UN Geneva - Multimedia Newsroom : FAO Press conference: Food Security and Nutrition in the World Report (SOFI)

OK.

Good morning and thank you for joining the FAO press conference at the UN office at Geneva.

Today's press conference will cover the launch of the report The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2024, also known as the Sophie Report, published by FAO in collaboration with EFAD, WFP, WHO and UNICEF.

Sophie 2024 will present the latest updates on hunger, food security and nutrition around the world, including updated estimates on the cost and affordability of healthy diets.

Today we have with us Maximo Torero, the FAO Chief Economist connecting from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Please note that this report and press conference are under embargo and the embargo will be lifted on 24 July, 2:00 PM Central European summertime.

So please respect the embargo.

We also have with us Francesco Branca, Director of the Nutrition and Food Safety Department from WHO joining us in person.

And we have 4 colleagues connecting from Rome, including Sara Savastano, Director of EFAZ Research and Impact Assessment Division, Piero Conforti, FAO, Deputy Director of the Statistics Division, Cindy Holman, FAO Senior Economist and Saskia DP, WFP, Senior Nutrition Advisor.

They will be available to provide further insights and answer questions.

And without further ado, I would like to invite Mr Maximo Torrero to the floor.

Thank you.

Thank you very much and thank you all for being with us today.

And thank you to the partners of the foreign institutions in addition to FAO, which are part of the Sofia.

So what I will do in the next 5 to 6 minutes is give you a brief overview of the key results and the key messages that are coming out from the Sofi publication this year.

Let me start by saying that latest estimates shows that the global hunger is persistently **** at nearly the same level for the last three consecutive years.

This after having rising sharply following the COVID-19 pandemic.

This means that we have a we have a stay and stabilise for the last three years at the highest levels of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In terms of numbers, this reflects a 9.1% of the global population facing hunger in 2023.

The midpoint of our range that goes from 713 million people to 757 million people in hunger is 733 million people in hunger compared to the 7.5% in 2019.

This means that current levels of undernourishment are comparable to those of 2020, 2008 and 2915 years ago.

If we consider the broader goal of ensuring regular access to adequate food, this has also stalled.

The prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity has remained unchanged for the last three years at around 28.9% of the global population or 2.33 billion people.

The bottom line is that we are still far off track towards the goal of ruining the world of hunger, putting security and my nutrition by 23rd.

Based on the current trajectory, our projections indicate that if we continue under the same conditions as today, we will be having 582 million people which will sell face to face hunger in 23rd and half of them will be from up.

So the situation with the projections today is basically that we will not achieve as the year 2 if we continue as we are.

However, it is still possible to reach our goal or to get as close as possible to it.

We know where hunger is more severe and increasing the major drivers behind this end and what we mean we need to do to change this now.

One of the important things of the report today is that although hunger has a style at the global level, there are signs of encouragement and there is a significant regional regional differences.

Progress has been made towards hunger in some 2 regions of Asia, almost notably in Latin America from 2022 to 2023.

On the other hand, hunger is continued to increase in Africa, Western Asia and in the Caribbean.

Recovery since the global pandemic has been particularly strong in Latin America and particularly driven by South America, where 5.4 million people fewer face hunger in 2023 compared to 2021.

There is a significant change, a significant improvement, and if they continue in this way, that part of the continent will be able to achieve as a year 2.

Economic recovery in this region has been a stronger than the original expectations and we also see improvements after the pandemic in other key indicators as poverty, income inequality and employment inflationary pressures have also lit in most of the countries.

Now if we look at Africa where the situation is the opposite to what we can find in South America, we see that in 2023 is the region with the largest percentage of population facing hunger more than 20% and the relevance of moderate or severe food insecurity is 58% which was nearly double the global average.

One of the main challenges is that Africa is the only region where hunger increased associated to all three major drivers, conflict, climate extremes and economic downturns.

Especially conflict is the major driver which is driven the food crisis countries.

At the same time in many of the countries we face multiple impacts of those drivers and that is creating significant impacts.

Now, what are the key takeaways on on food cost, focusing specifically on economic access to healthy diet, which is the what we'll be able to achieve.

If we achieve better access, of course we will reduce over nutrition and under nutrition.

Our updated estimates show that more than 1/3 of the people in the world, about 2.83 billion people, were unable to afford a healthy diet in 2022.

While food prices increased for 2022, pushing up the average cost of a healthy diet, this was largely offset by economic recovery and the ensuring positive income effects.

So, despite the increasing cost, the number of people unable to afford a healthy diet in the world fell back to pre pandemic levels in 2022.

Nevertheless, similar to the overall hunger, the uneven recovery is even evident across regions and country income groups.

In 2022, the number of people unable to afford a healthy diet dropped below pre pandemic levels in the group of upper middle and higher income countries.

In contrast, low income countries had the highest level since 2017, the first year we published this indicator.

Of the people in the world who were unable to afford a healthy diet in 2020, two, 1.68 billion or 59% lived in lower middle income countries.

This again reflects the significant increase of inequalities among countries and regions that has resulted because of COVID-19.

Now the second part of Sophie talks about the financing part, which is crucial to be able to achieve the access to be able to achieve as the year 2 financing has a lot of challenges today.

So and what the what the report is trying to do is trying to bring some potential solutions to the challenges we are facing on some potential recommendations.

The first element is about the definition.

Just to give you an example, if we look at the definition applied for average annual ODA, we could have grants in 2022 that range from 6.9 to $62.6 billion per year.

What that means is that depending on what the definition we're using, the numbers will be substantially different, even 10 times more.

