5th Collaborative Governance Dialogue on Affordability of Healthy Diets

Hello, everyone.
Good afternoon and welcome.
I'd like to ask people to take their seats and we will start this, which is the first dialogue of two this year of the CFS collaborative governance Dialogue series.
This one is on the affordability of healthy diets.
Welcome everyone here in the room in Geneva.
We also have CFS members and participants in Rome at the WFP headquarters and we have many more people online.
Welcome everyone.
My name is Maryam Rahmanan I'm your moderator.
I will just give a few logistical housekeeping details so we're all on the same level before introducing the panelists and doing a quick overview of the agenda.
In terms of housekeeping rules, the meeting is being recorded and the webcast is available.
The interpretation is available in all six UN languages online and in the rooms.
You're welcome to ask questions during the Q&A segments of each of the sessions.
For people joining online, please raise your hand or write your question in the chat and specify to whom your question is addressed.
We ask people online to kindly rename themselves on Zoom, including your name and organization so we know how to introduce you.
To avoid technical issues, we will first hear from people in Geneva, then in Rome, and then online, so we won't mix it up.
It's my great pleasure, first of all, to hand the floor to Professor Anas Arn Russi, the chairperson of the CFS, to present his opening remarks.
Professor.
Thank you, Maria.
Distinguished delegates, colleagues and partners.
Your Excellency, Ambassador Thomas Gerber.
It's my great pleasure to welcome you to this collaborative governance dialogue of the committee on World Food Security.
Let me thank Swiss government, the FA office in Geneva, and colleagues here at the Plais Nation for hosting us today.
I am also pleased to see colleagues have joined us in the WFP auditorium in Rome.
Many thanks to WFP for giving us the opportunity to connect Geneva and Rome for this important discussion.
A warm welcome to all of you attending online.
This is the first meeting under this CFS work stream in 2026.
The second meeting will take place in July in Rome and will focus on the crucial topic of addressing gaps in information and data availability through the multi stakeholder process.
Today's discussion on the affordability of healthy diet addresses one of the most pressing and complex challenges at the heart of our shared mandate, ensuring that all people at all time have success to join to a sufficient food, but to a food that is safe, nutritious and supports a healthy life.
Despite sustained global commitments and some measurable improvement in nutrition outcomes and food security over the past few years, challenges persist according to the 2025 state of food security and the nutrition.
In the Ward report, still 720 million people suffer from hunger and 2.6 billion could not afford a healthy diet in 2024.
This is not due to the lack of food alone, but the deeper structural challenges including raising food prices, resistance in qualities, climate change, or climate shocks, conflicts, and food environments that often make the most nutritious option the least accessible.
The ongoing conflict in the Middle East has further complicated the affordability of healthy diets by disrupting food supply chains, increasing price volatility, and straining household purchasing power, particularly in conflict affected and food imported dependent countries.
Affordability is not merely an economic issue, it reflects how food systems are organized, how policies are formulated, and how effectively we work together across sectors and stakeholders.
As its core, it is a governance and policy challenge and CFS multi year program recording in progress.
In 2024, 2028, the CFS is called to strengthen collaborative governance and coordinated responses to emerging global food crisis.
Our discussion today will bring together diverse perspectives to explore key questions, how to measure the affordability of healthy diets and what policy levers can shift food systems toward making nutritious food more accessible.
We will hear about concrete experience on the ground and finally, we will have an opportunity to discuss how CFS can strengthen its role as an inclusive platform to foster alignment, coordination, and collective action.
Let me conclude by emphasizing that ensuring affordable health diets for all requires more than technical solutions.
It demands political will, long term investment, and above all, collaboration.
No single actor can address this challenge alone.
It is only through inclusive, transparent, and coordinated governance that can drive the transformation needed.
I encourage all of you to engage actively and openly in today's discussion.
Your insight and experience are essential to shape meaningful outcomes that can inform our collective work moving forward.
With that, I would like to give the floor to our excellent moderator Miriam, who has kindly accepted to accompany us in this workstream since last year.
Thank you.
Thank you, Professor.
Thank you for your kind words and thank you for your opening remarks.
As many of you know, the CFS is a platform of dialogue, coordination, and policy coherence among many actors working for food security and nutrition.
Many of those actors are here in Geneva.
This is the first time that the CFS has managed to hold a meeting outside of Rome and in Geneva, so this is a special day.
With that, Your Excellency Thomas Gerber, I'm delighted to give you the floor.
We're delighted to be here in Geneva, in Switzerland.
In your country, you're the ambassador and permanent representative of Switzerland to the UN.
You have the floor.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Excellencies, distinguished colleagues, ladies and gentlemen.
It's a great pleasure to welcome you here in the Palais de Naco in Geneva for this important dialogue this afternoon.
Switzerland warmly welcomes the decision of the committee on World Food Security to convene this collaborative governance dialogue here in Geneva.
Geneva is not only a hub for multilateral diplomacy, but also a center of expertise on global health, trade, humanitarian action, and human rights.
It is indeed particularly fitting to convene this meeting in Geneva, a city that brings together international organizations, researchers, civil society, financial institutions, and member states, of course, working to address challenges related to the affordability of healthy diets.
We see this meeting as a strong signal of the growing importance of strengthening the Rome Geneva nexus.
This collaboration between Rome based agencies and Geneva based institutions, especially the World Health Organization, the World Trade Organization, and the Human Rights system offers important opportunities to better connect food security, nutrition, and the right to food.
To discuss the affordability of healthy diets is both timely and urgent.
Billions of people still cannot afford a healthy diet despite sufficient global food production.
This is not only a question of availability, but fundamentally one of access, equity, and governance.
A healthy diet should not only nourish people, but also respect planetary boundaries, reflecting the CFS concept of healthy diets through sustainable food systems.
However, this alignment between nutrition and sustainability is far from being achieved.
From a Swiss perspective, this calls for a food systems approach that advances agroecology, builds resilience, reduces dependencies, and strengthens market functioning and transparency and ensures policy coherence across sectors from health to trade to environment.
Particularly welcome the focus on collaborative governance.
No single actor can solve this challenge alone.
Progress depends on effective cooperation between governments, international organizations, civil society, the private sector, and research institutions, which is at the heart of the CFS collaborative governance workstream with its emphasis on strengthened policy coordination and coherence across sectors and actors.
Switzerland would also like to stress the central importance of the right to adequate food.
This right is firmly anchored in international human rights law and must guide our collective efforts.
Ensuring that everyone has access to sufficient, safe, nutritious, and affordable food is not only a policy objective, but also a legal and a moral obligation.
In Geneva, as the hub of the international human rights system, we are particularly committed to advancing this rights based approach and to strengthening the link between policy discussions and human rights implementation.
Finally, Switzerland remains strongly committed to the multilateral system as a whole.
We believe that multi stakeholder platforms, such as the CFS are essential to foster dialogue, build consensus, and support coordinated action towards sustainable, resilient, and equitable food systems that provide affordable, healthy diets for all.
I wish you all a fruitful and constructive discussion and look forward to the insights and concrete recommendations that will hopefully emerge from today's dialogue, which will be taken forward in the CFS 54 plenary discussions in October.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Ambassador.
Switzerland has been a strong supporter of the vision of the CFS since the beginning, so I think it's quite appropriate that our first meeting outside would be in Switzerland.
Thank you very much.
Could I now as I'm presenting the overview of the program, could I ask the panelists of the next session to join me onstage so that we can go directly into the next session.
In the meantime, I'm going to do an overview of the program.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Excuse me.
Our next panel is going to be on setting the scene.
We're very fortunate to have the leading experts in the field to set the scene for us in terms of the existing evidence space.
We're going to be talking about questions of definitions, methodologies, data, and the state of art of what we know about healthy diets.
Um, and there will be time after all of the presentations for question and answer, so prepare yourselves.
The next session after that, I'll just quickly go through all the sessions.
The next session after that will be on the main challenges, drivers, and solutions to improve access to affordable and healthy diets, including in fragile settings.
That session, some of you may be familiar now with the format that we have in this dialogue series, that session invites seven, eight participants and members of the CFS each to present their perspectives on the topic, in this case, the affordability of healthy diets.
That um You know, looking at the landscape of the different views that exist among the different CFS stakeholders will set us up for the final session, which is an open floor discussion about the role of the CFS in promoting the affordability of healthy diets.
We have these three main blocks we build up starting with the evidence base.
With that, I am delighted to invite miss Marie Joseph Amio Carlin, who is a member of the high level panel of experts of the CFS to make her presentation.
You have the floor.
Thank you, Marian.
I will speak in French.
Monsieur President Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, delegates, participants, I would like to thank you Chairman, for having invited me today to speak on behalf of the high level panel of experts on food security and nutrition.
Access to healthy and affordable food is not a privilege.
It is a crucial condition of the human right to food in a world that is being shaken by multiple crises.
In the context of a balanced diet, carbohydrates provide about two thirds of all energy and 50% out of 11 of the 20 key nutrients.
However, other necessary nutrients are costly to obtain, especially those that are obtained through fruit and vegetables, animal products, which are also the more perishable foods.
We know that a diet low in nutrients is linked to non transmissible diseases, and it also contributes to malnutrition and stunted growth and obesity.
All of these conditions affect low income communities in particular.
The cost of healthy diet has increased by more than 30% since 2020.
In 2024, 2.6 billion people in the world were unable to afford a healthy diet.
The Eat Lancet diet is now a reference for both human and planetary health.
But the cost of this diet exceeds the international poverty line of $190, that is, and it remains unaffordable for at least 1.6 billion people globally, in particular in Sub Saharan Africa.
Where more than 57.2% of people can't access it and in South Asia, 38.4%.
It represents 89% of the mean per capita household income in low income countries.
The cost and affordability of balanced diet varies greatly from one country to another, but also even within a given country, including in high income countries, where in some regions, one out of every five households is living in a situation of food insecurity.
This is according to Canadian statistics.
Improving healthy diets and access thereto requires broad action both within food systems and beyond because it relates both to the costs of production and the income of consumers.
But in order to ensure in the short term that food is nutritionally adequate and affordable, we need to ensure that nutrient rich foods are accessible at fair prices, and we need to ensure that there is in kind food assistance.
We can boost purchasing power through cash transfers and also ensure free school meals.
It is, however, also necessary to increase investment in the local level so as to boost agricultural productivity of nutrient rich crops, many of which are often neglected.
It's also important to develop storage and processing infrastructure, in particular in order to avoid food loss and nutrient loss.
However, in the long run, ensuring that healthy diets are affordable will depend on employment boosting measures and income generating activities.
It is essential to support that by giving consumers the wherewithal to access healthy food and by guiding their food choices towards obtaining the best nutritional value for money.
Therefore, ensuring the financial affordability of healthy diets for all will require major changes within food systems from production to consumption and even beyond.
The high level of experts considers that access to healthy diets is a crucial issue that would gain from being taken into account by the committee on food security and we have included it on the list of critical, emerging and persistent challenges that the HLPE will present so as to inform the discussions during the next program of work of the committee on food security.
Allow me to remind you that the HLPE seeks to provide an in depth analysis on the basis of effective measures that are already being implemented by certain countries.
Our approach is an inclusive one, one that is based on evidence and that allows for collective action in order to transform food systems in order to promote human rights, guarantee food security, and quality nutrition for all, and to ensure sustainable development.
I thank you for your attention.
Thank you very much, Marie Joseph and all of the HLPE team for this excellent overview of the complexity of the topic that we're getting into today.
And also for the reminder that this topic will be in the HLPE critical and emerging issues.
So this is also a another avenue for the CFS to continue discussing on this very important topic.
