Good Food For All
Flagship Event during Food, Agriculture and Livelihoods Week, Expo 2020 Dubai
On 20 February, during Food, Agriculture and Livelihoods Week at the Expo 2020 Dubai, citizens from across the globe, including farmers, chefs, Indigenous Peoples, youth, food systems experts, scientists and business leaders got together to discuss how we can accelerate change towards achieving the Agenda 2030 and carve a path to a world where good food is a reality for all.
In this article, we want to summarise and reflect on the rich contributions, insights and knowledge speakers and panellists shared, and thereby give those who were not able to attend in person or online, the chance to still reap the benefits of the day’s incredible conversations.
Structured in alignment with the Good Food For All pillars, the Master of Ceremonies for the day – Chef Lorna Maseko – first welcomed Dr Gunhild Stordalen, Founder and Executive Chair of EAT, to set the stage for the event and talk about why good food is all about love. Our day-to-day language connects love and food, Dr Stordalen said. Everyone around the globe appreciates a good meal – which is about taste, smell, and texture.
“Must we not demonstrate our love for the entire amazing web of life that surrounds and upholds us on this planet Earth and from which all our food comes from.”
But food is also, or maybe even especially, as she remarked, about connection and community. About breaking bread together. It is the most important catalyst to connect with each other. And when that happens, love can emerge, can be restored and can be cemented. Love that is translated into meaningful, responsible policy, Dr Stordalen concluded, of that love, we need a lot more.
Having set the tone for this event – that if we fall in love and stay in love with our food and our planet, real magic can happen – participants then took a step back and travelled to where the journey of all our food begins.
Good food begins with farmers. With those men and women on the frontlines of our food systems and climate-crisis who work incredibly hard and often under very difficult circumstances. Coming together from different corners of the world, Elizabeth Nsimadala, Chef Cristina Bowerman, Dr Anika Molesworth and Pramisha Thapaliya – an incredibly powerful all female panel – went on to discuss the integral and crucial role farmers play in our food systems.
Moderator Cherrie Atilano, Founding Farmer and CEO of Agrea stressed that farmers do not constitute the problem, but the solution: if we empower our farmers properly, and give them the right environment to thrive in, we could be solving more than half the world’s problems.
Chef Cristina added that we must move urgently from words to action. In Italy, and through the Chefs’ Manifesto framework, she has been working for decades directly with farmers, connecting chefs to farmers in their local areas, to form a bond from farm to fork. Another crucial actor in our food systems are young people.
Food Systems Advocate Pramisha Thapaliya joined the conversation virtually from Nepal, underscoring the role of youth in driving innovation and technology and the importance of tapping into their potential. She highlighted that we must increase capacity-building and financing, and educate young people, as well as give them a seat at the table on the policy level – locally, nationally and internationally.
Finally, Dr Anika Molesworth, who is an Australian Farmer and Environmental Scientist, shared a message of hope with the audience, describing her own joy and pride of being a farmer. Farmers, she said, are doing an incredible job at adapting to the challenges they are facing, including climate change, but there are limits. Farmers cannot achieve everything alone, they need support from the world.
Closing the segment, Elizabeth Nsimadala told the audience about the new policy consensus with smallholder farmers, which the SDG2 Advocacy Hub and its partners are currently developing.
Good food, it was underscored in the next segment, makes progress possible, especially for our next generation. Wawira Njiru, Founder and Executive Director of Food for Education, shared with the audience how her foundation works on providing over 6 million meals to children in Kenya across 25 schools. In alignment with the International School Meals Coalition and out of the realisation that a hungry child cannot learn, Food for Education on every school day provides a hot, nutritious and affordable meal to 33,000 children, using wristband technology.
As much as good food makes progress possible, it is also vulnerable to disruption. This was the topic of conversation between world-renowned food correspondent and journalist Thin Lei Win and Mageed Yahia, Director of the World Food Programme (WFP) Office in the UAE. Mr Yahia described the impossible choices people face whose lives are turned upside down – often suddenly – by conflict and explained the intricate links between food security and peace. Food security provides and promotes peace and helps diffuse situations of conflict in many parts of the world. Conflict, on the other hand, is one of the main causes for hunger. Mr Yahia called for political will to end conflicts and ensure all people have equal access to food. He also stressed the importance of innovation and adaptation to drive progress. The powerful discussion ended with Mr Yahia calling on all of us to not take food for granted, and to be grateful for it every day.