So one of the major recommendations and one of the normative recommendations of the SOFI this year is to bring up with a common definition so that we understand what we are financing and we understand what are the cool key elements that we want to include in the definition.

So people can have more accountability and owners can have more accountability, accountability of the flows that are happening.

The report also brings three key recommendations which are important.

Why?

Because we observe that the countries with the highest level of food insecurity are oftentimes with the least access to finance to financing.

Of the 199 sorry, of the 119 low and middle income countries analyse, around 63% have limited or moderate ability to access finance.

And as a result of this, our recommendations are three.

First, all funders and Agri food system actors need to enhance coordination and consensus on what and where it is essential to finance and better target financing for the ones most in need, considering national and local priorities.

This is central because it will allow us not only having a common definition but also having exactly a good coordination that will minimise the inefficiencies that we're facing today.

We need to recognise that there has been some improvement in coordination in financing, but there is a significant space to keep improving so that we can have better coordination and target.

2nd, donors and other international actors must be risk tolerant and involved in the de risking activities.

We need to understand that the AGGI food systems in which we operate is a system that will be under risk and uncertainties and this will be increasing because of climate.

We have already surpassed 6 of the 9 planetary boundaries.

So the frequency of climate events will increase over time.

So donors and all international actors should and should bring more risk tolerance to be able to fact to to activate this finance.

And 3rd, we need more blended financing, but also innovation in financing and here, which is central also to attract climate financing to the agrifood systems.

The agrifood systems provides the right to food, but at the same time generates externalities.

That's all.

All of us know externalities on emissions, on biodiversity, on use of natural resources.

But it's the sector that has the bigger space to improve inefficiencies and that's why climate financing will be so important.

So colleagues, in summary, we have a situation in which we are at **** levels of hunger in the world similar to the previous two years.

We're in a situation where there are significant disparities at the regional level, especially improvements in South America, deterioration in Africa, because all the three drivers of conflict, climate and slowdowns and downturns are really accelerating in that continent.

We clearly have not progressed, although in some of the nutritional indicators like exclusive breastfeeding, wasting understanding, there has been some progress.

Still, the velocity won't allow us to achieve the goals.

But we also need to to, to, to put a lot of effort in how we improve the way we finance this agrifood system because the only way we will be able to achieve the goals is through proper financing.

And that's where a proper definition, coordination, being able to take more risk and innovation in financing instruments will be central in the following years.

Let me stop there.

I'm more than happy to answer any of your questions through my colleagues.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Maximo, for this very comprehensive overview of the Sophie 2004 report.

Now I'm pleased to have Doctor Francesco Branca, who would also like to add some remarks following a Doctor Torreros presentation.

Doctor Branca, the floor is yours.

Thank you very much.

The Sophie is a key UN report to inform about the status of World Nutrition.

So I'd just like to compliment what Doctor Toredo mentioned and say that definitely there are some good news and we should start from the good news.

The good news is that we have had since 2012 a reduction in stunting.

The reduction of stunting which is impaired child growth and development in the first five years has gone down from 26 to 22% and that translating to 33.

Zero million less children under five were affected by this condition was important impact on child development and economic development of the country.

We also had a reduction in the acute malnutrition wasting that went down from 7.5 to 6.8% and that means 5 million children less with this condition.

And as Doctor Torreira mentioned, we have to celebrate the success of improving exclusive breastfeeding rates from 37 to 48%, almost reaching the target that welfare assembly is established by 2020.

We still have a lot of work to do for the 2030 target, but we are on track there.

The bad news are particularly the lack of improvements in women's anaemia.

So women's nutrition is still a challenge.

In fact, women's nutrition the the anaemia of women in women 15 to 49 years of age has increased from 28 to 30% and that translate into over half 1,571,000,000 women affected by this condition.

And of course, the other bad news is the increase in the.

Number of adults with overweight and obesity, and particularly obesity.

We now calculated over a billion individuals are affected by this condition with the projection to increase to 1.2 billion by 2030.

This is an important time and this report will constitute the basis of the analysis that the Executive Board, WTO will do in January 2025 about the status of the target and considering also what should be done to accelerate the progress toward the achievement of the of this global nutrition targets.

It it's 2025 is going to be an important year.

The French government is going to convene the Nutrition for Growth Summit in March 2025, and that's an opportunity to make the investment and to commit to the establishment of effective food and nutrition policies, but also it's the opportunity to have the second.

Stock taking of the UN Food System Summit to discuss action on food system transformation.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Doctor Branca, for the additional remarks.

Now, we will now open the floor for questions.

Journalists, please state your organisation and name before asking your questions and for our speakers online or here in person, please feel free to raise your hand if you would like to add to the answers now.

So we will start with the questions in the room.

All right, now we will move then we will move to the Zoom.

I see Jamie Keaton from AP.

Please go ahead.

Thank you, Keith for the for the the opportunity and thank you for the presentation.

I guess this question is for Mr Torero.

I wanted to know what impact there has been, if any on conflict, notably in Sudan and in Gaza in terms of the the lack of insecurity in terms of any impact on the overall global figures or if that is obviously Gaza began in late last year and of course Sudan happened in the spring of last year.

But I'm just wondering if you're seeing any signs that that that's moving the needle in any way in terms of the global Hunter Group food insecurity situation?

Thank you.

And you want me to answer immediately or we'll wait for more questions?

Perhaps Maximo, you can go ahead.

OK.

So very briefly, of course, the numbers we are reporting are 2023 numbers.

No, the major impact of Gaza will will be reflected, I assume, the following years.

