Evénement parallèle au CFS 50 co-organisé par les partenaires de CROPS4HD

On October 12, 2022, IPES-Food, SWISSAID, the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, Alliance Bioversity-CIAT, AFSA, Agroecology Coalition and Biovision jointly organized a side event at the 50th meeting of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS). 160 people from all continents followed the rich speeches and lively discussion in person or online.

The effects of the current price crisis on the world’s food systems are obvious and are particularly devastating for vulnerable populations. This side event demonstrated the importance of a rapid and effective response by states and other actors to help farmers and citizens cope with soaring food and agricultural input prices. Some of the examples show that, with comprehensive interventions, crises can even be exploited to drive the necessary transformation towards more agroecological, resilient and equitable food systems.

With food security under immediate threat, short-term measures are needed to stabilize the current rise in input and production costs for small farmers. However, these measures must be integrated into a plan to transform the food system and incentives to reinforce outdated structures must be avoided. This will minimize the costs of transitioning from current high-input to low-input systems, including putting in place the right policies to achieve this transition to agroecological food systems.

Farmers’ seeds and local, neglected and underutilized species deserve greater attention because of their ability to ensure access to high quality food and nutrition, as well as to provide greater resilience to economic shocks and the climate change crisis.