It's now my pleasure to invite doctor Luce Regil who's the Director of Nutrition and Food Safety at the WHO to present her words.
I'd also like to appreciate the collaboration of the WHO in hosting us here.
Thank you very much to all of you for co hosting this event with us.
Thank you.
Thank you very much and a big thank you to the Secretariat for bringing CFS to Geneva.
Be assured that from our perspective, we will be very supportive of having more meetings and convened the Geneva community to actually have a more active participation.
We see CFS as a critical body for advancing food policy and making sure that health, of course, is never forgotten in that dialogue.
I have a couple of slides that in many ways will reiterate what the previous panelist just mentioned.
Next, please.
Is it passes it? Okay.
In many ways, just reiterate the numbers.
These are data from the State of Food Insecurity report that the UN agencies put together every year.
What we are seeing is that after COVID in 2020, we have stopped and we have seen worsening situation in terms of hunger, in terms of undernutrition and food insecurity, and it hasn't changed.
If we think back We can think about the pandemic, wars, conflict, and multiple situations that are affecting prices of food.
So while we have entered in some ways into a resilience phase, that we are not at the stage yet where we have actually been able to do something about it.
We are mitigating some of the impacts that we are seeing.
As it was indicated, most of the 2.6 billion people could not afford a healthy diet in 2024 and that happens across different income levels in countries, but it's clearly more notorious in low and middle income countries and low income countries.
Next slide, please.
In parallel, what we are seeing at the level of nutrition indicators is that stunting is still highly prevalent, anemia is still highly prevalent affecting one out of three women in the world with a slight increase even in the prevalence of anemia.
We see at the right side of your graph that the prevalence of obesity in adults is increasing as well with a very clear trend towards the rise of obesity.
What we are facing is a paradox in many ways.
We cannot afford healthy diets, and that is leading to undernutrition on the one side and to overweight and obesity, but we know that is also micronutrient deficiencies, which is a triple burden of malnutrition.
Next slide please and one of the options or possible explanations about this is that we see that per calorie affordability of nutrient dense foods the nutrient dense foods per calorie have consistently higher prices than the ones that we know, for example, currently known as ultra processed foods.
On the left side you have the blue bar, unprocessed or minimal processed foods and on the green boxes are the ultra processed foods currently known as ultra processed foods.
You see that the price per calorie is consistently different and that happens in all countries.
That was a graph included in the recent SOFI report.
So that's one of the explanations that we can think about to explain the triple burden of malnutrition.
And certainly the topic that we are discussing today, why healthier food are more expensive and why less healthy food are cheaper.
Next, please.
There are multiple drivers, but in terms of policy goals, we really need to be intentional about repurposing policies for healthy diets.
On the one inside, we have to work on the supply and the demand.
On the one side, we need to reduce the prices of healthy diets, but also reduce exposure and availability of unhealthy foods.
On the other side, we need to increase the demand and consumption of healthier foods because it's not only that they are more affordable, but actually are demanded and consumed.
Also in parallel, we need to increase the prices or a The marketing, we need to increase the prices or increase the banning of marketing of all healthier foods.
Just working on the affordability is not going to work.
We really need to limit the availability and affordability or less healthier food.
Otherwise, we are not going to achieve our purpose in terms of public health.
Next slide please.
This is an adaptation of the panel and of the high level panel of Nutrition and Food Security and basically talks about multiple entry points.
It's difficult to see in the screen, but we need to work across the agri food system to be able to food system, to be able to actually achieve impact.
We need to work on price incentives, incentives or policy support, and we need to work on the production side and also on the food environment, where is where people access the food.
I'm very glad that my colleague from FAO is here, Lynette because certainly we need to work in a complimentary in the repurposing of agricultural policies and also in a very complementary way in the way that we implement policies to make sure that food environments are healthier.
Next slide.
From the WHO perspective, we have generated consistent guidance and evidence in on best buys to reduce the exposure of unhealthy foods in the food environment and also to increase to ensure that there are healthier diets.
We have released guidance on reformulation policies to ensure that they have less content of sodium trans fat, for example, we have policies we are soon going to launch a guideline on food labeling that includes for the first time a recommendation in front of a package labeling as a mechanism to inform consumers on the potential a nutritional content of the foods and potentially harmful content of certain nutrients or ingredients.
We have worked on public food procurement as a critical intervention to ensure that the purchasing power of governments, but also of civil society and private sector is used to procure healthier foods.
We have worked on policies to protect children from the harmful marketing of foods and of course, guidance on consumption of different nutrients like sugars, trans fats, et saturated fats.
With that, what we want to have and we have achieved, I believe so, is a solid body of evidence to make sure that there is consistent implementation of policies to reduce exposure to unhealthier foods, but also to use the right incentives, particularly fiscal policies to make sure that healthier food is available to populations.
With that, I stop, Madam Chair.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, doctor Loose.
Thank you for putting the spotlight also on unhealthy foods because there's two sides to this coin and also for highlighting the importance of WHO and FAO working together.
With that, I'm delighted to introduce the first of two FAO speakers.
Mr.
David LaBorde is the director of the Agri Food Economics and Policy Division of FAO.
David, you have the floor.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Yes, I'm David Labot from FAO.
I have the pleasure also with our statistic division to co lead the publication of the SOFI report on which you have already seen some elements.
I'm going to talk a bit more on details on our approach regarding the affordability, but in particular, the cost of AI diets, knowing that this year in SI, the second part of the SOFI that is the thematic part will be dedicated to understanding the cost of L diets and the differences.
You are going to have a snapshot about what is coming.
Next slide, please.
I'm not sure who's controlling them.
This is a big picture that you can already see in last year SOFI where globally, we say that 30%, a bit more of the population cannot afford health diet.
It's 2.6 billion people.
It's a lot, but you have to keep in mind that when we bring these numbers, it follows a specific methodology.
On one end, you have to combine how you estimate the cost of health diet.
So here we have basically a bundle of goods, basically different food groups that will represent the diet.
It's not a nutrition recommendation, it's just a pragmatic way to say, okay, we need this amount of gram of fruits, this amount of grams of staples, and we are going to look at the prices in the different countries.
For this, we also need to use prices that are available and can contribute to an international comparison.
Here we rely on the International price comparison Program of the World Bank.
Is basically a source of information that is updated every three to four years and we'll make sure that we can compare the basket of goods consumed by people across country and it is a metric also that is used to correct, for example, GDP income from what is called the PPP, the purchasing power parity.
It's a well known dataset that is already used and built on existing statistical system, but of course has some limitations including about which products are looked at.
Based on this information, we say, now, what will be the two items in this bundle of goods.
What are the two fruits that are less expensive in a country and that can help to get this amount of fruits.
Same thing for animal source foods, same thing for staples.
That will give us the cost of healthy diets in a country.
Then you compare it to your income distribution.
You have to make also another assumption is it how much people should or could spend on food.
And this is the type of assumption that are behind these numbers.
Today I'm going to focus on the cost part because providing more income to people, it's about poverty reduction.
It's about social safety net.
It's about very important policies, but sometimes are less directly linked to what we can do purely in agri food system.
I mean, agri food system contribute to poverty reduction, but we know that agri food system is not the main macroeconomic drivers in many economies.
So let's focus on the cost.
Next slide, please.
And why we focus on it, as I've said, it's because it helped to make sure that we are in a policy space that is relevant for our agencies.
We also have to think that the cost is a necessary but not sufficient condition.
If things are too expensive, you are not going to buy it.
But it's not because you can buy it that you will buy it.
My colleague Lynette, we will discuss this.
It's not reducing the cost should not be seen as mission accomplished.
But clearly it's going to be an important point in the process.
Now we have to think of also the political economy.
We are still in an inflationary context.
Policymakers and voters care about how much they spend in the grocery shop, including on food because let's keep in mind that food is something that you buy every day.
You don't buy a house every day, you don't buy a computer every day, the perception of prices for this daily purchase is very important.
So in the report, you will see why we have these differences, what can drive these difference of prices around the world? Is it lack of productivity? Is it linked to trade openness? Is it actually the cost of producing food in terms of cost of energy, the cost of moving food, and what we are going to see today.
We don't have so much time, but especially in the report, you will see that the situation really varies from one region to another, and it's not like there is one reason why you pay more for your fruits in this part of the world versus another.
Then it means that we will need targeted intervention, but in many cases, it's not just one intervention.
Starting to increase productivity of food in the table is going to be great.
But if your transportation system is very bad, you may just end up creating more food loss and not helping your consumers.
Next slide, please.
So I already gave you a pointer about the methodology we use.
I just want to reiterate, you know that we have this normative definition about what are the different food groups that would be in a healthy diets, and then we look at what are the items that can bring it at a lower cost.
It's a benchmark.
I want to be clear also that it's not a dietary recommendation.
It's assumption to compute a statistical indicator that help to compare the price of healthy diets from one region to another.
It doesn't talk about food preferences.
Some of these cheap food items may not be the thing that people want to consume.
Of course, we have also some countries where there is a lot of self consumption.
The price you see on the market may not be the most relevant one for some consumers.
Next slide, please.
What you see is this.
Basically, this cost of health diets varies significantly from one region to another.
When you look at a graph like that, Each bar is for one region, and you see the white line that we show the average in the region and you see the dispersion across region.
The first thing that you can notice is actually you can be in high income countries and have a lower cost of healthy diets than in poorer country.
There's not a direct link between your GDP or your level of development and the cost.
Why? Because you can be rich and be very efficient, so costs are low, and you can be poor, potentially be less efficient, but also a very low labor cost or actually benefit from a climate that helped to push down some of the prices you want to do.
So just to say there is diversity across region and within region.
Next slide, please.
David.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Just to say here that when you start to see why you have these differences, you can see that different food group when actually we want the same quantity are going to represent different share.
In your total cost.
If you are in Africa, it's because animal source food are quite expensive.
Milk, meat, fish are more expensive in Africa than in Europe, and it's due to the development of this value chain.
Add the opposite, and it can be surprising, but vegetables or pulses are much more expensive in Latin America.
You see behind these different overall cost of healthy diets, why they are more expensive.
First, you have to see which food group is more expensive in which region, and then what type of intervention can really target these elements.
Thank you.
Just to say the full report will be released on the 14th of July in New York, and I hope you will all attend virtually or physically.
Of course.
Thank you very much and apologies for cutting you off.
It's always difficult being given such a short amount of time when you have so much to say, so apologies to other people that I've had to remind.
Last but not least, the director of the nutrition Division of FAO, doctor Lynette Newfield, to give a nutrition perspective from an agricultural organization.
Thank you.
Thank you, and thank you for the opportunity to speak briefly today.
While we're waiting for the slides to come up, I think just to take one moment, we've talked a lot about a healthy diet and the variety of the basket that's needed to estimate the cost of a healthy diet around the world.
But what a healthy diet is is universal.
A healthy diet is adequate in nutrients, it's diverse in foods and food groups, it's moderate in the consumption of unhealthy foods, as was discussed already, and it's balanced in the consumption of energy and the sources of energy.
Those four principles, and of course, safe foods are what make up a healthy diet.
But what that healthy diet looks like in context is variable.
Do we have slides? Can they be pulled up, please? Okay.
There we go.
Perfect.
The next slide, please.
I'll leave this here just for one moment if you'd like to download that QR code, but then we'll have to move on.
Otherwise, maybe we can put that up later.
Next slide, please.
So achieving healthy diets requires that we move beyond thinking only about affordability into what drives food choice.
Food choice is a very complex set of human actions, behaviors, and decisions that happen in a context.
It matters what people choose, where they choose it, when they consume it, how they consume it, and by whom within a household and with whom All of those factors contribute to whether a diet will be healthy.