But this is an important question to to differentiate 2 definitions when we look at conflict zones and when we look at Gaza and Sudan and other countries which are in food crisis, which is the definition of acute food insecurity.

And acute food insecurity is a short term lack of access to food.

While in this report, we report the indicators of the year which are related to chronic undernourishment.

So this is more a medium and long term impact.

So what is happening in Gaza, what is happening in Sudan in terms of acute food insecurity, of course will be reflected if it continues over time and it will affect the numbers for the following years.

Clearly the situation that we're observing in Gaza is critical as has been reporting a kit for insecurity by the IPCC and the same in terms of of Sudan, which the numbers are becoming extremely critical.

So if that situation continues, then of course it will end impacting the future numbers of what we report as hunger, as the undernourishment, chronic undernourishment indicator of the soil.

Thank you very much.

I believe we also have Jan.

Your hands is up, the floor is yours.

Yes, good morning Jan Haberman for Tad Spiegel Berlin and other German media.

This is a follow up to Jamie's question I would like to ask you on the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine and its impact on the World Food markets.

We know that the Russians cancelled the Black Sea rain initiative last year, it's about exactly 1 year ago.

So what has been the impact in the last year on the World Food markets and OF?

Course on the hunger situation in many parts of the world, many things.

Thank you for your question.

The major impact that happened because of the war in Ukraine was reported in the previous Sophie in the Sophie of 2023, where we even did a projection of what will be what had been the impact both of COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine.

And the numbers were I think an increase of 19 million people more in hunger as a result of the of the war in Ukraine.

So we need to be careful that this process now have have been very smooth.

Commodity prices are going down.

Exports has re established their levels because commodities are being exported despite of the stop of the Black Sea grain initiative.

But commodities are moving now and the market has stabilised in terms of commodity prices.

If you look at the evolution of the foul price index, you will see that the commodity prices has been falling.

Of course, this not yet is reflected across all countries in terms of the final consumer.

So what we report in the FAO food price index is commodity prices, the raw commodities, wheat, maize, corn.

What consumers eat is what they buy at the local markets, at the shops and so on.

And those are final products that of course has a component of the commodity price, but also have other elements like energy, water, depending on what the product is about.

That those prices what we call the food inflation in some countries have improved especially in developed countries.

But still we are not serving the transmission of commodity prices in all the countries of the world especially in the ones which are the most vulnerable because of conflict.

So that is still there is a residual that is moving forward on these not yet return to lower put inflation in most of the countries of the world, but the expectation is that this will be improving over time.

So in this year, we don't do a difference of what is the effect of the war in Ukraine because as I said before, this has been smoothing over time.

And we, we don't have yet, we don't have any differentiated impact because of, of, of the case of of the war in Ukraine.

On the contrary, the impacts of COVID-19 has perpetrated more over time because that affected economic growth of countries, affected deafness of the countries and that is mostly moving the driver of slowdowns and downturns which is affecting significantly.

It has affect significantly the numbers that we face on hunger and has make us go backwards more or less 15 years in the case of hunger looms.

OK, Thank you.

We have a question from the room.

Musa, can you ask a question?

Yeah, Thank you.

Musa, CLBDTV Concerning Gaza again, you have some details about the situation of famine or malnutrition in Gaza, the difference between October 7 and today.

You have some details about the level of malnutrition there.

Thank you.

Please we need to understand that this report is not about countries in food crisis.

These are report that follows the indicators that we are supposed to report on SDE 2.

All the details in terms of of the levels of acute food insecurity and the potential impacts over man region on Gaza and Sudan are reported through the IPC.

But I don't know if any of my colleagues want to add something, but please it will be ideally we'll refocus to what the report is saying, which is basically focusing on SDG2 indicators.

But let me pass to my colleagues take a lot on this.

Many thanks.

If I may, just to direct the kind question to the report that FAO publishes on global food crisis.

There is a in that context and in the context of the work of the international phase classification project, the IPC, something about Gaza, the latest projection that we have by July, beginning of July, is that acute food.

Insecurity The contest may expand to interest 1.1 million people.

However, as Maximus said, this is not in the report we are launching today.

It's a different product organisation.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Piero.

And this is also a reminder to the other experts in the room in the Zoom chat as well, if you have any.

If you would like to add to the answers of the speakers, please feel free to raise your hand.

And I see Nick, Nick's hands is up.

So please go ahead, Nick.

Yeah, thank you for taking the question.

2 questions, one to Mr Torrero.

You identified 3 major factors in the deteriorating situation, food security in Africa.

I wonder if you could just elaborate a little bit on the relative importance of these.

Well, what is creating more of the downturn?

Is it, is it climate extremes impacting increasingly?

Or is it, is it conflict particularly?

And a second question to Mr Branker.

I mean, there's a time when the world is sort of consumed by more and more persistent conflicts, which have had huge impacts on nutritional status of that population.

And curious as to why you see stunting and wasting reducing.

What are what are the factors that are helping to improve that?

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Yes, sorry.

Go ahead, Maximo.

I'm not sure in terms of of Africa, the three drivers that will look carefully are conflict, climate and of course the slowdowns and downturns.

And then of course there's the interaction effect between them because in many countries more than one of the drivers will impact and will have an effect over the situation of of hunger in those countries.

Now if we have to rank them this year, I think the most important one is conflict.

As you can seen the the level of conflict in in the continent has increased, but also of course climate.

And the third will be slowdowns and downturns.

