Distinguished Colleagues,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

I would like to welcome you to this special side event on the theme: Aiming for  a Food Secure Future, sponsored by the Rome-based food and agriculture agencies — FAO, IFAD, WFP and Bioversity International.

Let me begin very simply by telling you who we are and why we are here.

The four co-sponsors of this event are jointly committed to ensuring sustainable food and nutrition security for all humankind. In diverse but complementary ways, these four organizations are creatively engaged with the ever-more complex realities of global food production and consumption systems. They have been strengthening their collaboration among themselves and with other partners. This and other events during Rio+20 are a reflection of this collaboration.

Together we advocate not just for high-level attention and debate, but also for global action on food and nutrition security. Food and agriculture are not secondary issues that must await the solution of other headline problems such as climate change, diminishing water resources, and finding clean, renewable sources of energy. The necessity of food is related to each and every one of these challenges. Food is life; food is energy. There will be no sustainable, equitable future on this planet unless we find ways to feed a growing human population while protecting natural resources, biodiversity and the environment. 
  
We often speak of the “Rome-based agencies” as a group because of their common focus on food and nutrition security. However, they each handle different aspects of the challenge, all of which are interrelated and intertwined. Those issues are at the heart of this conference’s focus.

The establishment of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations  inaugurated the relationship of UN agriculture with Rome. FAO is a global source of knowledge  and policy expertise, and a forum for shaping agreements on major food and agriculture issues.

The World Food Programme provides food aid to poor, food insecure and vulnerable people in both emergency and development settings. It reaches around 100 million people – mostly women and children - among the most food insecure communities in over 80 countries every year. 

Bioversity International, a member of the CGIAR Consortium, researches and promotes agricultural biodiversity, which plays a critical role in improving nutrition, strengthening the livelihoods of small farmers and enhancing agricultural sustainability.

My organization, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, is both a specialized agency of the United Nations and an international financial institution focused on helping poor rural people escape poverty. Small farmers provide up to 80% of the food in some regions, but are severely hampered by lack of resources and access to markets.

I am sure you can see how these mandates intersect and complement each other; and increasingly, we are looking at new ways that we can work together to enhance our relevance, our effectiveness and our efficiency.

Hungry people not only cannot see a future, they have no future. Food is the key to sustaining not only life, but also communities and families. Survival, sustainability, security and development are all closely linked.  As a scientist, I can tell you that discussions like the ones we are having today are anything but academic. Changing minds is a vital part of changing lives.

At this moment, the world is urgently in need of new policies and robust partnerships to fight an ever-more complex battle. There are threats on every side: erratic weather patterns and conditions, high and volatile food and energy prices, gross gender inequality, social marginalization and exclusion of vulnerable groups, weak governance and corruption, overexploitation of everything from fisheries to forests, loss of agricultural biodiversity, and increasing competition for land and water. No single entity or approach can deal with all of these challenges.

And there is another challenging ‘resource’ – Time. Time, indeed, is not on our side. Globally, there are still 1.3 billion people living in extreme poverty, and 925 million go hungry every day. Countless others malnourished, vulnerable to hunger and destitution, and food insecure.

This does not mean our efforts have been a total failure; it does mean, however, that we need to do better. It means that effective practices and successful interventions must be identified and vastly scaled up. This is essential if we are to feed a population that will top 9 billion by 2050. Action is urgently needed across all sectors and at all levels—community, country, and globe.  It is in this context that we must see the purpose for our gathering today.

One thing that we will do during the roundtable segment of this event, will be to analyse the food and nutrition security challenge and necessary actions at the community, country and global levels. We will share ideas on both the problems and the solutions and explore the linkages between the different levels. We will focus on measures to increase incomes and access to nutritious food; to strengthen the resilience of people, as well as the production systems they depend on; to enhance sustainable production and consumption; and to reduce food losses and waste, which prevent a huge proportion of food from ever reaching the table. In sub-Saharan Africa alone, post-harvest grain losses are worth an average US$4 billion every year, more than the total value of food aid in the last decade.

In our globalised world, the issue of global governance of food security and nutrition plays an ever more important role. We applaud the reform of the Committee on World Food Security as an inclusive  and evidence-based international platform to support country-led processes and strengthen policy convergence. But we must never forget the role of rural people themselves in policy formulation and work on the ground. We need to make them full partners in any new initiatives. The organizations that represent smallholder family farmers, fishers, herders, landless people, agricultural and food workers, women, youth, consumers and indigenous people, should all play a central role in the Rio+20 negotiations and in post-Rio actions.

We all know that there can be no sustainable development when people have no protection from risks and shocks, when they have no hope to contribute to growth and to benefit from it, or to fully enjoy their human potential. And without fundamental changes in the way we practice agriculture and manage our natural resources, ensuring food and nutrition security for all simply will not happen.  We cannot continue doing the same things we have been doing all these years and expect different results and outcomes.

A new paradigm is needed to transform agriculture and food systems, and ensure that all people have access to nutritious food at all times. We need a new way of thinking that will make possible what has not been possible up to today. Our discussions can be transformative if they undertake the demanding job of knitting together cross-cutting themes, and conceptualizing solutions that are—to use a much-abused term—truly multi-sectoral.

Like all of you, I look forward to the conclusions you reach and above all to your practical recommendations for action. I wish to thank you on behalf of the four Rome-based agencies and I look forward to an exciting day of discussion on these important issues.  

 Rio de Janeiro
19 June 2012