Gabriel Ferrero, Chairman of the Committee on World Food Security: “the need for a profound transformation of food systems is an emergency”

This engineer, a professor at the Polytechnic University of Valencia on leave of absence, became president of the world institution dedicated to the fight against hunger and malnutrition in 2021. At that time, he had a clear idea: food systems needed to be transformed. A complex task that was expected to take a long time. Now, as his presidency draws to a close, we interviewed him to find that his proposal has become as important as it is urgent.

Question: You are ending your presidency of the Committee: how have these two years with such a complex situation been experienced in the institution?

Answer: It has been very difficult, very turbulent. We are talking about an intergovernmental institution that has had to face, first of all, a world food crisis on a scale that had not been experienced for at least 11 years and that has been exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. And the latter has made the debate extremely complicated because it has been extremely difficult even to discuss. It goes without saying that it has been very difficult to reach the agreements between countries that are necessary to solve a food crisis.

And now, moreover, the situation has worsened with the war in Gaza, which is repeating similar patterns. It is true that, for the moment, the impact is localised in the Gazan population, which is suffering dramatically and terribly. But we are aware that the situation can aggravate the food crisis through other channels of transmission.

In short, it has been a tremendously complicated two years because of the confluence of a food crisis with geopolitical conflicts that have almost paralysed multilateral institutions.

Q: When you took over the chairmanship of this body, your proposal was based on promoting a transformation of food systems. And that is a slow movement. Is it possible to work at two speeds? Is it possible to combine short- and long-term objectives?

A.: Actually, the need to fundamentally transform food systems is already an emergency. It was on our agenda and, far from disappearing, it has become more important, as evidenced by the shock of climate change, the pandemic and the war against Ukraine and the rest of the conflicts around the world. These elements have further revealed that food systems need to accelerate their transformation because the ones we have are not resilient and, in the way they are configured, their capacity to reduce hunger and malnutrition is already coming to an end.

And this response, that of transforming food systems, is not only put forward by the Committee on Food Security, but by the entire UN system. At the summit on food systems held in 2021, even before the war, the UN secretary-general put the promotion of new models at the centre of the debate.

So I would summarise the answer by saying that there is no longer a short term and a long term. We can no longer consider that we have plenty of time to slowly transform food systems while we attend to the urgent. That distinction is no longer valid. It used to be valid, but the crises we are experiencing now are our new normal. That is, the shock of climate change and its almost exponential growth in intensity and frequency plus international tensions are now commonplace, requiring rapid and urgent transformation.

Q.: And how do you address a transition of food systems as a matter of urgency?

A.: First of all, we have to frame the conversation properly and say that this transformation is urgent and we cannot separate action into two phases.

After that, there is a lot to do, but there are three elements that I would highlight. The first, from which we have learned a lot in recent decades, is to increase social protection measures. Measures not only related to income, but also designed to facilitate access to healthy food. Examples such as Ethiopia or Brazil are evidence that, in times of shock, having consolidated and structured social protection systems prevents the increase of hunger and malnutrition.

The second element is the need to support local markets, small and medium-sized agriculture. Firstly, because this is what ensures a local, territorial and regional supply of food; but it also leads to better nutrition, because it offers higher quality food with a smaller environmental footprint. We must remember that there are many countries in the world where more than half of food production depends on producers working up to two hectares of land. And, on a global scale, 70% of the world’s production comes from family farming. So, if we do not support these family farmers or livestock farmers and allow them to suffer the consequences of climate change or the difficulties caused by rising prices for the means of production without help, we run the risk that these people will be forced to leave the countryside. We must therefore offer support to those farming families who may not have the financial muscle to withstand irregular yields caused by climate change.

And the third response must be to move towards a new form of production, incorporating agroecological approaches, regenerative agriculture, organic agriculture and other innovative approaches that have in common the concern for a more efficient use of resources and less damage to the environment. We need climate-smart agriculture, a strategy linked to the environment, soil management, water use, landscape recovery and territory. And this third axis is immediate. And this is where we see more and more clearly that the difference between the short and the long term is blurred, because the objectives converge and everything is equally urgent.

Q.: That’s a complete programme, but what means do we have to move forward so that half of humanity does not die of hunger?

Let’s see. From the outset, it is easy to assume that means would have to be found from the national budgets of the countries. Means that come from their fiscal resources. Unfortunately, after the enormous effort that has been made in the pandemic to vaccinate, to protect and to offer social protection to citizens, we find that fiscal resources are exhausted in many places. In fact, there are about 60 countries in the world under debt stress. How can we solve this? Well, in a context of inflation and high interest rates, the situation is difficult, but we can count on the intervention of international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which already have some windows of financing available to support the most vulnerable countries that are most dependent on importing products at high prices.

