Food is the one of the main pillars of our life. However, this essential pillar is being tested in this highly challenging time. Covid-19 has reduced incomes, caused economic shock and threatened food systems around the globe.
The impact of the pandemic -- amplified by existing issues including conflicts, economic slowdowns, extreme natural hazards and climate change -- has led to deepening food insecurity, with a rise in acute and chronic hunger and malnutrition.
Last year, between 720 million and 811 million people in the world faced hunger, according to a recent United Nations (UN) report entitled The State of Food Security and Nutrition around the World. Oxfam has estimated that acute hunger and malnutrition kill 11 people every minute.
Asia and the Pacific is home to 4.3 billion people, or 60% of the global population, making it the engine of the global economy. Yet the food system in the region has been exposed as fragile by the pandemic.
"The incidence of malnutrition in this region has remained stubbornly high," said Jong-jin Kim, assistant director-general and regional representative for Asia and the Pacific with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
"Roughly half the world's malnourished population (51%) -- some 350 million people -- live here in the Asia and Pacific region," he said during the online Asia Pacific Regional Food Systems Dialogue, hosted by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (Escap).
"The incidence of malnutrition in this region has remained stubbornly high," says Jong-jin Kim, assistant director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization. SUPPLIED
Approximately 75 million children under 5 years of age are stunted (low height for a child's weight) and more than 31 million are wasted (low weight relative to height). Meanwhile, almost counter-intuitively, childhood obesity is gradually rising, he pointed out.
Asia and Africa account for more than nine out of 10 children with stunting and wasting, while about 20% of children worldwide are overweight, mainly due to unhealthy diets heavy on processed foods.
"The outcome of this pandemic could result in an additional 140 million people forced into extreme poverty and the doubling of the number of people facing acute food insecurity to 265 million," said Mr Kim.
"The multiple burdens of malnutrition in the region are the result of our inability to direct our food systems to provide sufficient nutritious food to citizens."
It will take bold, progressive and inclusive action to reverse current trends, experts say. Otherwise, due to the lasting effects of Covid-19, as many as 660 million people may still face hunger in 2030.
The UN has outlined five action tracks to focus on how food systems can contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. They include ensuring access to safe and nutritious food for all, shifting to sustainable consumption patterns, expanding "nature-positive" production, advancing equitable livelihoods, and building resilience to vulnerabilities, shocks and stress.
It has also identified "levers of change" -- areas of work that are believed to bring wide-ranging positive change including human rights, innovation, finance, gender equality and women's empowerment.
FOUNDATION FOCUS
Farmers are the backbone of the food system in Asia Pacific, which is home to the largest number of smallholders producing most of the world's food.
"Farming is a noble livelihood as farmers produce food, and food is essential to every human being on earth," said Estrella Penunia, secretary-general of the Philippines-based Asian Farmers Association.
"Many who are farming today are farming not because of choice but because there are no other choices," said Ms Penunia, adding that young people are turning away as they see farming as "tedious and unglamorous" work that doesn't offer very good earnings.
Improving the food system and ensuring food security will depend on improving the conditions of millions of small-scale farmers in the region, who have been most at risk during the pandemic.
Game-changing solutions to promote and advance equitable livelihoods start with "ensuring family farmers' rights to basic natural resources; mainly lands, waters, forest and seeds",said Ms Penunia, adding that women farmers must be included as well.
At least a third of farmers are still landless or working as tenants, sharecroppers or seasonal farm labourers. These groups typically enjoy only 30% of the income from the farm, Ms Penunia noted.
"In many countries, community forests are not implemented effectively and still many indigenous people communities and local farming communities do not have rights to lands and forests," she said.
"We need secure rights to lands and forests to incentivise, to make long-term plans for a farming business.
"Who owns and controls these land resources has a definite say in how food will be produced, processed, marketed and consumed."
Secondly, promoting agency among family farmers -- especially cooperatives and similar enterprises -- as well as building capacity to increase their market power will not only create better incomes but increase their social and political power.
Increased transparency about water is needed, between countries facing deficits and those with surplus supplies, says Paul Nicholson, head of Rice Research & Sustainability at Olam. SUPPLIED
This way farmers will be better able to engage with governments and business partners on agriculture-related matters.
The last solution is to incentivise and value various economic services that farmers provide, such as landscape and ecosystem restoration, promotion of biodiversity, and in providing local fresh healthy food.
This can be done by procuring their products as well as ensuring they have access to finance, equipment and facilities, market information and public service infrastructure such as internet connectivity, electricity and water. Local markets also should be addressed to support direct farmer-consumer relationships.