Improving availability, affordability is clearly a necessary condition to achieve healthy diets, but it's an insufficient condition to do so.
While the latitude for food choice varies by context, obviously in a very resource constrained area with limited markets, the options and the choices are different.
Food choice still happens.
People still make food related decisions and food related choices that can drive them in the direction of healthier or unhealthier in the way that they acquire, prepare, share within their households, and consume foods.
These choices serve as the critical bridge to what the food system provides and the achievement of healthy diets, beyond, obviously this aspect of affordability.
The next slide, please.
I know you cannot read this and particularly with the small screen, but I wanted to show up this to you and with this, introduce the next big high level report that will be coming out from FAO this fall.
Following on from the report on a SOFI, which will focus on the affordability of healthy diets.
In the fall, we will be launching a report on healthy diets that will cover current state of consumptions, a lot of information related to terminology, controversies and consensus and many other factors.
But fundamentally, the core of this report will be the demand side constraints to healthy diet, those food related decisions and practices and how we can influence those and the supply side and the opportunities for changing that supply, picking up on where we leave off with affordability.
On the supply side, this is a figure that you will see the background paper that we'll be going into this.
What you can see is that there are a number of individual factors.
People have a taste acuity, they preferences.
Other biological factors that drive your decisions.
But those individual biological factors are embedded within immediate immediate environment, the family, the household, the context in which you share and consume food, which is embedded within a much broader environment of the food system, of the economic system, of the commercial determinants, and all of those other structures that can influence both the availability as well as the choice.
Fundamentally, achieving healthy diets requires that foods are available and affordable, but it required that the nutritious safe foods are available and affordable.
But it also requires that consumers and decision makers within households and as individuals have the knowledge, have the motivation, have the opportunity, and the agency to make those choices that will result in healthier diets for themselves and for their families.
The next slide, please.
This is my final announcement to end.
For those of you who are around, the week of the 25th to 28th is Rome Nutrition Week.
There are many interesting events, and you can find the agenda at this QR code.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Lynette.
Thank you to all the speakers.
Please stay with us a moment while we take some questions.
I thought it was really interesting how each of the speakers really focused on a different main aspect of this complex problem.
I think that was really a nice way to introduce the complexity of the issue from its structural causes, from the affordability of unhealthy diets from the regional variations.
Um, we have about 10 minutes.
What I would like to do is maybe take, as I said, one question here in the room in Geneva, one question in the room in Rome, one online, then we'll get the answers.
Please tell who your question is focused to.
Then if we have time, we'll do some other questions.
Let's do it like that.
By the way, in the introduction, I forgot to really thank the CFS Secretariat for making this possible.
I'll just take this small opportunity now, doctor Fatia Ti and her whole team who are here working hard behind the scenes, thank you very much for making this possible.
It's been complex to move out of Rome.
I see in the back of the room there one lady with her hand up.
Thank you.
I mind of the one goal initiative for governance.
Toxicology, micronutrients, and also affordability relative to what other things that also need to be affordable.
We're also talking about affordability of energy and other things.
The nutrition that is needed can be also personal, individual, different and also depending on what job you do or things like that.
What are the considerations.
Thank you.
Could you once again state which organization you're from? I didn't catch it.
I have mine of the One Goal Initiative for governance.
I guess I'll take any answer from anybody.
Thank you.
Then I'll turn to the panel.
So Rome, one of my colleagues is going to help me identify a question in Rome.
We have the Secretary of the CFS.
She's checking out.
We don't have any request for the floor, so maybe we come back to Geneva and there are some question online, I think.
Okay.
Thank you very much, CFS secretary.
Maybe we'll take an online question if you have one ready, and then for the third question, we'll come back to Geneva if there are any other questions.
Sure.
Thank you very much.
This is a question from Save the Children and it is addressed to our colleagues from FAO.
How is FAO thinking about complementing the cost of healthy diet with household level methodologies, including cost of the diet, fill the nutrient gap, minimum expenditure basket that capture demographic composition, seasonality, and the elevated nutrient density required for diet of young children and women in the first 10,000 days? Is their appetite for a harmonized framework that treat these as methodological family rather than competing tools? Okay.
As you start thinking about your answer, let's take another question from the room here.
I'm going to give it because yes, you're also a speaker, so I'm going to give the opportunity to someone else.
Could you please introduce yourself? Thank you, Edward Boyle from the scaling up Nutrition movement Secretariat.
My question is for David and Lynette.
For the Sophie report and looking at the numbers on affordability of healthy diets, I'm just wondering in terms of the desegregation this year, this is also a bridge to the next section.
If there will be any analysis on links between affordability and other themes like fragility.
Because we know from among the 67 scaling up nutrition countries, the countries where the population who cannot afford a healthy diet is highest tend to be countries in fragility.
I believe there's 12 countries, all of them are in the African continent.
But I'm just wondering what the data is telling us and if there's any indication about how that's evolving over time as well.
Thanks.
Great.
Thank you very much for that question.
I think I'll just start at this end, Lynette, if you don't mind and we'll just work our way up.
Sure.
Thanks.
Let me take the first one.
You're absolutely right.
Individuals have very different nutrient requirements based on your sex, your physiology, your activity, your biological aspects.
When we talk about a healthy diet, when you talk about adequacy, absolutely addresses that.
You also talked about the interest in the nutrient values of food or the functionality of food that go beyond nutrients.
When we talk about the principle of diversity, that addresses that.
Diversity is important because it helps us achieve what we need by way of nutrients.
It also helps ensure that we are consuming all of those other food components that we call bioactive components that somehow support life and the functions within the body.
That is embedded within the definition of a healthy diet.
The way the affordability is addressed is for an average and I will let maybe David can pick that up again because it is never intended to represent any one individual.
It is for the purpose of global monitoring only.
Other dietary guidelines in countries and different level of depth of analysis is required to actually consider the needs of individuals, and that's not the purpose of affordability assessments.
Maybe I can just say one word about the comment related to the other household level metrics.
Each of those metrics is designed with a very specific purpose to meet a very specific need.
They're not competitive, they're different.
And I think we are never saying that this one is better than the other.
They serve different purposes and they should be used aligned with what they were designed to be used for because they are fit to that purpose.
It's not a competition, it's a complementarity.
Thanks.
Thank you very much very clear answers.
Doctor De Regin okay.
Can I pass the floor to actually maybe we'll go with you if you have something to say, Marie Jose you just turn on your Indeed, nutritional needs are very different.
Depending on age and also they're related to the physiological conditions as Lynette just said, and also depending on this physiological state, especially if we look at pregnant women, they're very specific needs, food guides in order to ensure healthy nutrition.
They target the general population, but we also have specific guides targeting specific groups of the populations, those who suffer from diabetes, women, for example, pregnant women.
This is something that is very important.
But what is complicated, there's also a genetic effect.
But we cannot take that into account because no one reacts in the same way depending on their genetic um composition.
If we look at certain groups of population, for example, in Africa, we can correct genetic problem, for example, an addiction to sugar, and that can be done from a very early age.
We have confirmed examples for that.
Now thanks for all the question and some commonality here.
I think Lyneta already pointed to the fact that each indicator has a purpose and also a cost.
Okay.
So it's not like we can measure everything everywhere, and so we have to be strategic.
In the context of the SOFI that is a global report, we want to make sure we have indicator that can inform the policy debate across countries, and so we need a methodology that can be deployed at scale.
And that's why here we are talking about this cost of healthy diet and affordability with a representative diets for which we can have prices at the country level and now we try also to get more within country information, but it's not designed to say, what is the cost for you if you are 25-years-old, living in the Lagos and you are pregnant.
That's not the level of detail we can get.
That's not the level also of what people reading the SOFI wants.
We have this global good already providing a lot of information.
Now, these other indicators need additional data, so that's where also we have to bring them in a fragile context or in a specific location.
I think we have to understand there's a complementarity, but also deploying some of these for 190 40 members.
It's not going to be possible, knowing that we already have challenges to get the basic information to compute these indicators.
For instance, the scope of products for which we have prices may not always include the most healthier option because if people are not really consuming them, the central bank or the statistical Institute is not even going to monitor them.
Then just to say on the affordability issue, that's where we focus more on the cost actually in terms of guiding policy action because affordability depends on many things.
Yes, you have an energy price shock.
That is going to change if household have enough money to pay for other things.
But that should not start to change the policy you should do in the diet space.
That's where the link with cost and once again, cost is just one element of a more complex picture.
Thank you very much, David.
We are running short of time, but there's so many interesting questions online that we're going to take another one or two and hope to wrap up quickly.
Fatah, could you kindly share the questions? We have a question from one member of the HLPE doctor Amadi.
According to what mentioned by respective speakers, why is healthy diet still unaffordable for so many people while ultra processed food remains the cheapest option.
Maybe I would pass that question to doctor Luis.
Thank you.
I think there are multiple factors and not all of them completely unpacked.
One of them is the pricing policies in many cases, another important aspect.
Of course, as a conflict is happening in different places that increases the cost of some of the foods that are depending on that supply chain.
A there is a cost of a scale as well.
When products are produced in mass with very cheap ingredients, that also reduces the cost.
For example, of those formulations that are, as I said, currently known as ultra processed.
There is also another issue that is a lot of the incentives in the agricultural system are also a to produce foods or ingredients that eventually may be used in foods that are highly processed or ultra processed.
So when we think about why is it more expensive or less expensive, honestly, it's a complex question and I don't think that we can have an easy answer to that complex question.
However, what is clear is that we need to look at from incentives in the production to incentives in the consumption because also a a lot of spending, for example, in these products is in marketing and fiscal policies need to be at the agricultural level.
We talked about in our case about the health taxes, but it really needs to fiscal policies on the agricultural side, incentives and local production, for example, that needs to be incentivized and several countries are doing that, but also with capacity.
It's not only a the production itself.
Again, I hope that we can actually elaborate more than that answer, but Sofie more and more is talking about those issues.
I think that if I can say that in the last five years, I see that Sofie is not only reporting the nutrition or hunger indicators, but really trying to have a deep dive on understanding why prices are changing, what type of policies can be done.
I'm thinking about the 2022 report actually has a deep dive in report post in agricultural policies, for example.
Yeah, that's a long answer for a complex question.
It's definitely difficult to answer complex questions, but it's very important to identify the right questions in a discussion.
That's really great.
We'll have maybe just one last question online and then we'll move to the next panel.
This is a question coming from the Civil Society Indigenous People Mechanism.
When you say healthy diet, are you considering the model of production, agroecological, organic, a agrochemical or this is something that you don't consider important? Could I ask Lynette, maybe to answer that one? That's another complex question.
When we talk about healthy diets, that definition that we developed jointly with WHO in 2024, it is based on human biology.
It's based on evidence.
It is not about production systems, except to the extent that it does include that food must be safe for diets to be healthy.
In that sense, it does.
Question of whether organic production, organic production systems are fundamental for the environment, whether they actually result in foods that are higher nutrient content is a whole other discussion.
The evidence is not strong that they result in higher nutrient content of those foods, that they may be safer because they do not have chemical ingredients, that it's constructive for the environment, but from a truly human biology, and this is where it's fundamental that our food is produced sustainably, But producing sustainably doesn't necessarily make it healthier for humans.
We need to have a clear line between what defines human health and what defines sustainability, and then bring those two together.
They come together in what we put on our plates and how we produce what gets on our plates rather than those four principles which are defined by our biology and the evidence that underpins the outcomes of health and well being.
Thanks.
Thank you very much, Lynette.
It's very clear.
With that, I'd like to maybe ask a round of applause for this panel.
Thank you all for your contributions.
Opening the field of debate for us.
