(AGENPARL) – mer 28 settembre 2022 [NewsMedia_NewsRelease]
Speech by FAO Director-General QU Dongyu
G20 Ministers of Agriculture Meeting
Building a resilient and sustainable food systems and agriculture
Bali, Indonesia, 28 September 2022
Excellences,
It is my pleasure to join you today.
Last year, our dialogue focused on the need to increase the resilience of global agrifood systems in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This year, global agrifood systems were faced with another tremendous challenge – the outbreak of the war in Ukraine and many extreme weather disasters occurred globally.
The Russian Federation and Ukraine are both major players in global agricultural markets, and the war has had multiple implications for agricultural trade, food prices, and livelihoods.
The Black Sea Grain Initiative is an important step forward, its steady implementation is sending a positive signal to global food markets, but still it needs to be complemented to improve the food access of most vulnerable countries.
In August, the FAO Food Price Index decreased for its 5th consecutive month, but it still remained nearly 8% above its value last year.
Indeed, consumer food prices and inflation are soaring, with devastating implications for global food security and nutrition.
While we witnessed improvements in the forecasts for wheat and soybean markets, the outlook is less positive for maize and rice, and fertilizer markets remain supply-constrained and volatile.
Food prices are very high for consumers, and input prices are very high for farmers.
Much needs to be done to ensure that all people can afford safe and nutritious food in sufficient quantities to meet their dietary needs and preferences and have a healthy life.
We must increase the resilience of global agrifood systems.
For that, in the long-term, we need to:
• Improve early warning and early action systems
• Increase productivity sustainably
• Accelerate trade; and
• Find innovative solutions to tackle inorganic fertilizer supply constraints.
In the medium-term, it is paramount to:
• Increase innovation and identify alternatives;
• Invest in infrastructure to reduce inequalities;
• Reduce food loss and waste.
And finally, in the immediate or short-term, we need to:
• Improve food access and for that FAO proposed the Food Import Financing Facility, – which I am happy the IMF has now taken over and it is calling it the food shock window within the IMF emergency lending instruments;
• Accelerate exports from Ukraine and the Russian Federation, as per the Black Sea Grain Initiative; and
• Increase fertilizer availability though the comfort letters issues by US, and the new guidelines issued by the European Commission;
• Finally, we need to increase the use efficiency of our fertilizer through soil nutrition maps.
• We need to avoid that a food access crises also becomes a food availability crises.
Excellences,
Conflicts, slowdowns and downturns because of COVID-19, and the climate crisis are the major drivers of our crises today and tomorrow.
The human, social and economic costs of conflict are always immense, and peace is a precondition for the resilience of national and international agrifood systems.
It is important that all nations join in the dividends of peace and stability, so that we all commit to peace.
Without peace we will not achieve Zero Hunger and the Sustainable Development Goals.
I commend the Indonesian Presidency for the extraordinary effort made in keeping our dialogue open and bringing us together today, despite the forces that tend to pull us apart.
At FAO, we are fully committed to a world free of hunger, through the transformation of agrifood systems to be MORE efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable, to achieve Better Production, Better Nutrition, Better Environment and a Better Life for all, leaving no one behind.
I thank you.
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