G20 Foundation Publications Australia 2014 | Page 94
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F O O D , A G R I C U LT U R E & W A T E R
F O O D , A G R I C U LT U R E & W A T E R
Improving food
security and nutrition
governance
José Graziano da Silva, Director-General, U.N. Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO)
We can end hunger
for all. And because
we can end hunger
for all, we must end
hunger for all
Some 60 developing countries
have reduced the proportion of
their populations experiencing
chronic hunger by half or
brought it to under 5 percent,
meeting or exceeding
international goals. Based on
this evidence, there is a growing
consensus that, with better
food security and nutrition
governance and comprehensive
approaches, hunger can be
dramatically reduced – even in
very poor countries. climatic shocks. It ensures the hungry
themselves are heard when programs are
designed and put into motion; it enhances
accountability; and it distributes the
burden of implementation.
Great care must be taken in drawing
lessons from different countries, but
experience shows that three types of
political initiatives have been crucial
to sustain progress on food security
and nutrition. Looking at how different countries
are responding to the food security
challenges they face, three main areas
of action emerge: social protection;
raising productivity and net incomes of
small-scale agricultural producers; and
using special instruments to address
nutritional deficiencies in mothers and
children under five years old.
First, political commitment at the
highest level is the necessary condition
for successful national initiatives to
reduce hunger, food insecurity and
malnutrition. It is needed to make the
issue a government-wide priority and
to address governance bottlenecks
inhibiting progress.
Second, broad social participation is
needed to sustain these efforts, even
in the face of changes of government,
limited budgets and socio-economic and
Third, ending hunger and malnutrition
requires a large-scale, comprehensive
approach, linking macro-economic,
social, health, sanitation, environmental,
agricultural and education policies.
Investing in food security is a small
price to pay for something that not
only is an ethical imperative but also
brings benefits to society as a whole in
the form of healthier, more productive
citizens and by triggering other
development dynamics.
Social protection measures for the poor
are key. When integrated with rural
and agricultural development policies
as well as special nutrition initiatives,
impressive results often follow.
It is important to remember that three
quarters of the world’s very poor live in
rural areas, and many are themselves
producers of food.
Boosting the productivity and incomes of
small-scale farmers, herders and fisher
folk, while promoting diversification and
more sustainable practices, can reduce
rural malnutrition by improving the
availability and quality of food, and by
raising producers’ purchasing power. To do
so requires public and private investments
to increase producers’ access to land,
financing, productive assets and technology,
as well as input and output markets adding
Other nutrition-enhancing interventions
may be required, including judicious
nutrient supplementation and
improvements in sanitation, hygiene,
nutrition education, and access to
health care. To prevent stunting and
other forms of severe undernutrition,
it is necessary to focus on measures to
address nutrition deficiencies afflicting
nutritionally vulnerable households and
particularly the mothers and children
less than five years of age to break the
vicious circle that perpetuates extreme
poverty and hunger across generations.
These types of interventions are most
powerful when used in combination. For
example, school meal programmes can be
designed to procure safe and nutritious
food from smallholder farmer cooperatives.
This, in turn, raises producer incomes while
stimulating the local supply of more diverse,
nutritious and safe foods by small farmers.
Cash and in-kind transfers and other
forms of social protection that raise
incomes and improve diets also
have positive spill-over effects, such
as increasing local wages, and can
enhance small producers’ accumulation
of productive resources, thereby
stimulating production and productivity
increases, both on- and off-farm.
Experiences in Bangladesh, Brazil, China,
Ghana, Thailand and Vietnam, to name
only a few, demonstrate that the most
effective approaches to ending hunger
have included most, if not all, of the
measures listed above. When combined
with appropriate public investments, they
have yielded spectacular results for the
undernourished, and for all of society.
The international community has an
important role to play in enabling and
supporting national efforts – in the
identification and evaluation of policy
options, in the design of effective social
protection, trade policy assessment and
vulnerability and resilience analysis,
as well as in developing measures
to improve agricultural productivity
and sustainability. This seems like a
demanding agenda, but as country
aft