I'd like to ask members of the next panel who are here present in Geneva to come and take the floor or to come and sit at the podium.
And this next section, as I was saying, is a section where several members, country representatives, members of the CFS, but also participants in the CFS, including from the private sector mechanism and the Civil Society and Indigenous people's mechanism will give us their perspectives on this issue.
With that, we will, um sort of where we started with the evidence based, what does the science say? Now we're looking to see what are the country experiences? What are the different stakeholders views on these issues? Do we have a Okay.
Let me introduce our first speaker and we'll just introduce each speaker one by one.
You see them there on the screen.
Miss Stat is a counselor of the permanent mission of the Arab Republic of Egypt to the United Nations Office and other international organizations in Geneva.
She will be speaking about Egypt's efforts in terms of the affordability of healthy diets, especially in light of Egypt's national strategy for food and nutrition.
Thank you very much for joining us.
You have the floor.
So good evening everyone.
First of all, I would like to thank CFS for convening this session and coordinating this dialogue on such a very vital topic, affordability of healthy diets, a topic that has been overlooked and it's newly introduced to many of us.
It's not only about food accessibility, it's the quality of food as well.
But if you want to tackle healthy diets or improved nutrition, we need to have a comprehensive overlook on the global landscape when it comes to food security.
Because healthy diet is one component of food accessibility and food security.
We need first to step back and have a look on the situation that we all face nowadays, especially the most vulnerable countries, as Egypt as a net food importing developing country, we face huge challenges nowadays.
So We all know that food is not a privilege, as one of the previous panelists said, it's a fundamental human rights.
But at the same time, food security is very vulnerable to external and internal factors.
In such an over interconnected world nowadays, food security and food accessibility and subsequently healthy diets are very vulnerable to many factors starting from climate change, inflation of food prices, geopolitical tensions and disruption in the supply chain.
They all affect even countries ability to have sufficient amount of food for their population.
If you want to tackle healthy diets, we need first to tackle the situation about food accessibility and how it has been affected by every and each challenge in our globe nowadays.
And unfortunately, we are four years away from 2030 deadline for sustainable development and SDG two is far from being reached.
So we are talking about 720 million people suffered from hunger in 2024, 2.6 billion people that can't afford healthy diets.
So yeah, we need when we talk about healthy diets to put all of these not conditionalities but facts and the context to be able to really tackle the situation from different angles.
And coming from the African continent, I would say that the situation in Africa is more profound, even though that the continent is producing a huge amount of food, but at the same time, they suffer the most from food insecurity and even the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity in Africa is more than the double of the global average.
It's reaching 58% and the global average is about 28%.
One in every five persons in Africa face hunger.
So we need to tackle food security in line with healthy diet at the same time.
But it's really important to introduce this new topic about improved nutrition.
It's not only about accessibility, it's improves the nutrition and trying to improve the affordability of it as well.
And when it comes to Egypt, as I said before, like as a net for developing important countries, our population is exceeding 100 million person, facing water scarcity and at the same time, we are hosting nowadays around 10 million people foreign people from refugees migrant asylum seekers.
So this addition pressure on us when it comes to food security and healthy diet subsequently.
But food security remains one of the top priorities of our government policies in general and food systems improved nutrition becomes like core values for the human development, the capital of human development.
We are really aware of that.
Improving nutrition is linking to improving productivity, preventing non communicable diseases.
That's why Egypt in cooperation with WHO and many other UN entities, They developed the national strategy on food and nutrition 2023, 2050, and as well as the plan for its implementation.
This plan was just adopted in 2025.
This the main goal of this plan is achieving access to healthy, safe, affordable diets through sustainable food systems.
Its strategy has been implemented through multi sectoral operational plan for food nutrition from 2025, as I said, until 2030, a plan that integrates health, agriculture, education, social protection to improve nutrition, food security, and sustainable diets.
So this was one of our main goals to implement each and every aspect of this plan, and as well to try as much as possible, as I said, to place food system, food security, and nutrition at the very core of the human capital development agenda in Egypt.
So this is like a very brief situation about what's happening in Egypt.
We have many other initiatives, but I would like to give the floor to other panelists as well to brief us on their experiences.
Thank you so much.
Thank you very much for giving us a window into Egypt.
I would like to now pass the floor to doctor Marcial, who is the regional program coordinator for Food Security and Nutrition of the Permanent Interstate Committee for drought Control in the Sahel, and you will be speaking about integrating food affordability into the ad harmonise.
Marcel, you have the floor.
Mr.
B, thank you very much for this opportunity you've given me to provide an overview of the situation in terms of affordability in the harmonized framework.
Next slide, please.
In the framework, next slide.
Okay.
Right.
In the Homes framework in the Salm West Africa, what we see is that this year we've got around 52 million people who need food assistance, and that's above all, in the peak period of drought in N ne July, August, and we've got around 16 million children suffering from severe acute malnutrition across the board.
Of those 16 million children which are being addressed by the 2025, 2026 campaign, The highest rates are being seen in the Sahel, particularly in Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Chad, Nigeria, and Mauritania.
In those countries, we have some zones which are reaching more than 15% of the acute malnutrition and the principal factors here are problems connected to insecurity in that area.
And we have climate factors, agricultural factors, and we have specific drops in certain areas.
There's also issues connected to the increased cost of food purchasing as well as political instability and issues connected to governments in the region, which means that it's very hard to roll out regional programs because we're seeing a lot of challenges in that area.
Given that situation, We have some shared tools in the Harmonized framework to analyze food and nutrition insecurity in the region.
That's the equivalent of the OPC at a global level.
We've been able to carry out fantastic work with the food nutrition group to set up and identify the issue of new indicators to allow us to tackle the problem of malnutrition and that's why we've introduced a pilot phase to carry out research on affordability and costs of diet issues, allowing us to come up with two flagship indicators.
This relates to food security and we're taking into account the cost of diets, taking into account contributory factors and also the problems related to non affordability.
In healthy diets with some key indicators there.
This has allowed us to work with the WFP next slide.
We have next slide.
Next slide.
We've worked with a number of countries, six countries, four in the Sahel, two coastal countries to collect data on the markets and be able to carry out tests in order to assess rather affordability in the harmonized framework.
That was with regards to 2022, historical data and we have an analysis from March and October.
Next slide, please.
We've also collected data from more than 240 markets with the harmonized national market system and that analysis has been done also.
At regional level and country level.
We've collected 5-10 markets we're collecting data from those.
The idea is to collect data on at least 25 products for all food groups.
You can see that presented here and this is done in three periods.
There's the post harvest period in January and then there's the peak of the shortfall period across the middle of the year and then the October period, which corresponds to the harvest period.
Our colleagues have spoken about this, but we've also looked at the typical demography for households in terms of numbers and structures within the household.
In terms of the number of adults in the household, the number of breastfeeding women or women of childbearing age, and the number of children under the age of five because nutritional needs are different.
That's a function of each demographic group and that allows us to have a long term average of 5-8 people in each household, allowing us to come up with these calculations.
We've also been able to take into account the data that we use for commodities.
These are the main sources.
We've got cereals, for example, and roots and that allows us to cross check the data.
We have fairly accessible data, actually.
We've now got around 150 products data coming in, which has allowed us to assess the energy and the average cost stands at between 1.7 to $7 depending on where you're looking at.
This allows us to come up with a rate of affordability of 53% and 70% of non affordability during the famine periods.
This is connected as well to the higher cost of products during those periods.
Fruits and vegetables, particularly, they're very expensive and they're not accessible above all at certain times of the year.
Next slide, please.
So in terms of opportunities here for the harmonized framework, it was an opportunity to take into account a raft of these different elements to be more proactive in the analysis of food security and to be able to come up with more clarification concerning steps that we might take to respond to food insecurity, in terms of challenges.
We really identified the way these elements are taken into account by data systems and make that more sustainable across data tools and digital tools.
Next slide, please.
In terms of key messages, affordability being included in the Harmonized framework has allowed us to have a more proactive tool which allows us to anticipate situations and tailor policies much better.
And guide responses in terms of food security.
In terms of recommendations, the recommendation would be to set up a much more structured initiative, allowing the national structures that already exist, which have been very much valued at the regional level to allow all countries to systematically collect data concerning all of these products at least three times a year in order to deal in a more structured way with issues of affordability and non affordability in food policy with the support of the WFP and the FAO, who are still our partners.
Thank you very much, Marsal.
Our next speaker is online.
He's going to join us online.
Mr.
Mamadou Tanimun, who is the regional Port coordinator of WFP, will speak about the affordability of healthy diets, the experience in West and Central Africa.
Mr.
Tanyimun, are you online? Yes, I am.
Okay.
You have the floor.
Thank you very much.
For the opportunity.
Yeah.
I think a lot has been said this morning from the global approach in the healthy diet and the experience that we have in West Africa, from the government institution that Marshall had just presented.
What I'm going to speak about here is the practical experience that we had in more than ten countries in West Africa that actually led to this experience that Marcell has just presented.
Because from the different analysts that we have conducted in West Central Africa, we have realized that, in fact, affordability is one of the main constraint for nutrition and food insecurity in the region.
Generally, food is available, but not everyone has the mean to be able to afford this food.
And this is happening because of many reasons that are in fact constraining the the income of the families and also disrupting the market because of conflict and insecurity, as you know, our region is facing.
So fragility and the conflict are really one of the key drivers these days that are disrupting the market on top of the effect on the effect on the purchasing power that are impeding the access to a healthy and nutritious diet.
So from what we've seen in our region, we have a serious difference between what is the cost for a just basic energy only diet versus a healthy and nutritious diet.
And usually, the difference is close to two to four times.
When we look into the non affordability in terms of the proportion of the household that cannot afford this, we have close to 70% 50s to 70% of household that are unable to afford.
And just as someone mentioned in the previous panel in the comment, when we go into the areas where the conflict is serious, we see these figures going up to 80 to above 80% of the household that are not able to afford the healthy diet.
So of course, what we see is mainly, it's been said before, animals such as food are the most expensive that are driving the cost high.
And as well as the seasonal variations.
Because as you know, in many countries in West Africa, we have a lean season, and we have a season where you have raining and post harvest where usually we see the price going down and then the affordability better.
But in the lean season, this change completely and it increases the number of people who are not able to afford.
So definitely we see A key drivers of non affordability or affordability in our region is the conflicts that are really multiplying this effect because of the disruption of the access to market, disruption of the production capacity because of the people movement from their own lands, as well as this seasonal variations because most of the productive systems are dependent to normal raining season.
Now, a What do we know as what works? I was thinking without actually moving my slides.
So we've seen that if you are able to come up with a combined solution that is impacting the policies like, for example, a large scale fortification program, which will then increase the access to nutrient, as well as multiple programs such as the school feeding program or social protection that is providing income support to housebd as well as working in parallel like doctor Labor had mentioned, on a food system that is pro nutrition, then you will be able to have a true impact on the dimensions that are affecting the affordability and eventually reduce the gap of accessing the nutritious diet.
So what are the policy implications? I think as we understand the barriers and the key drivers, and among those key drivers are serious policy implications.
We think that if the governments are promoting nutrition sensitive food system and nutrition value chain, This would actually help to have availability at an acceptable price of highly nutritious food commodities.
But this is not enough.
We recognize that there are some cultural barriers.
There are some economic barriers that we need also to work on sensitizing the community to improve the behavior on nutrition, as well as stimulating the income by creating employment or providing social transfers that would actually help families to improve their own incomes.
So just showing this last slide with a quote that you can download and it's going to address one of the questions that someone has asked to doctor Lab.
We are using a different tool to do this estimation of affordability, which is called enhance.