And a slowdowns and downturns plays a a cost cutting impact because it is related also to debt stress and many of these countries are facing significant debt stress, which is also reflected in this report.

Why is this complicated?

Because it's not only the price effect of the commodities that affect the capacity of consumption and access to food in these countries, but it's also the effect as a result of the increase in interest rates at the global level, which impacts the capacity of the exchange rate of the country.

So deteriorates their currency.

So that makes buying their food more expensive.

And that is what we call the exchange rate effect.

So it's the price effect plus exchange rate effect.

In addition to that, because of the level of debt, the cost of the debt has increased substantially and they will have to pay more of the flow of resources to pay in debt.

And that could imply sacrificing part of the resources to buy food, their food in poor bill, but also implies that they will have less capacity to get new resources to be able to cover the gap of the food in poor bill.

So although conflict seems to be increasing and climate impacts affecting significantly, the the macroeconomic situation also cuts across and that interactive effect I think is one of the biggest impacts that we observe in many of these countries in Africa.

In the case of climate, the expectation is that the frequency of events will continue to increase and we need to understand that these countries are very vulnerable.

So the capacity of resilience is lower than countries which are doing better in other continents and as a result of that they will be affected more than countries which are more resilient.

So that's another element which we need to keep in mind and which we need to look carefully across time.

Sure.

The reason of the improvements is actually the active investment of governments in policies to reduce stunting and wasting.

Stunting and wasting have been selected to be critical.

Nutrition targets improvement in access to health, improvement in water and sanitation, improvement in social protections.

These are all policies that have been enabled to address standing and wasting, both on prevention and management.

On wasting specifically, larger investment in the treatment of children with wasting and not only decreased the total number, but have actually decreased the impact on mortality of wasting.

So this is just an indication that a very clear targeting of this nutrition conditions with a set of well known effective policies adequately resourced is the way forward.

And so the elimination of hunger and malnutrition is not just a vague ambition, it's something that can be achieved absolutely in our lifetime.

Thank you very much.

I see Saskia from WFP also raising her hand, if you would like to add on.

Yeah, thank you very much.

Yeah, to that point on the stunting reductions, there is sort of uneven progress on that reduction.

And the question on where we see persistent conflict, do we also see a reduction there?

If we look at the regional figures, we see that in Middle Africa and Southern Africa, the prevalence of stunting has virtually remained the same between 2012 and 22.

So 37.9 to 37.4% for Middle Africa between 12/20/12 and 20/22 and in Southern Africa 23.4 and 22.8.

So that's against the background of a global reduction from 26.3 to 22.3.

So less of a reduction there.

And yeah, as Doctor Branka says, there's many efforts from government, but then there are of course situations outside are very difficult to address by, by governments that sort of counteract this.

And that's also where the the cost and affordability of of healthy diets and access to them comes in.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I see Lisa Shrines hands up.

Yes, Good morning.

Thank you.

First, this is a question to Saskia WFP.

There are so many forgotten crises in the world, a great too many of them in Africa, Sudan and so forth.

And they are not getting the money that they aid agencies are not getting the money yours as well as others in order to help them.

So I'm wondering how what has happened in during your reporting period in terms of your having to cut beneficiaries.

This has probably increased the number of hunger and so forth.

And what is the outlook in terms of your having to cut beneficiaries if you do not get the money that you need?

What will this ultimately mean in terms of your efforts to try to end hunger in the world?

And then I'm wondering, whoever wishes to answer this, is you are talking about the need for money.

How much money do you actually need globally in order to end hunger?

And is this even feasible?

Thank you.

Yeah, Thank you, Lisa.

Now you've well noted that the budget for humanitarian food assistance, it went up in the response to or in the time of of COVID war in Ukraine.

But since then it it has come down, it's also governments also in donor countries spending more domestically with their to address their crises.

So what this means for our response in terms of humanitarian food assistance, we can help many fewer people.

The numbers that we we were able to support two years ago and the numbers that we're able to support this year, it's it's several 10s of millions less.

I don't have the number on what it would take to address everyone.

I would like to give that to the FEO colleagues who contributed much more to that part of the report.

Thank you.

So we have Cindy and Sarah's hands are up.

Maybe Cindy you can go 1st and then Sarah can add over.

OK, yeah, thank you for the important question on, you know what is it going to take in terms of financing to end hunger.

This is one of our main themes for this report and we've done quite a bit of research on this.

One thing that Maximo has already alluded to and mentioned is that one of the problems is, is that there's no single clear definition of what financing food security and nutrition is.

So one thing we're putting forward in this report is a definition to clarify what it entails for financing for food security, nutrition.

Right now, it's impossible to determine how much financing is going to end hunger and malnutrition because of this.

As we've seen, you know, depending on your definition, you have different ones and this creates many problems.

1 is that we don't really know how much money is going to the areas that need it most.

So it also it creates problems of accountability and impact.

So one of the things that we've put forward in this report and we hope to send a strong call is that we need to improve and have a common definition of financing for food security, nutrition.

And we've also put forward some protocols on how to implement and who needs to take action.

That is all financing organisations, whether it's public, private, both domestic and foreign.

We need to improve this if we need to be able to track.

However, we do know that the number of in terms of trillions of dollars that we're, we're have a funding gap on.

So it's a we also in our analysis, we show that many countries that have the highest levels of food insecurity and most in need have a problem accessing this financing.

So it's very important that what we look at is how we can scale up and how countries mobilise better financing and more cost effective, more targeted for these more poorer countries that can't access.

This includes looking more at innovative ways to lose use collaborative financing to de risk investments.

It's just going to take, you know, investments both from the public and private sector.

