It has been changed to an ONLINE format. (updated on October 4th).

Today’s food systems, which encompass food production, distribution, and consumption, are highly globalized. They are founded on technological advances that have mitigated famine while feeding the growing world population over the past half-century. However, the food systems’ development and impacts have been uneven across the world, leading to pressing issues such as chronic hunger and malnutrition alongside environmental and climate crises. 

In recent years, globalized food systems have faced a multitude of risks, including pandemics and geopolitical conflicts, which amplify uncertainty over global food security by triggering supply chain disruptions and export restrictions. With international food prices reaching record highs during the first half of 2022, the trade of inputs such as fertilizers and feeds continues to drive cost-push food inflation in many parts of the world. Simultaneously, as global average temperatures are breaking records, extreme weather events such as heat waves, floods, and droughts, as well as outbreaks of plant and animal pests and diseases, are also observed around the world with increasing frequency, adding new risks of supply shocks. 

The lingering effects of soaring fuel, fertilizer, and food prices due to export restrictions on certain goods are reflected in medium- and long-term food supply and demand trends, disproportionally affecting the food security and nutrition of vulnerable social groups in low-income countries that are already struggling to cope with the growing impacts of climate change and environmental degradation. Consequently, the decades-long progress toward eliminating hunger has been diverted from the pre-COVID trend. The exposure of global food systems to cascading risks and subsequent uncertainty is becoming an increasing concern, especially in view of achieving SDG2 by 2030. 

It is urgent for policy makers and researchers around the world to identify solutions to ensure global food security and the investment needed to improve the resilience of food systems. This special seminar welcomes Dr. Máximo Torero, Chief Economist of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), who will share with us his diagnosis of the risks to global food security and the constraints of the current food systems, along with FAO’s portfolios of policy and investment options to address them. Seminar participants will have the opportunity to engage with Dr. Torero in strategic international cooperation discussions and explore priority policy and investment options to enhance global food security and nutrition as well as the resilience of food systems.