Rice production involves 144 million households globally and 90% of them are in Asia. However, the staple crop has a 90% correlation with poverty, a 65% correlation with malnutrition, uses 30% of the world's irrigation and accounts for a large amount of methane, just below livestock.
At the regional level, if countries want to make the crop more sustainable, they need to start at the source that touches multiple countries: water.
"Water is compounded not just by availability but also quality issues: upstream water quality affecting rice fields or downstream water quality affected by farmers' practices," said Paul Nicholson, head of rice research and sustainability at Olam, the Singapore-based food and agribusiness company.
Water availability should be addressed as a regional effort, in Mr Nicholson's view. Due to climate change, droughts and floods are being seen more frequently. "The variance around weather is becoming problematic", he said, which leads to surplus and deficit countries in terms of water.
Mr Nicholson called for increased transparency about the expected needs of countries facing potential deficits, while surplus production needs to be managed carefully, "such that surplus producers aren't phasing out too much surplus production for deficit countries' needs".
Policymakers in the region are also being encouraged to create alignment in areas ranging from food safety to sustainability definitions, information for consumers, import standards and upstream production systems.
Data analysis is playing an increasingly important role in agriculture, as it helps bring more insights and transparency to the system.
Alignment of data definitions is becoming a must-have as "digital systems require clarity between the definitions of collected data upstream in order to produce the insights that we're looking for in the food systems to enact change", said Mr Nicholson, noting that change cannot happen without incentives to farmers.
UPSCALING THE SYSTEM
"Global experiences show that the process of economic structural transformation across sectors is the necessary precondition for agriculture competitiveness and improved food systems," said Omer Zafar, principal agriculture and natural resources specialist at the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
He noted that an inordinately large number of people are employed in agriculture, "which contributes relatively little to GDP".
In South Asia, agriculture now accounts for 16% of gross domestic product, compared with 24% for industry and 50% for services. In East Asia and the Pacific, agriculture accounts for 8% of GDP, with industry at 38% and services at 54%.
Yet, in South Asia, 42% of employment is still in agriculture. The figure in East Asia and Pacific is 27%, compared to 3% of employment in the agriculture sectors of high-income countries globally.
"This means low labour productivity, insufficient technological advancement and low incomes in agriculture," Mr Zafar noted.
To transform the economy and scale up the food system, policies and incentives are needed to encourage industry and services sectors to absorb more of the labour force from agriculture.
"This will create the space for technological modernisation and competitiveness in agriculture and food systems," Mr Zafar said, noting that it would also result in growing domestic demand for food products and, over time, diversify the availability of more nutritious food products.
To increase agricultural productivity and competitiveness, "We need private money, but the business environment is not conducive to attract private money nor for public-private partnerships", he conceded.
Mr Zafar emphasised that Asian countries need policies and incentives to create a more attractive business environment for private investment.
Lastly, it will require actions across the supply chains -- from farmers to market intermediaries, processors and agribusinesses -- in areas such as knowledge, technology, finance, digitisation and infrastructure.
"Certification or standardisation systems can give consumers the power to make more informed decisions about their food" Salman Hussain Coordinator of the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity, UN Environment Programme SUPPLIED
CONSUMERS ON BOARD
As ecosystems and environments such as water and soil are being depleted and degraded, it could become more and more difficult to produce healthy and safe food in the future if natural capital isn't included in the equation.
The predominant food system has a number of hidden costs to ecological and human health. True cost accounting, a practice that calculates the cost of these externalities in food production, might be the solution to promote a sustainable food system in the future.
Such an approach can help consumers understand the real cost of the food they buy and how food production is affecting the ecosystem.
Certification or standardisation can also give consumers the power to make informed decisions about choices that will be nature-positive and human-positive, said Salman Hussain, a coordinator of the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
Increasing consumer awareness of safe food can play a role in the system as well -- starting with the information on the package.
"Current food labels may seem to possess plenty of information but it is often challenging to read the ingredients and they are often printed in painfully small form," said SM Nazer Hossain, vice-president of the Consumers Association Bangladesh.
"Another big issue with nutrition labels is that no one bothers to read them anymore," Mr Hossain noted, suggesting that a "traffic light" labelling system will enable consumers to understand easily whether the food has high, medium or low amounts of fat, saturated fat, sugar and calories.
"The quantity of food should be increased, and at the same time, the purchasing power of the people should also be improved," he said. "The quality of food is equally important as the quantity of food. Consumers need to be assured about what they consume."