And the value of addition of this tool is completing one of the elements that doctor Lacour said is missing in the approach he described, like the nutrient adequacy.
With the enhance, you are able to go beyond only the diversity and the healthiest of diet, but also the nutrient content of what potential diet could look like and what price it will be able to cost in a given community.
And as well as additional features that has been integrated in terms of looking into environmental impact, how we can frame potential recommendation that would actually shift the diet towards more nutritious, but less environment costly.
So thank you very much.
I will stop here and looking forward for the next session.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Timon, for your very clear presentation.
We're going to have our last speaker from Africa.
We will hear about IFAD's work in Malawi to improve the affordability of healthy diets.
The speaker who is joining us online is miss Beatrice Equesa Onango, who is the Global Lead Technical Specialist of Nutrition in EFAD.
She's standing in on behalf of miss Bernadette Mukora, who is the Country Director of Malawi, but unfortunately couldn't make it today.
Thank you.
Beatrice, you have the floor.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much and thank you, Your Excellencies, and ladies and gentlemen.
Yes, I'm stepping in for our country director for Malawi Benedette who was not able to join today.
So I'm going to give a highlight of what we are actually doing in Malawi and how that influences access to healthy diet by our Malawian colleagues.
First of all, As EFD, there is a broad investment in Malawi, more than $400 million have been put into the work that is going on in Malawi, and there's a big portfolio of nutrition sensitive agricultural intervention.
But then what we are realizing is that affordability of healthy diets is one of the most urgent development challenge in Malawi.
Of course, as you've heard, it's not just Malawi, but across Sub Saharan Africa.
It's not only a nutrition issue, but it comes in because it's about the food systems, it's about poverty, and it's more of even a resilience challenge.
You find if there is a on other contributing factors, then the diet becomes unaffordable to a majority of populations within Malawi.
In Malawi, Healthy diets are really unaffordable basically because of under diversified production systems.
You find that the production systems are mostly dependent on maize, which is one of the staple crops there and it's also mostly rain fed.
Not a lot of investment has been going into this.
You find that people can only access a commodity like maize at a cheaper price.
But then when you want to make sure that your diet is diversified to include vegetable, fruits, and maybe animal source food, then it takes you to a level that you cannot be able to access this.
So this is also something that is also contributed to by weak production and supply of nutrient rich, not just from the farm, but also from the markets, meaning that it's not just about this community being able to produce these, but generally at country level, the diversity of the production systems remain very, very limited.
Here I'm talking about things around legumes, livestock, and other horticultural crops.
What also influences this and is increased climate shocks, Malawi is one of those countries that has also been experiencing droughts and floods.
This has been disrupting production and driving up, of course, the price of food, and then eventually this leads to poor nutrition outcomes.
Now, something else that has also been observed by teams as they engage in Malawi is weak value chains.
Because some of these commodities that would be able to contribute to a diversified diets, for instance, animal source foods, fisheries, livestock, and dairies, you find they need a lot of support in terms of making sure that the value chain process is better developed for value addition and increased shelf life.
So the fact that the value chains are not optimally developed, then you find that if you have these commodities, you can only utilize them for a particular type.
It also becomes very, very hard for communities to invest in them because they don't have the structures that will lead to better returns.
The other aspect that also contributes to eventually increasing the diets cost is gender and cultural barriers that limit the access to and consumption of the vast nutrition diets because you find If there are restrictions on what particular groups can engage in terms of decision, engaging the markets, engage in the production, then whatever is eventually produced is what aligns to the stereotype.
For instance, you'll go for the maze because it's a commodity that can be controlled by a particular gender or a particular population group.
The income comes from it and it also influenced by the decisions that already are attributed to this.
The production of the step of crops, some of them The remittance says the results of these are influenced by some gender dynamics, and so they are not able to adequately influence access to nutritious diets.
This is a scenario that is not just in Malawi.
This is a scenario that has been observed in a number of countries whereby the fact that the decision on production on consumption lies on a particular group, then what is actually produced and consumed ends up being influenced.
So I can put these drivers into just four aspects, the price symmetry, the limited market access, there's also policy fragmentation and insufficient investments, and that is why you find that then EFRD plays a very unique role in addressing some of these barriers.
You find that By making sure that you are able to engage in nutrition agricultural practices, for instance, infrastructure, for instance, markets, and maybe rural finance, you are able to bridge this gap and make sure that if people used to work for a number of kilometers to access markets and access foods, then that is reduced.
When such aspect like transport infrastructure is improved, then you find that the cost of commodities tends to reduce.
So we are able to implement this through our country programs where you find that we support and we align and make sure that any ERD investments are aligned to the national development programs, but they are also tuned in a way that they're able to support not just access to food security, but contribution to better nutrition outcome.
So we work with the country programs to enhance any support on nutrition that could direct to maybe access to affordable diets or can bring the diet closer to the population, thus reducing the cost of acquisition.
So IFAD also recognizes the empowerment of women and youth and as a good initiative to improve nutrition and dietary diversity at household level, but also at community level.
This is through gender transformative activities that end up empowering these populations to engage in production, in value chain, in marketing such in a way that bring some of these commodities closer to the end users.
Lastly, EFD also supports social behavior change and communication, and I think this has been mentioned also by a previous speaker as a key element on ensuring what can we do to communicate appropriately to make sure that people will still go for the healthier diets, even if the price could be different.
The interventions to promote the production and consumption of nutrient rich foods such as we can talk of orange, sweet potato, legumes, biofortified commodities, fortified commodities, is a way that can address the low dietary diversity despite the challenge of affordability.
With this said, I would like to conclude by saying that, yes, there's still a lot of work to be done to make sure that we can afford the healthy diets, but there are interventions that we can all bring in from a different perspective to try to curb and support this whole challenge.
With that said, thank you so much over to you.
Thank you very much Patrice and especially for raising the gender dimension, which has been perhaps a bit under discussed until now.
We now will move to listen to two perspectives from Latin America.
The next speaker who is also attending online is doctor Camilla Corvala who is the Director of the Center for Research and Food Environments and the Prevention of chronic diseases associated with nutrition from Chile and she will be speaking about integrated policy approaches to improve diet quality and affordability in Latin America.
Doctor Corvala, you have the floor.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for the invitation and the opportunity of sharing what Latin America has been doing regarding improving dietary quality and affordability.
We have heard during this session that Latin America and Caribbean region has the highest cost of a healthy diet.
This results in more than 133 million people in the region unable to afford a healthy diet.
And this condition results in one out of three people experiencing moderate or severe food insecurity in our region.
As it was previously mentioned, the burden of this food insecurity is not equally distributed in the population here highlighting that in particular in our region, the burden over women is significantly higher than in men.
But this is not only an issue about quantity of food, it has also been very clearly expressed that is an issue about the quality of the food that we are consuming.
And this is a graph showing that in Latin America, as in all the rest of the world, in the past decades, we have been observing an increasing consumption of these healthy food products with high content of nutrients related to chronic diseases and also that are very poor in terms of healthy nutrients, the so called ultra process foods.
And the problem with this increase is that these products, the consumption of these products is actually replacing the consumption of those food groups that we have traditionally linked to healthy diets and to health results, such as fruits and vegetables, legumes, fish and seafood.
And we were observing early this year that this is very related to the cost of some of these food groups in our region.
So basically, the challenge in Latin America right now is to promote the consumption of healthy food, but at the same time, discourage the consumption of unhealthy foods.
And basically, in terms of food policy, for the last decade, countries in the region have been trying to tackle this by implementing food policies that are mandatory, that are national.
The first great example is the SODA tax implemented by Mexico in 2013 and this is a great example because it shows that a well designed and well implemented tax has the possibility of actually decreasing the consumption, in this case of sugar sweetened beverages.
And this is an impact that is sustained over time.
The next example comes from Chile in 2016, Chile moves forward and decides that we need to be implementing these policies by addressing different aspects of the food environment.
And what Chile does is to implement a package of policies that includes improving the information to consumers about foods that are unhealthy by adding a warning label, But linked to that label, there are also very strict restrictions on the possibility of marketing those foods to children and also very strict restrictions on the provision or selling or promotion of those food products on the school setting or the nursery settings.
And what we observe with this package of policies is actually important reformulations in terms of the package food supply, decreases in all the nutrients that are regulated, salt, sugar, and fats, and actually very important decreases in the consumption of these nutrients as well that are reflected also in changes in consumption and impact on health outcomes.
But also, while doing all these interventions that are trying to decrease the consumption of unhealthy foods, we have been receiving a number of comments from the population saying, now we understand much better what type of food we should be eating, but these healthier options are more expensive, are less available in our communities.
And in the last, I would say five to six years, different countries has been piloting different kind of actions to actually improve also the access to these healthy food options.
But I'm going to just highlight maybe the larger of these efforts at the national level.
This is the school feeding program in Brazil.
This program covers about 80% of all Brazilian school age population, and it's really a program that has been evolving over time to respond to the necessities of the population.
The program mandates that part of the purchases of the program are done following a mandatory farm to school policy what provides a preference than to food that is provision by women or a small farm production, but also has restrictions on the amount of money that can be expended on the purchase of ultra processed food.
This has become increasingly stricter to arrive to only 10% in 2026.
And very rapidly, we have observed that this has very concrete results in the amount, of course, of provision of ultra processed food compared to healthy food options.
But also, this has had a very concrete impact on the creation of direct and indirect jobs in the country and in the a very concrete contribution to the GDP of Brazil.
Again, highlighting the cross nature of all the interventions that we are trying to promote to ensure access to healthy diets.
To conclude, basically, addressing affordability of healthy diet in our region needs to consider these two aspects of diet, decreasing the availability of unhealthy foods and promoting at the same time the consumption of healthy foods.
That probably requires implementation of package of policies.
We are able to show some promising results, but of course, we need to strengthen what has been done and combine these policies and that will only be possible if we all work together, academia, governmental bodies, but also if we combine the knowledge of different disciplines to address this using a systemic perspective.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, doctor Corvalan, for sharing with us these really well known cases, but it's worth looking at them again.
The second speaker from South America is from the representative of the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples Mechanism of the CFS.
Miss Jimena Morena is the coordinator of the network of biodynamic Medicinal agro forestry Gardens.
You have the floor, Jimena.
Thank you.
Thank you very much and good afternoon.
I don't have a presentation, but I have brought photos with me of people who grow crops in our country and territories.
What I am going to be telling you about now was built with a mechanism of society and indigenous communities and I'd like to begin by highlighting that food has to be understood in its full dimension, not just as a product to be consumed.
Food that is produced through monocultures with toxic pesticides, we know that they have a high impact on the health of those who grow them and those who consume them and also on our ecosystems.
Food is a governed by social contracts really and in order to be healthy, these contracts need to be struck between the farmers and all the other stakeholders right down to the people who eat the food.
It also has to take into account gender dimension and our various roles and we need to try and avoid ultra processed food that is full of commercial implications.
Our basis about food needs to really lend visibility to all those implications.
Underpinning a healthy diet is a sound understanding of how food is tied into social and agricultural systems from the crops and the cultivation right up until the point of sale and consumption and you have to ensure that there is affordability.
The second point is that the unaffordability of healthy diets is a structural consequence which reflects inequalities that run much deeper in our economic systems and our current social and food systems.
Moreover, commotization of goods and the capitalist system that promotes profit over environmental and social sustainability and the right to food.
Then you've got private stakeholders and powerful philanthropists who shape the decision making in favor of industrial and capitalist food production systems that are based on a principle that means that those who have the most productive lands end up exporting commodities and contaminating their territories, whereas their own populations can't afford to buy healthy food.