So using collaborative financing combined with private to invest in food supply chains to supply nutritious foods.

Other innovative things that we can do for countries in Africa is to look at debt for nature swats or debt swats, swaps related to climate and to start funding the climate resilience and the scale up of that which is needed.

In many countries that are really seeing increases in hunger at a global level, we see it stalled hunger.

But in many countries that are affected by climate in conflict and economic downturns, we see hunger continuing to increase.

So there's also a number of parametric insurance measures that we need to look at to help derisk investments in Agri food systems.

So we are hopeful that, you know, we can end hunger, but it's going to take scaling up financing, especially to countries that need it most and overcoming this challenge we face which they have problem accessing financing.

Countries are not able to mobilise enough funding that needed to address food security and nutrition.

So that's something that we we really need to address and what we're trying to achieve in terms of sending some strong calls in this report.

Thank you.

Sarah, would you like to add?

Yes, thank you very much and thank you for all these questions.

I would like to really maybe stop one second and go beyond the numbers because sometimes one may be trapped by looking at the numbers and the conflict of today and all the crisis of today may exacerbate this anxiety towards the consequences on the number, especially of nutrition and food security.

So while conflict and climate change may affect short term numbers of nutrition and food security, economic downturn may affect the long term consequences of nutrition and food security.

And in the short, in the short term, both positive and negative changes in numbers are important, but what matters is that in the long term, nutrition and food security improve.

And why?

Because in effect using our impact data where we use evidence from if at beneficiaries we found out which is not maybe something new, but nutrition and food security and especially nutrition are long term behaviourals change.

As such it requires time and investment, good investment financing for food security and nutrition to achieve those change.

And while years by years change may reflect crisis, conflict and even climate change, investing and financing in a holistic way for long term nutritional improvement is much more important.

This is the reason why the focus of this year, Sophie is really important because it really calls International Development institution to join forces to really make a shift in the way we are financing food security and nutrition.

So that the investment that have been done in the past and that are already visible in this in this year's of this number can continue again in the future.

And Africa, where the burden of malnutrition and obesity is stronger than everywhere else in the in the world, calls for action for really from all the sectors of the economy and not only maybe in agriculture that can cause for changing the way we are financing and we are supporting investment in nutrition and food security.

Thank you.

And I believe Doctor Branca has something to add.

Sure.

No, I, I agree with my colleagues that I mean, these numbers require a comprehensive assessment looking at food security and nutrition.

But maybe I'd like to quote very interesting report that the World Bank put out in 2012.

That estimated the cost of achieving the at least four of the global nutrition target, just to give you an order of magnitude the way we are with the with the investments and in 2012.

The World Bank was estimating that to achieve the targets at least four stamping anaemia, exclusive breastfeeding and wasting, we would need $70 billion in 10 years, which is about 7 billion per year.

Now what we have seen in terms of donors investment in this year has been 1 billion.

So it's a small fraction of what was really needed and just to achieve these 4 targets.

Now we also have to add that this investment should produce an incredible return on investment.

You know the investment of $1.00 for example, on programmes to.

Promote, protect and support breastfeeding.

Have a return of investment of 35 dollars which is really enormous programmes invest investing in standing $11.00, anaemia $12.00.

So, so there's definitely an incredible return and we want to flag this because clearly.

At a time of shortage of resources for development and investment in nutrition is really making a difference.

World Bank is coming out next month with with an update on these numbers.

I presume also including the other big challenge which is that of overweight and obesity.

But that is really a message to not only a donors on overseas aid, but but.

But regulators and leaders in countries, because that's where the resources need to be mobilised, the domestic resources are critical to achieve this target.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And I see Maya's hand is up.

Maya, do you have a question?

Yes, thank you very much for taking my question.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you is regarding that.

In your report you say that from 2017 to 2000 and 2195 billion from remittances from migrants, from the philanthropy and foreign direct investment, about 95 billion per year has been evaluated that was been going towards ending hunger, towards achieving the Sustainable development goal #2 in 2.1 and 2.2.

And then also you see that several trillion are needed in fact to address to achieve 0 hunger.

But which channels do you see are the most useful and where the improvement has to come from?

Development banks wouldn't be important also to create a self-sufficiency within these countries.

Of course, some regions, some places cannot because they are in conflict or they have they are facing and hunger after in the aftermath of extreme weather events.

So what do you see are the channels that need to be energised in order to meet the challenge?

Let me start and then we can pass those India and other colleagues and so on.

But let let me start first by saying that one of the core messages of this of is the importance of the definition.

And that's why you can refer to certain types of numbers that cover certain types of of of targets.

But what we need to come is a common definition of what we want to achieve.

And the trillions refers to basically a more comprehensive definition that will incorporate several of the indicators that we have been discussing.

Now what we know and where we know there has been success.

Francesco already have talked about the returns to nutrition.

We also know that social protection programmes is one of the major reasons why South America is doing better than other regions of the world and why they were able to reduce more than 5 million people moving out of hunger in the last two years.

And why?

Because social protection programmes help them to be able to target the people which are the most vulnerable and be able to be able to expand or shrink depending on the chocolate they are facing.

So it's a very cost effective mechanism.

Also we know in the case of emergency situations, anticipatory action will give you 5 for each dollar invested.

But it's very difficult to do anticipatory action if you don't have funds available early even before the choke happened because that's why it's called anticipatory action.

But early action also pays back when you respond very quickly to the chalk and WP can can talk about it.

That return is one in three, so and we also know that there's other programmes that can be bring better impact.

