, Africa is going to solve the world's food problem. But we're going to have to change all across Africa from agriculture as a development activity to agriculture as a business. And on that, I would like to invite you all to Nigeria for the World Economic Forum Africa, which is holding that food challenge. Good. I will just conclude by saying that many of the folks in this room have been working together for many years to tackle this challenge. And let's be clear that we need more public investment, not less. We need higher level political visibility, not less. We need more G8, G20 attention, not less. And we need more private investment, not less. And as we do those things, we need to do it in a way where we're measuring results focused on outcomes, reaching women, prioritizing the small holders and those who are poorest amongst us. And if successful, we will effectively not just rethink global food security, but actually achieve it and address hunger and poverty in the next decade, decade and a half. Thank you very much for being with us this morning. There you go. OK.