The IFPRI-FAO Global Event: Accelerating the end of hunger

28-30 November 2018. Bangkok, Thailand. The IFPRI-FAO Global Event: Accelerating the end of hunger.

How can we accelerate progress in transforming our agri-food systems to meet the needs of the hungry and malnourished and achieve the SDGs?

With rising levels of global hunger putting the goal of ending malnutrition in all its forms by 2030 in serious jeopardy, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) organised a global conference aimed at urgently accelerating efforts to achieve Zero Hunger worldwide.

The conference highlighted how great strides have been made in many countries in reducing hunger and malnutrition, rapidly and sustainably, through improvements in public policies, focused investments and the harnessing of new technologies.

• Bangladesh, for example, has achieved one of the fastest reductions in child underweight and stunting in history, largely by using innovative public policies to improve agriculture and nutrition. Policies supporting agricultural growth helped increase agricultural production, while other policies supported family planning, stronger health services, growing school attendance, greater access to drinking water and sanitation, and women’s empowerment. Together, these policies reinforced each other to create an environment of improved food security and nutrition for millions of Bangladeshis.
• Economic growth in China lifted millions out of both hunger and poverty, while Brazil and
  
  Ethiopia transformed their food systems and diminished the threat of hunger through targeted investments in agricultural research and development (R and D) and social protection programmes. Starting in the mid-1980s and continuing over two decades, crop production in Brazil grew by 77 percent and that -- combined with the country’s Fome Zero programme, established in 2003 to provide beneficiaries a wide range of social services -- saw hunger and undernutrition nearly eradicated in just ten years.
• Similarly, Ethiopia’s large-scale investments in agriculture have led to substantial growth in the production of cereals and the availability of food, while the creation of the Productive Safety Net Programme provides food and/or cash to needy households, which are direct for the most needy and conditional on a work requirement for others. These investments, combined with large public expenditures in health and education, have dramatically reduced hunger and undernutrition, shifting the international image of Ethiopia from victim of frequent famines to development success story.

By convening key figures from the worlds of research, policymaking, and development programme implementation to share knowledge of the policies, interventions, and technologies that have effectively accelerated the elimination of undernutrition, the conference has catalyzed the next era of rapid reductions in hunger and malnutrition.

Extract of the programme

Reports
LAUNCH OF THE GLOBAL NUTRITION REPORT 2018

29 November 2018. The 2018 Global Nutrition Report shares insights into the current state of global nutrition, highlighting the unacceptably high burden of malnutrition in the world.

LAUNCH OF THE REPORT: REDUCING STUNTING TROUGH MULTISECTORAL EFFORTS IN SSA
29 November 2018. The report “All Hands on Deck: Reducing Stunting through Multisectoral Efforts in Sub-Saharan Africa” lays the groundwork for more effective multisectoral action on reducing stunting by analyzing and generating empirical evidence useful for informing the joint targeting and, if necessary, the sequencing of sector-specific interventions in countries in SSA.

‘Future Smart Food’ to Tap Huge Potentials of Neglected and underutilized species

Li, X. and Siddique, K.H.M. 2018. Future Smart Food - Rediscovering hidden treasures of neglected and underutilized species for Zero Hunger in Asia, Bangkok, 242 pp.
Scoping and Prioritizing NUS through an interdisciplinary priority-setting exercise in December 2016, in collaboration with among others FAO, ICARDA, ICRISAT, ACIAR and national governments and research institutes of Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Nepal, Vietman and India,

HOW TO BUILD URBAN FOOD SYSTEMS FOR BETTER DIETS, AND HEALTH IN LOW AND MIDDLE-INCOME COUNTRIES
30 November 2018. This blogpost includes the presentations of the side event and a 4 pages document on the Urban Food Systems research program of IFPRI

Spotlights:

• Spotlight on the Ghana Nutrition Improvement Project Japan-Ghana
• Spotlight on Kennie-O Logistics and August Secret from Nigeria Nigeria
• Spotlight on Greenday snacks Thailand