We have done an analysis of the marginal return of costs of dollars invested in terms of reduction of hunger and they are investments that will pay in the short term and there are investments that will pay in the long term and we need to tackle both at the same time.

Now what is important and worldwide, this report is being launched in the year 20 of Brazil is that this fits perfectly with the Alliance Against Hunger, the Global Alliance against Hunger and and Poverty that the G20 of Brazil is launching this year.

Why?

Because the alliance has three key pillars.

The first pillar is on knowledge and that's where we are trying to document and bring evidence on what pays back the highest in terms of reduction of hunger and undernutrition.

Second, it has the pillar of financing where we hope we can gain efficiencies in the financing, which is one of the recommendations of the Sofi.

Why it's important because you have several buckets on financing.

So you have the government money which should be catalytic and should enable.

You have the ODA bucket, you have the, IF is the global banks like the World Bank or the regional banks like the African Development Bank or the IDD, CAF and many others, the Asian Development Bank.

Then you have the private sector which is and requires some support to reduce the risk.

And that's the blending that we are referring to and the more capacity to take bigger risks.

And then you have the foundations, no, the, the AKF Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation that gets foundation, MasterCard Foundation, which is catalytic mode.

So we need to look at each of the markets and how we can gain efficiencies.

No, in the government, we need to measure carefully what they are investing in the sector.

In the case of the ODA and the Ifis, we need to coordinate better so that those dollars are used more efficiently.

And in the case of the private sector, we need to attract more private sector investment.

And in the case of the foundations, of course, they should be catalytic to what the others are doing.

So a lot of efficiency gains can happen through a better coordination in addition to the additional resources that are requested.

But the aim is not just to ask more money per SE, but it's trying to find ways in which this can be coordinated.

And that's why the Alliance will will play a role in that.

Thank you.

We have Cindy and Sarah with their hands up.

Cindy, would you like to start?

And then Sarah could answer as well.

Over.

Yeah, just to compliment Maximus, I think, you know, one thing to keep in mind is that the countries where hunger is increasing the most are those that are affected by the major drivers.

So that's conflict, climate, economic downturns and those that are affected the most are those that are occurring in combination and also where you also have **** levels of inequality as well as afford unaffordably healthy diet.

So the definition that we're putting forward is really critical because right now, if you look at funding, most of the funding that's going is going to the traditional things about food security and nutrition.

But our definition considers 2 elements.

1 is a core part of the definition, which is about funding food, secure food consumption, availability, access, the health, environmental, environmental environment, healthy environments, health services.

That's what you normally fund with food security and nutrition.

So what's additional is that we've identified that the funding is needed to go to address these major drivers.

So that's what we're calling the extended definition.

And currently there's not enough funding going to that.

That means we need to look at our Agri food systems and transform them so they're resilience to the climate extremes.

Also that vulnerable populations are resilient and have social protection when there's economic downturns.

It means also looking at integrated peace building and development in conflict areas so that we don't have famines when there is conflict.

So it's this integration of funding these major drivers and we have a number of pathways we've identified on different portfolios of policies to address that.

So what's if we're really going to end hunger and food security, we need to do things differently.

We need to look at which countries where we really have the large amount of numbers of people that are hungry and where it's increasing.

And we need to be doing targeted financing to address those issues.

And that does mean looking at closer at these drivers and how to build resilience, how to scale up climate resilience, how to build in social protection where countries need it.

The other thing to add is the countries that need the most financing or those that cannot access it, whether they have **** debt, they're poor, they have a very low income base for taxes to support the things that are needed for these these elements.

So we also need to look at innovative financing.

We can't just rely on one form of financing.

We need to look at creating financing for these.

I had mentioned this before, you know, we it's not just the development banks, Oregon just ODA that's not going to be sufficient to reach the targets that we need in terms of the changes in our Agri food systems.

So we do need to use our financing in a different way.

We need to look at looking at concessional and grants just to make it more blended to get private investment to de risk, de risk in terms of Agri food systems, in terms of supply chains, making them more nutritious, scaling up nutrition.

Also within the climate financing, how can we turn some of that financing to address food security and nutrition?

A lot of it, the climate financing isn't looking at the impacts on hunger and food insecurity.

So there's a lot that we need to do in terms of streamlining, improving.

And that's one of the reasons why we call for collaborative and consensus increase partnerships because if we're going to meet the targets that we need to, it's going to take efforts across the board.

So again, you know, we need more targeted, more cost effective, we need collaboration between public and private.

It's not one person's responsibility.

It's the government, it's donors, it's the private sector also.

The private sector is investing a lot.

And one, a lot of the investment that's going on is not conducive to healthy diets necessarily.

So if we don't address that also.

So we need to bring the private sector on board so that they have the goals of investment that will bring the outcomes of food security and nutrition that we're looking for.

Thank you, Sarah.

Thank you very much.

And along the line of what Nancy was saying, but also with using the IF AD Lance or IF AD framework.

IF AD is really innovating in order to create new ways of channelling financing from the private sector to the rural population.

And the new rural development report that we are about to launch and the strategic framework for until 2030 are pointing towards financing a connected, equitable, the resilient and prosperous, prosperous rule of transformation.

And in financing food and nutrition security is part is only one component, 1 component of it.

And also, we have to think smarter and the innovative, for example, leveraging remittance, maximising the impact of remittance means not only giving families more options to use them efficiently, but it means also that families will save and invest more if they're provided with the appropriate savings and investments in schemes.

And This is why, for example, financial inclusion and digitalization are key drivers of this.