We need to promote agriculture based on processes and not agriculture based on inputs because this is constantly influenced by global crisis.
Environmentally friendly farming has to be deeply rooted in the health of territories and foster biodiversity and improve the various balances and relations, including with animals and in order to ensure that we can leverage low cost inputs and ensure the proper care of land and soil and the presence of people on that land and soil.
Also, public policies need to be geared towards addressing the systemic challenges that ensure the availability and affordability of healthy food and healthy diets, especially for those who cannot actually afford them because very often the decision boils down to how much people have in their pockets.
Public policies have to be aligned in terms of food policy, investment policy, and other policies so as to ensure that there is diversity and that those societies and communities that support agriculture benefit from the system.
Inclusive farming needs to benefit small scale farming with appropriate practices and we need to promote dignified wages and social protection and we need to regulate the misleading marketing of ultra processed food.
Also, we need to ensure that those who can produce their food know which ones would be just environmentally friendly and healthy and viable.
There are, however, people who go hungry on the outskirts of cities.
These tend to be women and they tend to have a particular color of the skin.
I apologize to the speaker.
I was speaking very fast.
So for us, it is very important that we ensure that those people who cannot choose their foods are taken into account because we know that the vast majority of people on the outskirts of city can't afford to choose.
It's not a matter of option.
It just depends on how much money they have in their pocket at that moment.
We believe there have to be specific policies that guarantee healthy food at schools, in hospitals, and in other social places, and there needs to be financial health.
For farmers.
An example, and this was mentioned by Camera earlier, is the example of Brazil with the National Food Meal Program, which purchases food from environmentally friendly farms through their direct purchasing program.
However, in our region, we are deeply concerned when we see that there are governors from other countries who decide to scrap the school food and school meal programs leaving thousands of children at a loss and condemned to suffering malnutrition or undernutrition.
Also, we cannot forget that we need health policies that encourage ongoing measures in the urban systems, both in terms of awareness and education and school meals and also in terms of the bottom up approaches where we have spaces of coexistence and production of food and education, environmental education, and the production of medicinal plants within the public facilities in Brazilia in Brazil, for example.
A fourth point we want to make is to provide spaces for participatory governance within the governments themselves.
I'd also like to give you the example of Brazil here, which created a National Council for Food Security and Nutrition.
Which society and civil society, that is, and the state and academia, are all mobilized to ensure that healthy food reaches everyone.
Such actions have been absolutely crucial for ensuring that Brazil was able to extract itself from the hunger map again.
Before I wrap up, I must emphasize that in 2022, we recognized the right to a clean healthy environment as a fundamental right.
Therefore, we must think together about how we can reduce and diminish the use and production of agro toxic products and substances because ultimately these substances are killing us sometimes slowly and sometimes much more quickly through multiple illnesses.
Also, I have to recall that the right to food and adequate nutrition is a fundamental right.
Therefore, we must not remain silent in the face of the use of hunger as a weapon of war.
We need inclusive societies in this world, not war.
Thank you.
Thank you very much Jimena.
We move now to our last speaker from the private sector mechanism.
She will also join us online.
Miss Wendy Vasa is the CEO of Matomani, which is a company in South Africa and she will be speaking about designing affordable healthy diets using local and indigenous foods.
Wendy, you have the floor.
Good afternoon, everyone in that are present physically and those that are joining online.
I'm going to share my screen.
Are you able to see my screen? Yes, we can.
Thank you.
Okay.
Thank you so much.
Like I said, good afternoon, everyone.
My name is Wendy Verilantbani.
I represent the private sector mechanism.
I am a CEO of a company called Maomani.
We are based here in South Africa, Southern Africa.
So what my contribution is I Designing affordable healthy diets are using local and indigenous foods.
So globally, there is not a shortage of healthy nutritious food.
However, there's a failure of systems to make those foods available, accessible, and desirable to the global community.
Our company, Maomani uses edible insects, which provide a very significant nutrient dense, high quality micronutrients protein, superfoods that we use in order to produce foods for people.
The reason that we are using edible insects is because it's a local and indigenous food that has been consumed over the years.
And we recognize that this is a way to be able to contribute towards solving global challenges such as food security, such as populations not being able to afford food.
There has been publications, but the ones that I wanted to speak of was a publication that was done by the Food and Agriculture Organization that talks about edible food insects, which provides a solution for food and food security for the future.
Also the World Bank has published a publication called Insect and Hydroponic Famine in Africa, which is a new secular economy into contributing towards food security.
The challenge here is that with nutrient dense localized food remain under neutralized.
There's a restriction into getting them to mainstream markets in order to be able to contribute to affordable, healthy foods, healthy diets, to affordable foods that can be able to nourish people globally.
So another challenge is that the value chains are weak in a sense of incorporating localize original foods into making them more scalable so that they can contribute towards providing healthy food.
And also another big challenge that we recognized is that there is limited consumer awareness on what actually are healthy foods.
So where we see an opportunity is that indigenous food needs to be glorified.
They need to be communicated more.
They need to be communicated in terms of their nutrient dens and they exist.
So we have, I think it was mentioned in the dialogue like some of local indigenous foods, there isn't a scientific backing that talks about whether this is a healthy food, as it was mentioned, like what is a healthy diet, which talks to human biology.
So in our case, we have done scientific studies.
We are doing tests in order to make sure that the food that we are providing to people as a solution in order to create a healthier food and offer has been tested and it complies with global standards.
Also the food produced by regionals locally, by rural communities, rural women and youth that help to create an economic contribution in the most rural and generate income for the families that are of low income or don't have access to economic activities.
Climate resistance, foods that are localized tends to be climate resilient and therefore can be able to be contributed towards creating a healthy diet for global population.
And localized food needs to be recognized, it needs to be promoted.
There has to be investment, there has to be policy that talks to localization and regional food system in order to be inclusive because this will create more awareness in terms of these foods and their nutrition profile that is dense.
Then in terms of the solution, obviously, is to strengthen supply chains that will be that will be included in the broader food supply and supply chains in order to be able to contribute towards solving those problems.
And also like to assistance in order to be able to scale SMMEs and recognize food innovation in terms of solving these particular challenges and to continue to invest in consumer awareness for general people to understand what is nutrition.
And also labeling and creating trust.
There has to be investment in terms of, you know, how do we go about ensuring that people understand what is a healthy diet and what is a healthy diet for me, you know, as a biological person.
And also, the outcome of being able to do this, it has been shared across the dialogue that this is not a one institution solution.
It takes collective effort.
It needs all the stakeholders to be involved in order for us to be able to continue to solve this challenge.
So there's going to be a results of all stakeholders working together, is improved access, improved healthier food.
Global hunger states will continue to decline in such a way that zero hunger is going to be achieved.
Malnutrition is going to be eliminated across the world.
There is enough food that is being produced in the world, and this has been communicated and this is being shared across.
However, the food does not get to everyone.
So being able to implement policy that will be able to tackle this challenge and making sure that there is affordable, healthy diets for all people in the world will be able to reduce the food waste that we see year on year as it's being reported.
And obviously more resilient, more that we're going to have more resilient food systems and supply chains and also an increased incomes for rural communities, women and youth in the spaces where we operate and more SMM is across Africa and the world where we are looking after rural communities.
I was asked to share pictures of some of our products that we use with the insect.
Then here are some of the products that we produce in our facility, working with rural women.
In the middle, there is the powder of the insect caterpillar after being milled.
We make biscuits, we make protein bars, and This family is one of the family members community members that we work with that are part of our team, part of our harvesting communities.
And then on the left there is the initiative of plant a tree.
We work with indigenous trees.
The insects eat indigenous tree.
So what we do is that we work with community members to replant the trees so that we create a sustainable system and also a climate resistant type of environment.
And some of our products, when packaged is a dry mopani caterpillar, yes, and powder and other products that we do.
Thank you so much.
Thank you very much, Wendy, for highlighting the important role of value chains as other speakers have done, but especially also of SMEs in increasing the affordability of healthy diets.
We now have about a bit less time than we would want to, but we have about 10 minutes for question and answer.
As before, we will start here taking one question in Geneva, and then we will move to Rome and then have a question online and if there's time, we'll go around again.
I think I saw a hand raised in the back.
Did I? Yes.
Please go ahead, introduce yourself.
Call at the same time.
I'm Natalie Vojnik senior nutrition advisor with Save the Children.
I have a question for anyone from any of the speakers who've just spoken from the countries, but even our previous speakers, I'm just really interested because we had a meeting this week which alerted me around the impact of the war in Iran.
On fertilizers and the fact that this person who specializes in food prices, that even if it opened this now, that it would take weeks before clearing the mines, then they would prioritize the oil ships, and then the fertilizer ships and we might miss the harvests and that would have a knock on effect way down the line on the food prices.
I'm really keen to hear from the countries if in your country they're discussing this, how this would have an impact on the cost and affordability of nutritious diet, as well as globally from our colleagues at FAO WHO and so on.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
It's a very topical and very complex question, but an important one that you raise.
We'll take two other questions before I hand it back to the panel.
Maybe we'll just take one more question here also, because I see that there's several hands up, so let's give a good balance to Geneva.
You have the floor, please introduce yourself.
Thank you very much.
My name is Anna Maria Suarez Franco and I am the Secretary-General of Fan International.
I have a comment question.
So the first is to remember what the ambassador of Switzerland mentioned about the human rights approach to this problem and I think in that approach, it is very important to remember the focus on the most marginalized and disadvantaged sectors or communities in the society, and also the fact that all the issues of adequacy access, which includes affordability, but also physical access, sustainability and availability are interdependent when one cannot delink them.
Then I would like to highlight what one of the speakers said about the impact of violence and war.
I think in the first panel, we didn't hear that, but this is the weaponization of food or use of hunger as a weapon of war is a big problem today, both in the countries where the conflicts are happening, but also outside.
Maybe the panelists can expand a little bit.
The second question is more about corporate power and corporate concentration in the global value chains.
We know that very few corporations have the power in, for example, fertilizers, that there is a big concentration of land with land grabbing, that corporate capture impedes marketing regulation in many cases.
Maybe you can also elaborate on how important is the regulation of corporations to impede abuses.
The last one, sorry, I will be to Jimena, I would like to hear more about the point you did on agroecology as one of the solutions to ensure that people can feed themselves and interconnection with local markets.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Three questions in one.
We'll move to Rome.
Yes.
Adriana, you're in Rome the CFS secretary, you have the floor.
Could you please let us know.
Thank you.
We have here a question from the Civil Society mechanism.
Julia, if you'd like to take the floor, please.
Hello, yes.
Actually Marisa Venuti will take the floor from civil society.
I have a question regarding production systems, again, and the affordability of diets as sometimes that pressure falls on farmers and different types of production systems, farmers can be compensated differently depending on fiscal policy in different countries.
Um, So my question is really, like, how can we ensure that that pressure doesn't fall onto farmers to make diets affordable so that farmers can also ensure fair wages while we tackle affordable, healthy diets.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for this question that was also, I think, raised by the HLPE.
Perhaps we have an online.
Online, we have doctor Leonard Natutimana from the University of Burundi.
Could I invite you to take the floor and give your question.
From the University of Burundi, are you online? Can you please accept my request to open your microphone, please.
Doctor Leonardo.
Do we have a technical issue here? Okay.
I see.
Thank you.
Hello.
I will ask Not a question, but I will share with you an approach how food security that is sustainable can be affordable.
Research has shown that healthy nutrition can be reached through food system that are focused on land.
In Burundi, access to financing of healthy nutrition regimes represents a serious obstacle to ensure the nutrition of the population.
In many low income countries, including Burundi, The high prices of fertilizers and other things, land degradation and drop in productivity is very difficult and high dependence on world markets and limited integration into food local systems that are sustainable.