Another proposed way forward is that developed countries with more liquidity could offer it, through the Fund, to countries with less available liquidity. These mechanisms are very complex and require the involvement of the world’s finance ministers, but they need to be explored. Development aid is also there, although it is very limited for what is needed. Private sector investment is also extremely important and, at the moment, we have very large international funds that are increasingly interested in making impact investments, but these are the ones that work on a large scale, the big ones in the sector, the investment funds. And, as we said before, what will allow us to change the paradigm will be the protection of farming families who have to make the transition to a more resilient agriculture.

And this is where we have an interesting pocket, in the Green Climate Fund, the financial mechanism created in Glasgow from the COP in 2010 in which 100 billion dollars were pledged to finance climate action. So far, only 3% of these funds have been allocated to food systems when they account for approximately 35% of greenhouse gas emissions. There is a clear mismatch here.

If a higher percentage of climate funds were to be received -up to 35%- and were correctly channelled, these resources could be used to transform small and medium-scale food production. As well as the large scale, by the way, which also needs it. Farming families could be helped through payment for environmental services and financing investment to undertake much-needed actions in certain countries, from levelling soils to selecting varieties in line with climate change, drip irrigation, etc. And, of course, it is essential to improve the conception of the environment and to provide rural youth with a decent livelihood and a future. Because, at the moment, there are subsidies that are basically only going to directly subsidise fertilisers or petrol or diesel.

At the end of the day, whether we look at it from the perspective of producers, ecology, biodiversity, climate or the environment, we should have sufficient funds. If we look at climate resources and we look at the various subsidies, there are more than enough funds to ensure global food security. That’s why I am optimistic, because the World Bank is on it and the FAO is insisting that we have to look at the real cost of the food we eat….

Q.: Your discourse is very close to the territory and to the farming families, but it is carried out from a global institution: how do these proposals become a reality in a small corner of the planet, here in Valencia, for example?

A.: We can already see many examples of what I am saying because the European Union is undoubtedly making an effort to redirect CAP subsidies. It is gradual, slow and meets with resistance fueled by unfounded narratives, but progress is being made. In other parts of the world, it is much more complex to see, but recently, at a meeting of the Global Agroecology Coalition, we saw clear examples in India, which has a large agroecology promotion programme with excellent results. And this is not an anecdote. It is clear that India has a strong state and a strong government. But in states that do not have such consolidated structures, the Committee on World Food Security itself or the FAO are proposing new paths and pushing these proposals forward.

In any case, we have to consider that the Committee is a multilateral institution: what we agree on is approved by governments and everything ends up deriving in a cascade of decisions that link the local with the global. In other words, what is finally happening in Kenya is happening because the Kenyan government has promoted programmes that are working very well and can be replicated in Brazil.

Moreover, the Committee on World Food Security is not just made up of countries. We have the World Bank, the World Trade Organisation, civil society, the private sector, philanthropic foundations, the big milk and seed lobbies… they are all represented on the Committee and participate in the discussions and negotiations. In short, we are talking about a mechanism that works both ways: from the bottom up and from the top down to the grassroots.

Q.: Now that your presidency is coming to an end, it is time to look to the future, where is the work of the Committee heading?

A.: The Committee has adopted its programme of work for the next 4 years. The global guidelines identify women’s empowerment as one of the key elements to advance food security, as well as the use of data, the reduction of inequalities, the resilience of food systems and, of course, the fight against climate change and against the loss of biodiversity from the perspective of the human right to food.

I would sum it up by saying that times are very difficult, but there is an ecological or agro-ecological transition that has already begun and I believe that in a few years we will be able to see it realised. Just as it happened with energy. We are now seeing that Spain has already produced one hundred percent of the energy needed for one day with renewables. Five years ago. that seemed impossible and ten years ago it was science fiction. Well, I think that with food systems we are beginning to enter this dynamic. We are behind schedule and it may take 5 or 10 years, but the changes have already begun and that is important. It is true that there are difficult times ahead because climate change is hitting much sooner than we thought and, unfortunately, wars are increasing and inequalities are not decreasing. But that transition has already begun and, although we may have some more difficult and painful years ahead, I envision a completely different, sustainable food system in 20 years’ time that will allow us to end hunger.

Foto: ETEA Foundation