FAO Highlights Priority Areas for Boosting Global Agrifood Systems

Gilbert Ekugbe

The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), has identified four key priority areas vital to boosting global agrifood system.

Speaking at the beginning of a three-day Asia-Pacific symposium, aimed at fast-tracking agrifood systems, the FAO’s Director-General, Mr. QU Dongyu, stated the need to focus on outcomes that would yield better production, better nutrition, a better environment, and a better life for all while also ensuring no one is left behind.

Dongyu highlighted that providing immediate support to the vulnerable through social protection systems, “especially in rural areas and among vulnerable groups; boosting agricultural production by ensuring that family farmers have affordable access to seeds and fertilizers, working capital and technical assistance, and links to markets and facilitating trade in agricultural products and inputs to prevent further disruptions to food production and investing in climate-resilient agriculture to address and reverse the effects of the climate crisis are the key areas to transform the failing agrifood systems.” 

The FAO boss, however, warned that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) would not be achievable unless there is a collective will to defeat hunger as a priority in a post-pandemic region.

According to him, rising food prices, floods, drought, water scarcity, increasing climate-related disasters, the global pandemic and conflicts, are driving food insecurity across the region, pointing out that these challenges directly impact the most vulnerable people, including smallholder farmers, others depending on the land for their livelihoods and millions of urban poor.

He pointed out that ongoing crises, including the impacts of COVID-19, the climate crisis, droughts and floods, conflicts and war have disrupted the world’s supply of grains and other essential commodities.