We have structural challenges that affect in a disproportionate manner, small farmers undermining the right to adequate undermining the UN directives of the FAO.
Access to funding is directly linked to production system.
Agriculture thus becomes a very high cost and leads to high food prices, while systems that focus on land that reduce costs and ensure access to nutrition when it's practiced at the community level.
Experience shows that The different criteria may lead to the production of organic fertilizers that are of a low cost.
Farmers can cultivate their lands, something that can improve the lands themselves and lead to the production of healthy foodstuffs.
The interpreters say that the sound is extremely poor.
Now, do you have a question? We do not have enough time.
Can I ask you to pose your question.
Yes, of course.
We need to ensure political support to our projects and developed supply chain in order to ensure access to funding.
The interpreters apologize.
The sound is too poor to provide quality interpretation.
I would like to now turn back to the panelists.
We've had seven panelists.
You don't all have to respond because the questions were not necessarily for everyone.
I would like to give maybe up to 2 minutes for each panelist.
Speakers.
Let's see if we have time for that.
In the next session, we have 40 minutes of discussion.
If any of the panelists either here or online and maybe the colleagues in the secretary can help me understand who's online of the panelists who wants to speak, but maybe I'll start in the room and just 2 minutes, you don't have to answer every question because it's impossible.
Whoever is ready to Marial would you like to.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you for different questions.
I will directly focus on the first question.
The impact of the war in the Middle East on the region.
We have to say we held a meeting of the Food Security Committee because what we see that we have a recommendation to In order to ensure that we have enough supplies, the campaign has already started in order to build up the different stocks of food and the working group works together with Nigeria, large producer of fertilizers and also with Morocco in order to ensure that we have the supply at the local level.
Well, what is important to remember that there are a lot of imports in West Africa of fertilizers, but there's also local productions.
But 90% of the production in West Africa in an unusual manner, it's actually exported.
We have to group purchases in order to ensure to ensure that the local farmers can have these fertilizers.
We do have a follow up committee related to food security that focuses on prices and prices of fertilizers in order to provide this information very quickly and ensure that we evaluate this situation in real time.
And what we're trying to do is to update the lists related to food security in order to ensure that our planning and estimates for guests are correct.
The other panelists would like to ene, yes, ena, please go ahead.
For us, it is extremely important to ensure that costs of foodstuffs do not fall on the shoulders of farmers.
This is why it's a very complex issue that this should be part of the state strategies related to taxes that farmers pay and they need to have technological support In order to have the tools to facilitate their lives, we see that China has developed very interesting technologies for small scale farmers.
This has to be also kept in mind.
We also have to provide space in territorial marks if government stimulate cooperate approach and this leads to create local markets that involves all farmers and ensure diversity of productions.
This makes it possible to provide different very diverse products at just prices.
That removes intermediaries that take a large part of the benefits.
We have a program in Brazil with purchases of foodstuffs, a very interesting program that is part of a rural agricultural reform and a truck goes through different territories two, three times a week and farmers do not have to leave their lands and the trucks bring food to distribution centers.
Now on the environment for us, food sovereignty and environment is a strategic point that ensures that farmers and citizens can defend their right to eat what they wish to eat.
We are talking about the need to ensure that farmers can develop their own territories, and this is indeed an approach based on dignity.
Thank you, we have one last panelist who's online and wants to answer one or more of the questions.
Mr.
Timon, you have the floor.
Yeah.
Thank you very much.
I wanted to address maybe just two comments here.
One is a clarification and I will start by that clarification, by the way.
So when I was speaking about the impact of conflict and insecurity on the affordability is not about the use of hunger as a weapon.
No.
It's about the practical realities that is actually with the blockades, the market have disrupted.
And with the conflict, people are leaving their lands, so they cannot produce.
They are losing their jobs.
They can't have income and revenue.
And those are the practical things that today are part of the critical causes for food insecurity and the nutrition and penetration in West Africa.
And this blockade is not only having the impact in the actual site of conflict.
It's actually spreading because all the countries in the region are interconnected.
And if you look into the sport of those conflicts, they are huge and heavily impacting the policy, geopolitical, you know, situation and the relations in the region also having this impact on the import, supplies, et cetera.
So it's in that sense, not in the sense of the use of the the hunger as a weapon.
Another comment I wanted to contribute on is this human right opportunity.
One of the solutions that we have suggested in terms of reducing the gap of affordability is the social protection.
And this is for equity purposes because when we talk about the social protection, it's always about targeting the most vulnerable who do not have the minimum revenue that is, you know, required to be able to afford the food or other basic services.
So by providing this kind of income support, it will actually uplift their purchasing power, and then they will be able with dignity to be able to go on the market and access the consumption because we mentioned that usually the availability of those foods is there in the market.
The last point is one of the comment that one of our colleagues has put on the chat from 70 children regarding the next step of the policy.
I think for me, today, the evidence of the affordability in terms of how it impacts the nutrition, the food security, and even all human capital in general, it's out there.
It's really about a pushing creating the system that is durable to supply this information, and that's what we try to do with the C.
If the system that Marcel presented is supported and continue collecting this information on a regular basis, we don't have to speculate today with the impact of what would happen with the Middle East because this will anyway translate into the cost.
And if we have a written way of collecting the cost embedded in the national system, and analyzing it on a regular basis, we can easily see the trend, how this affordability varies and appropriate actions can be implemented on right time.
And some policy implications in terms of policies on social protection on targeting, like on subsidy finance measures, trade measures that can actually help because, yes, it's not about putting the burden on farmers, particularly in countries where we have 70% of people being small holder farmers.
There is survival agriculture.
It's about looking into the most appropriate way to create and facilitate the availability and the access of this and it involves contribution from small hola farmers, but also highly industrialized agriculture in the countries or geographical places in the country where you have conducive environment for production.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Thani Moon.
I understand that our colleague from EFD is online and also wants to have a word.
Miss Beatrice Esa Onango, if you could be very brief because I'm afraid that we're running out of time for our last session, which will be on the CFS.
You have the floor.
Could you please be brief.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Modert.
I'll try to be brief.
I just want to give a comment on the aspect of food systems in relation to affordability of diets.
I think one key strategy that we have put in place as EFD is looking at programs and food systems in a way that addresses the different typologies of the communities that we're working with.
So you are able to target the ultra poor and provide specific programs that are directed to them and able to target different categories in a different way.
That way, we are not putting the fact that everybody is at the same level.
So you apply different mechanisms and you're able to provide avenues for accessing healthy diets in a differentiated manner.
So we have details of that, there's a program that works on graduation of the ultra poor, then they're able to get to a different level.
So that is one thing that I wanted just to mention, but I think details can be found in our program that we implement in Malawi.
Thank you so much.
Thank you very much, miss Onango.
With that, I'd like to thank all of the panelists.
Maybe we can do a final clap for all of them.
Thank you very much.
I would invite these panelists to kindly um return to their seats, and now we go to the final section, which is in a sense, it's what we're really here.
I mean, all these discussions until now are really to set the ground for what we're discussing now, which is the role of the CFS in promoting the affordability of healthy diets for all.
The CFS, as I said, and particularly this Workstream is about collaborative governance.
We've heard in the sessions this morning about, um, We've heard about many policies, especially at the national level that need to be put in place, that would be good to put in place.
We've heard about the importance of policy coherence.
We've heard about the importance of participatory governance.
At the international level, we've also heard about what FAO, WHO, WFP, and IFAD are doing.
Here we're trying to really get at the point of collaboration between these institutions, collaboration, alignment of policies, and essentially what could be the role of the CFS to make sure that all the acts, the multiple actors who are working in this space, work with more alignment to the extent that's possible for greater impact.
We do have several questions which I'm sure that you've seen it in the program, but I'll just read them out just to refocus all of our thinking and then we'll take maybe until 102 or 52 maybe.
We have about half an hour and the floor is open again, we will go first to questions from Geneva and then Rome and then online.
The questions are, how can CFS address and contribute to ensuring economic access to affordable, healthy diets? How can CFS advocate for economic access to affordable diets in diverse contexts and environments, including in fragile and conflict settings? And how can current CFS policy products contribute to promoting a conducive environment to improve the affordability of healthy diets? Um, so these are our questions.
Essentially, what is the role of the CFS in this topic? The CFS being this space of participatory governance.
It's not just the CFS, it's all of the members and participants of the CFS.
Um, the floor is open for anyone first here in the room sitting in front of me who might have a comment, and They're not super forthcoming.
I think people need a little bit of time to digest these questions.
Could we ask Adriana if there's someone in Rome? Adriana, could I ask you hello to Rome? CPM maybe.
Thank you.
CIPm Hello, everyone in Geneva.
This is Julia from the Secretariat.
Actually, there are a lot of participants organizations online and also in Geneva, so I don't want to take too much time, but now the question disappeared.
But one was what the CFS can do to ensure affordability of healthy diets.
I think that based on the very interesting discussions that we had today and the complexities that emerged.
Thank you so much, Cecilia, that go really beyond price and markets.
I think that very concretely the CFS can help the different institutions to also have a more holistic approach to what it means to really ensure the right to food.
But I would really like to invite the organizations online and in Geneva to say their own.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much to the colleagues in Rome.
It's nice to have this connection between these two rooms in two different countries.
Maybe we go online now.
Betsy, are there any questions? Any questions online? We have a question here.
Our colleague from FAO, comment Lynette, you have the floor.
More comment in the spirit of your questions related to what CFS can be doing.
I think we hear a lot about policy coherence.
We're all talking about policy coherence and I would argue for what we've been talking about, that policy needs to go all the way from policies that guide our in research and development.
Resources and help target those resources.
One of the things we've talked about is the need for agricultural incentives.
But a part of the problem is that some of the food products we need to be produced in larger quantities at lower prices haven't been invested in from the level of seeds and plant breeding and so forth.
It's a complex construct, and it implies multiple sectors.
I think when each of us from our own placed in this big problem and opportunity that we live in.
Think about policy coherence in a certain manner because we're looking at it from a sector or from a perspective.
But at government level, this comes down to resource allocations, it comes down to priority setting, it comes down to where the focus is given.
And I don't think even though we all use that same word, we necessarily all mean the same thing or think through the implications of that in the same way.
Could you just clarify which word Policy coherence.
Policy coherence.
Policy coherence.
Policy for what? Across sectors and how do we actually make that happen and get the resources allocated across those sectors in ways that recognize we heard about farmers.
Farmers absolutely need to have fair income.
Agriculture has to contribute to GDP, but it also has to deliver on healthy diets and the consumers who are in vulnerable situations need to be protected.
All of those policies need to drive in that same direction.
But they need to also deliver on their individual mandate.
That, I don't think we even though we're easy to use that word, I don't think we've really cracked what that means and what is the evidence and the opportunities that we need to really make sure that we can give from where I sit, good technical advice in that regard and help drive the research and the practice experience that is needed to get there.
Thank you very much for that very provocative comment and thought provoking comment.
I think it's quite interesting what you say, you know, that we use the term very frequently, and yet behind this term, there are trade offs, for example, that need to be made.
There are different interests and different incentives.
So yes, we shouldn't take the word so lightly.
I would invite other people who might want to respond to Lynets Lynette's interesting comment to consider, well, you know, how, you know, what, um, What are the challenges to achieving policy coherence in this realm of affordable and healthy diets? For example, maybe we could start by just discussing that before jumping into saying what should be done.
Please, Martial, you have the floor.
Thank you very much.
Well, to contribute maybe by answering the first question, I think this question needs to be divided into two parts.
Because to manage the issue of economic accessibility, to an affordable diet.