We then turned to Africa: a continent often talked about through the lens of food insecurity. Social Entrepreneur Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli countered this narrative and shared her strong message of the diversity and richness of food from the African continent. So much of the food we love and enjoy in the world originates in Africa, and African Entrepreneurs in all African countries are demonstrating that this continent is naturally endowed for agricultural excellence. Ms Nwuneli’s organisation’s vision is for Jollof rice to compete with sushi globally, for teff from Ethiopia to be in the running with flour and fonio with quinoa. Everyone around the globe can help to achieve this by asking for and actively seeking out amazing African produce. When thinking of Africa, we all should be thinking equally of the amazing generations growing up there who are well nourished, safe and going on to living meaningful lives.
This shows that good food helps people around the world thrive, powering them, their communities, countries and economies. Moderated by Chef Anahita Dhondy from India, the next panel picked apart the topic of global corporate companies’ responsibility and actions in this equation.
In the discussion, WBCSD’s Diane Holdorf highlighted the importance of last year’s UN Food Systems Summitto mobilise partnerships and action, and called on everyone to help drive this momentum forward. Yannick Foing from DSM drew attention to the tool of food fortification as a game-changing intervention to nutritionally improve the food people eat every day. Because staple foods such as rice, which are consumed by people around the globe, often lack crucial vitamins and micronutrients, food fortification can be used as an efficient and inexpensive tool to change this.
The panel also saw an intervention by Dr Nigel Hughes from Kellogg Company, who shared concrete stories of how his company works with over 400,000 farmers worldwide. Amongst others, Kellogg’s support farmers with learning programmes, promote conservative water use and regenerative farming, support livelihoods and counter food waste by using ‘differently formed’ potatoes to produce the famous Pringles. Wael Ismail, VP Corporate Affairs at PepsiCo added that nothing brings more pride in sustainability than agriculture, and spoke about PepsiCo’s work with farmers.
Regenerative farming is a tool which helps counter climate change and improve food security. Tony Rinaudo from World Vision Australia joined virtually to explain in-depth how this ground-breaking technique works and just how big its potential is. Building on this, the last panel of the day took stock of what had been shared during the event, assessing in detail what is needed to not only achieve but scale impact. Dr Claudia Sadoff from CGIAR, Ertharin Cousin, Founder and CEO of Food Systems for the Future and Enock Chikava from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation engaged in a conversation moderated by Paul Newnham, particularly focusing on the role of research, data, finance and investment in driving action.
“The Sustainable Development Goals will never be achieved if we don’t invest in smallholder farmers, give them a seat at the table and make sure they have an environment that they can thrive in.”
What stood out during the event for Dr Sadoff were the ideas that inspire and lead to solutions. She quoted Ms Atilano’s story of speaking to farmers directly about diversifying and learning new solutions instead of just doing what one already does, maybe a little better. Ms Cousins focused on the financial side of things: one cannot get anything done without money, she highlighted. Every day, we have accelerators and grants coming online to start new businesses with the potential to support the transformation of food systems. However there is no capital for growth and this is called the hidden middle. This space between a start-up and commercial attraction of capital stops opportunity. If we want to see results beyond just small projects in isolation, Ms Cousins stressed, we must solve the problem of the missing middle.
In addition, we must invest for the long haul, Mr Chikava added. We must support and advocate for committed investment and leadership with foresight. And to achieve this, research and innovation are critical tools. Fortunately, he said, we live in a time where we can use data and machine learning to understand what and why something is happening.
There are no silver bullets, the panellists agreed, however what we know to work well is creating partnerships. This is where networks such as CGIAR come in, leading in this case in the areas of agricultural science and innovation for development.
Panellists’ calls to action as the event was drawing to an end were to:
Bring food and agriculture into the climate conversation;
To continue advocating for evidence-based programmes with a vision and long-term commitment;
And to work towards change through partnerships with respect for the fact that food systems are personally and socially important to everyone on this planet.
Outside the event venue, a series of interactive activities and exhibitions awaited guests as they were leaving, set up by the Expo Sustainability team. Honey was showcased which has been grown onsite at the Expo as well as a community garden design board. Guests also had the chance to participate in tastings of delicious diverse, native, and resilient ingredients from the UAE and beyond, provided and prepared by the Emirates Bio Farm, by sustainable coffee roasters from Rwanda, the International Centre for Biosaline Agriculture and by the Alkebulan African Dining Hall.
As words spoken during the event merged with practical actions demonstrated by these amazing food systems advocates, farmers and chefs, guests went away to discover more of the Expo during Food, Agriculture and Livelihoods Week with a true sense of how we can carve a path forward, towards achieving the SDGs, and towards good food for all.