The digitalization of remittance is changing tremendously, especially in rural areas and and underserved areas.

And this is connecting millions of unbanked people to basic financial service and making them a real difference in provide in improving their lives.

Connecting I mean a partnership between international organisation that allows to finance investment in digitalization for remittance.

At the same time, for example, improving the digital infrastructure to allows those who are located in the most remote areas of the world who would to be able to benefit from those smarter innovative way of making, making investment is really key and fundamental to achieve this change over.

Thank you very much.

I see Saskia has her hands up and I guess you would like to add, but however perhaps we could bring Maya, maybe she has a follow up question and then Saskia and other experts could also build on the following question.

Maya, are you there?

Yes, thank you very much.

It's a follow up question and perhaps Saska can answer to it's regarding the aspect of nutrition, which Cindy also brought up, which is, you know, the question of financing education in healthy diets and sustainable agriculture, Agri food systems, right, Which seems quite important too, because if when we see this photos or video footage of delivery of food after, you know, an extremely weather event or in conflict zones, we see lots of flour being delivered like and and some processed bars of protein.

These are really terrible sources of nutrition.

But of course, in that situation is the only thing perhaps that they can, you know, quickly get in the hands of people before they die of starvation.

However, shouldn't we be more strongly focus on making sure that the food, the Agri food systems are sustainable from the soil app and that the nutrition component of all this food aid be financed by overseas development aid or finance financed by domestic sources?

That this be transversal to what we do going forward.

And I understand also self-sufficiency is quite important and I know the word for the programme in Haiti has some programmes which works with local farmers to actually help them increase their production or make it sustainable.

Oh, my God.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Saskia, would you like to perhaps answer the previous question and also the current one and other experts, if you would like to add, please let us know.

Yeah, thank you very much.

Thanks for that Additional question, Maya.

Yeah.

So in periods of acute food insecurity, providing food assistance, it's a major logistical operation.

So of course, the first choice is to meet the needs with what is locally available and to provide the means to access that.

So where possible, we provide as a humanitarian food assistance agency, we provide cash so people can access food locally.

Where that's not possible, we will provide food in kind.

And it being a major logistics operation, it has to be food that has a shelf life that we can handle through the operation.

So that's why you see basically dry food being distributed, but it can be a combination to also access fresh, more local nutritious foods where that is available.

So now I wanted to turn to the the cost and affordability metric and linking it to social protection.

So the proportion of people that cannot afford a healthy diet, the higher it gets, the also the deeper the gap of people to be able to afford that healthy nutritious diet.

So where the gap is like I'd say 50%, of course, the diets are very not meeting the the needs of people.

And also social protection, it becomes really hard to provide sufficient support to close that entire gap.

And that's where the design of shock responsive social protection as well as nutrition sensitive social protection comes in.

So you want to make the most with the resources available to make the largest dent for whom it matters most.

So social protection needs to be adaptive to respond to the shock in terms of who are affected, how are they affected and how can they be best supported.

That's also where nutrition sensitive comes in.

So how do you link it with the component that specifically addresses the needs of the most nutritionally vulnerable or how can you make more of the transfer?

And they're making a link with fortified foods.

It's a very good one.

Also a link with a voucher to stimulate the demand for specific nutritious foods that are locally available.

So there are many ways to, yeah, fine tune the design of social assistance programmes to address as much as possible of the food insecurity and nutrition situation amongst the recipients.

Just to say social protection is a great mechanism, but it may only be focused on unethiating severe poverty, while there's many things that can be done to make it more responsive to shocks and make it more nutrition sensitive.

Thank you.

I believe Francesco would like to add and then after Maximo can come in and then Cindy over.

Hello, thank you for the question.

I think you raised a very important point.

The food that is delivered not only during emergencies, Saska was already explaining.

But.

In the many opportunities that the public sector has to deliver food to people, we have to think of course of social protection programmes.

But if you think of the million meals that are served everyday in school canteens, in hospitals in in all canteens run by ministries or or local authorities, there is an.

Incredible.

Power.

To offer healthy food and we still don't have that.

So public food procurement is really an important element for transformation of the food system.

And then you you heard that the Sophie says that about 1/3, a bit more than 1/3.

Of the world.

Population cannot afford a healthy diet, but you know how many people consume a healthy diet?

Probably 1 to 10% maximum.

So there is an element of transformation of the food environment and transformation of our food culture to actually consume better diet and that's entirely driven by public.

Policies, you know, public policies can do a lot to shape the way we consume food the the food we choose.

It could be done through fiscal policies by just putting taxation to foods that it shouldn't, shouldn't be consumed as much.

You know, if you think of, for example, sugar sweetened beverages, but also certain countries have taxation of foods **** in salt, for example.

And then controlling the marketing.

Why should we having the promotion of foods which we know are unhealthy and information to consumers allowing them?

Through very clear nutrition front of the pack labelling to select foods which are which are better.

So all these elements need to come in place and of course the private sector investment should not go in production of food which we know are detrimental to help and actually produce a very **** cost.

I think a previous report of FEO was showing that almost the whole cost, the whole revenue generated by the food system was equalled by.

The negative impact of consumption of unhealthy foods on health and environment.

Maximo, the floor is yours.

Yeah.

Just very, very briefly before passing to Cindy, I just wanted to touch the point of self-sufficiency.

We need to be careful.

I think the the topic that we need to be talking about is resilience.

Why?

Because I could become self-sufficient in in my food, but if I am affected by a climate shock, all my self-sufficiency will disappear overnight.

And then what I do.

