The 2015 Inaugural Food Tank Summit, in partnership with The George Washington University, brought together food thought leaders for two days to discuss some of the most pressing issues in food, agriculture and nutrition. From debates on food waste to addressing workers’ rights in food systems, the sold-out event also featured a panel on agriculture research and policy, where FAO North America’s Senior Liaison Officer, Barbara Ekwall, spoke on the need to fight hunger by “questioning and reviewing the way that society is organized: which means looking at policies and laws, promoting governance and empowerment.”
When the amount of food produced today is enough to feed the global population, yet 805 million still go hungry, part of the problem lies with inadequate or absent policies that provide access to food, markets and land to society’s most vulnerable.
As Jahi Chappell from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy noted, 80% of the reduction in hunger of the last 40 years came as a result of non-production factors, such as an increase in women’s rights and improved access to sanitation and water.
Chappell attributed the success of Brazil’s model initiative that dramatically reduced hunger to its “premise that the problem was access, and not a need for higher production,” something FAO’s Director-General Graziano da Silva has also stated.
If hunger is largely a political problem, Ekwall stressed, we need political action complementing scientific tools to eradicate it: increasing productivity will not do enough to provide access and allow farmers, one of the most food insecure groups, to have a safety net to thrive economically and feed themselves.
Political commitment and investment in research are vital to this process. But as Humanitas Global’s Nabeeha Kazi-Hutchins argued, a focus on research, policies and new technology pays off when it focuses on the receiving communities, and when politicians and researchers address the real needs of people on the ground, including them in the decision-making process to provide the most adequate solutions to their problems.
Click HERE to read interviews with many of the speakers from this panel and to learn more about the Food Tank Summit.