That's why the concept of resilience that incorporates both elements incorporates on one dimension and the diversity of what I produce.

Because at the end we want access to caldidates, but the already mentioned is access to trade partners.

And I think we need to keep both dimensions open in a world that will be chopped by this type of risk and uncertainties.

That's the only way we will be resilient to these type of vulnerabilities, Cindy.

Yeah.

Thank you.

I just wanted to bring this back.

Just complimenting all the my colleagues, what they've said is that if we look at you know, financing to bring down the cost of nutritious foods and to support food environment, it's definitely under financed.

In our new definition.

We have a whole 2 pathways, transformative pathways that we are saying that we want to start to monitor the financing going into them.

And one is bringing down the cost of, of nutritious foods and also building healthy food environments.

So these are very much important.

We need to begin to, to start bringing attention to those being funded and making sure those are being financed.

So it's a big part of our definition.

And of course, as our, my colleagues have already said, the food environment is critical and we need to do more funding in terms of financing of that.

And that includes as, as Branca mentioned, education, regulations, marketing, look at marketing much better labelling.

There's a many things that we can do to strengthen and make sure that we have healthy food environments, but we also need to look at the availability and access of nutritious foods.

Our report last year showed that if we look at the per capita availability of vegetables, for example, most countries and regions in the world don't have enough to meet the needs of everybody was having a healthy diet.

So a lot of what we're calling for in terms of financing and scaling up is also just to invest in these two transformative pathways, not only ensuring accessibility of nutritious foods at a reasonable cost, but also to increase the availability.

And that means all interventions and investments all along Agri food system supply chains from production and increasing the diversity of nutritious foods.

But also looking at the cold storage and availability, because we'd see that food insecurity and hunger is **** not only in rural areas, it's also **** in peri urban and urban areas.

So we need to look beyond this.

And then of course, as my colleague Saskia mentioned, you know, how can we be more innovative also in ensuring in conflicts, especially protracted conflict situations on how we can ensure populations have access to nutritious foods.

Thank you.

Maya, is that a follow up question?

And if so, perhaps you could specify who to whom you would like to ask your question?

Thank you very much.

Yes, it's a quick question.

Perhaps I don't know Mr Torrero or Mrs Holman can speak or Mrs Savastano.

The idea is that just a quick comment on financing women in rural settings, as we know, women find it harder to find in traditional forms of finance from banks and whatnot.

And sometimes they are isolated too and they don't have, you know, good communications or news organisations that that will transfer information about the the government subsidies available for them right to in order to produce crops and so on.

So what in the report have you highlighted, found out in what do you recommend in terms of enhancing mechanisms that allow women, rural women, to have the same degree of access to finance for their farms?

Quickly, if I may quickly answer and Cindy can compliment, but we have a full report on this is, is woman in the agrifood system that was published last year.

I will put the link in, in the in the notes, but I think that reports goes into very much detail on which are the best practises and so on.

Cindy, sorry.

Yeah.

So thank you so much for raising that point.

That's very critical.

Of course, you probably have seen the the research that shows that if you put an extra dollar in the hand of a woman farmer, you know what that does in terms of improving also the food security and nutrition of members of that household.

And also the community where women get together and have a Co-op and they have access to additional funds, they have a much bigger impact in terms of improving food security and nutrition for the community.

So this is a really important element.

And as Maximo said, there's a lot of examples of what can be done in this group.

I think the main thing I want to emphasise also is let's not only focus on rural women.

As our report last year showed, we need to be thinking differently in terms of food security and nutrition because we have done an analysis across a rural urban continuum and we have many different settlements that are growing and they're connecting the rural and the urban.

And I think, you know, it's important to look at targeting women in the supply chains, small business enterprises that are run by women with nutritious foods.

Also in a lot of the peri urban areas where there's there's a very poor access to food is putting, putting money in their hands to increase income opportunities, but also to supply healthy, nutritious food.

So there's a lot that we need to do and that's very much a big part of it.

If you look at one of our pathways that is included in our definition and that we want to be tracking is on inclusiveness and inequality.

And inequality has to do with women and youth.

And So what we want to see is more funding in terms of women and youth to make this more bigger gains in terms of food security, nutrition.

So we do need to target them.

We need to target them across in many different ways and not just think of farming or women farmers, but throughout our Agri food system and across the urban world continuum.

Thank you, Sarah, I saw your hands up.

Did you want to add or yes, just a last point, um, identifying innovative way be creative or using a holistic view of nutrition and food security means only taking all the opportunities to, to really invest for what is important and what is relevant.

We all know how nutritious nutritional outcome are transferred between women and their child and therefore training is a fundamental importance.

In fact, what we're trying to do when we, when we invest in system transformation is we always provide training.

So being holistic means that every time there is, for example, a value chain development project or a microfinance project, project target is on women also put their component of nutrition, adding train programme, training programme for better nutritious food.

This doesn't mean that you only access to finance, but while accessing to finance, you attend the training.

And this training is not only learning about how to use microfinance, but it's also on how to use nutritious food, which was not the primary objective of the programme of the project, though an important secondary outcome that can be even more important than the first one.

Thank you very much.

Now, I don't see any further questions from the journalist.

This is just to highlight one more time that the embargo will be lifted on the 24th of July, 2:00 PM Central European Summertime.

And in the meantime, please let us know if you have any follow up questions or interview requests, and we'd be very happy to facilitate.

And with this, we will conclude the Sophie press conference.

Thank you very much.

We wish you a lovely day.

FAO Press conference: Food Security and Nutrition in the World Report (SOFI) - 22 July 2024