I think you need to think about the humanitarian aspects of it because in some areas like the Sahel, you do have the humanitarian and development aspects which are butting up against one another.
I think you need to think about humanitarian development peace approaches because you are looking at areas where You're not going to get people who have their minimum energy input in many cases and the issue of affordability allows you to properly define your response, what kind of response you're going to harness.
Because often in the Sahel, the food response that we input corresponds to around 40% of diet in the Sahel region.
First of all, you need to work on the quality of diet you're giving in terms of support to the target vulnerable population, people who are in food insecurity, and then you need a consistent response at the national level that's drafted up because We are 40% down in terms of funding for those plans at the moment and that's just to support the humanitarian aspects.
You need to work on that firstly.
I think that Tammy also responded to this social networks.
There's people who are good and clever and they're in difficult situations and you need to support those people to benefit from the supports that are available.
In order to foster good nutritional practices and obviously, they need to be leveraged and lifted out of insecurity and cycle of insecurity in a recurrent fashion.
This is connected to the elements we try and assess on an anual basis, but there's also the question about development as well and the multi sectoral natures of this.
We've worked with various partners on nutrition guides to be incorporated across the entire development sector because this isn't that's just connected to one sector, just agriculture, just nutrition, just transportation.
It really touches on all of the sectors.
We identified 12 sectors actually in specific.
Approaches were identified in each sector to target the activities, education, trade, transformation, and transportation that would allow us to best address this question of malnutrition and the management of affordability, which needs to be looked at from a point of view, I think of sustainability because we need a real paradigm shifting changes.
To allow women usually who have a high proportion of involvements in terms of their responsibility for the management, particularly of young children, and they often have a lot of work that they have to do and that takes them away from care of young children.
You have areas where there's high levels of production, but you have a high level of malnutrition in children because the women are all involved in profit making activities as well and that has an impact on the children.
If, for example, you have school canteens as well, that can work and you can connect that to local production.
What's it called? Small small producers and so forth, need to be brought in.
That's very important.
Now, there's also the issue of peace, of course.
Without peace, you can't do anything and it comes up and up and up again in the Sahel.
All of the nutrition problems may exist, but the ones that are most impacted in the Sahel are the zones that have security issues in a situation of military insecurity.
Those three areas need to be taken into account when we're thinking about affordability.
Thank you.
Martial.
Yeah, I see another hand in the room and then we'll go online and then come back in the room.
Thank you.
Please introduce yourself.
Thank you very much.
My name is Katherine Engelhart.
I'm with the WHO Department of Nutrition and Food Safety.
I think maybe reflecting also on what Lynette said in relation to the importance of policy coherence and the fact that we need to start looking at all forms of malnutrition as a joint problem, which we haven't.
Even in this session now we've been talking about currently known so called ultra processed foods.
We've been talking about foods that make up a healthy diet, that are diverse, that are adequate, et cetera.
But we're talking about these two streams actually differently.
We're not converging the data.
We're not looking at, well, how much of the food that's being produced is actually going into ultra processed foods, how much of the food that could be sold on fresh markets is actually going to corporations.
We're producing ultra processed foods.
So we're not really looking at the data in a coherent way, I think another thing is we haven't touched upon, for example, data in relation to obesity.
1 billion people are obese in the world, and that's also largely because of the diets that they consume.
So while yes, we need to look at food insecurity and we need to look at humanitarian side of things, I think food is so complex that we might actually not be able to achieve full coherence.
We might need to make compromises at some point.
And I think also one thing which was only briefly mentioned at the beginning in relation to sustainability.
I think Lynette, you mentioned that we need to know what's healthy, we need to know what's sustainable, and then we need to start thinking about what those common lines are that we can be promoting.
So I think in relation to data, there's probably a lot that can still be improved to truly break the silos, looking at undernutrition, undernourishment, overweight obesity, diet related NCDs.
I think there's still a lot more coherence that we actually need, but also realizing that there might be compromises that we need to make.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, WHO.
We have several requests from the floor from online.
Argentina.
So.
The first speaker online would be Argentina in this round.
Maria Tolla, you have the floor.
Thank you very much, moderator.
Can you hear me? Thank you.
Very good.
Thank you.
Well, firstly, the Argentine Republic wants to thank the committee for Global Food Security and as ever the Secretariat, for calling this fifth dialogue on collaborative governance in food security and nutrition in prolonged crisis.
We also want to thank the Swiss government in particular for hosting this meeting in Geneva, as well as the panelists for the fantastic presentation and technical contributions.
I want to briefly deal with the three questions, if you'll allow.
The first in terms of how the Committee can contribute to ensuring an affordable access to a balanced diet.
Argentina thinks it's important to recognize and promote the role of international trade in food security and nutrition, in particular, its contribution to the availability of foods and price stability as well as transference of food from regions with access to those with a deficits.
It's very important to have an open and transparent norms based system, avoiding distorting measures which are not based on scientific evidence.
It's essential to promote the adoption of comprehensive policies which simultaneously address production, the prices of products and consumption prices.
We also think that strengthening the logistics of the food distribution system for healthy food is a key element to improving financially affordable access to healthy diets.
We also think that it's important to have inclusive and multi sectoral spaces for dialogue between the private sector, the states and civil society and we believe that the committee could also contribute to an implementation of the One Health focus, identifying, for example, synergies which can incentivize cooperation between the FEO and those members requesting it.
In terms of the second question, in terms of how we can promote affordable access to healthy diets in various contexts and theaters, Argentina believes that healthy diets and targets must take into account national realities, food traditions, and the different distinct contexts.
In this context, the national guides which have been developed on the basis of scientific evidence most recently, which are now available and have the technical support of the FAO for those requesting members can play a relevant role to guide public policies and strengthen food education.
We also want to highlight and recognize the role played by producer countries which provide a reliable production of healthy food, nutritional and quality food, particularly in fragile contexts affected by conflicts or crises.
In this context and to conclude our response to the second question, Argentina thinks it's essential to strengthen international cooperation and promote forecastable, resilience and efficient supply chains in order to contribute to food security and interests and security, particularly in the context of greatest vulnerability.
Finally, Madam Moderator, with regards to the third question, Argentina believes that voluntary guidelines published by the committee are a valuable tool to create guidance in terms of policy creation connected to food security and nutrition as well as to guide investments both by member states and the private sector.
In that context, we think it's particularly useful to continue having an exchange of lessons learned on the implementations of those guidelines in the various national contexts and I'd be very interested to know from the panelists what specific examples they might share concerning the implementation of those guidelines or guidelines they know connected to the issues that have brought us to this discussion today and the results they've seen in practical implementation.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Argentina.
We'll move back to the room here in Geneva.
I think I saw a hand up in this direction.
Yes.
Could you please introduce yourself? Yeah.
Hi, Caroline Wilkinson.
I'm a nutritionist with significant experience in humanitarian situations.
My question really would focus on the second of your questions.
I think following up from what Marcel and Joe were just saying, recognizing that humanitarian situations are becoming more and more protracted.
We have more and more people that fall under the fragile and conflict affected group if you like.
But we also have increasing levels of undernutrition, but at the same time, a huge increase in obesity and other non communicable diseases.
I think this adds another layer of complexity in terms of people that are concerned about having their drugs, about the possibility to have testing that aren't necessarily available in humanitarian situations that puts more competing priorities on accessibility of affordable diets.
I think it's this spiral, things are getting longer.
People are suffering from both types of malnutrition and the consequences from that.
Yet, where I think the CFS could have a role is that our instruments that we use to look at practical responses and programmatic approaches are still very much based on minimum diets, whether that be through cash based initiatives to help people.
It's very that's one thing.
I think they're limited to the minimum necessary.
Secondly, the target populations that are taken into account are still very limited.
I understand on a financial, et cetera basis and the vulnerabilities, but there's very little programming done around these increasing numbers of people with obesity and NCDs that do fall out of the current programming.
I would say that perhaps that's an area of work that the CFS could help coordinate with the different actors in fragile and conflict affected states.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
We will now go online.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
Go ahead, Marie Jose.
Just a few issues to share.
First of all, this issue of financial accessibility of a healthy diet.
This can't be seen separately from the issue of natural resources and the deterioration in natural resources.
I think this is a point that's essential to bear in mind in the context of climate change.
I completely agree with Lynettes that it's very important to connect the different silos.
I think obviously we had an exchange with the chair in a one health approach that's going to be extremely important so that we can safeguard our resources, soils, of course, and indeed, of course, our health.
Now, I'm extremely aware of this matter of the enterprises roles and their focus.
I think we need to ask how local initiatives can be leveraged in this context of the concentration of businesses and what's being called mainstreaming.
I think that is a priority.
The HP has been addressing this issue and is in discussion with the Bureau as well about that.
I think obviously the future is for the young people who will be the ones to manage it ultimately and we need to also absolutely work on the question of youth.
I think we're all agreed on this.
The issue of the non food aspect of this is very important because food can't simply be adjustment variable that you are inputting into the rest of the picture.
I'm very aware of the importance of what Marcio says as well.
For women, particularly young women, you have to work from a holistic context, focusing on education, for example, and not forget health infrastructure.
There are some initiatives I'm very familiar with in Ethiopia which have been very impressive and they have that global holistic vision supporting a whole raft of different actions at the same time.
I think those are the points I had.
We'll go online now and then come back into the room.
Online from the CSIPM Isabel Alvarez, you have the floor.
Good afternoon.
I'll be talking Spanish.
Can you hear me? My name is Isabel Alvarez.
I'm a part of Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples mechanisms representing consumer groups.
I wanted to firstly answer the question about the role of the committee and sharing our vision.
As other speakers have said, this provides, not a space, the space to bring together different policies and it's a space under a rights based mandate at the United Nations allowing different rights bearers to come together and speak to stakeholders.
It's fundamental when we're talking about the right to an appropriate diet and that we connected to other human rights.
We also want to highlight because we think this is very important, the need for this systemic vision and also the need to highlight the role of the body itself.
I think that, and I'm speaking on behalf as one of my colleagues here, is that what is needed is to really highlight all of the work that's being done and all of the products and guidelines and recommendations that we've already produced.
We're not beginning from square one here.
Obviously, crises are escalating and we have a space of overlapping multiple crises, but we already have many tools that we've created and I think it's extremely important to be able to highlight the work we've done and all of the tools and processes that have been carried out over so much time and so many years, both yourselves and we have dedicated time to producing that.
I think it's very important to highlight that and not lose sight of it.
Furthermore, I'm picking up on some of the contributions.
I think it is high time to deal with the clear gaps, talking about scientific evidence.
I think scientific evidence is speaking for itself, for example, in terms of climate change on the global markets and the globalized architecture.
I think scientific evidence and also the demonstrable, obvious vital signs that we're seeing on a daily basis.
I think it's important to really highlight the breaches, the shortcomings and gaps that are being increasingly pointed to by that evidence.
The gaps, these shortfalls are being obviously connected to the commercial and financial architecture of the world, which means that not all countries are at the same starting point and that's essential to be able to really identify genuine solutions that as other speakers have said, might begin to resolve some of the structural issues here so we can all make progress.
We also think it's important we think about which model we are using to build a grow food systems.
We've heard about scientific evidence and we're delighted to share all of the documents that are missing scientific papers that have been published in prestigious journals which clearly demonstrate the impact in terms of nutrition is closely connected to chemical fertilization and the drop in that has a major impact.
The quantity of chemicals that are turning up in food is directly related to that, or how the use of chemicals can deteriorate the qualities in soils and the properties in the soil, of course, that we need for our own bodies are being heavily impacted by that.
In any case, I want to highlight that this is the space.
This committee provides the space for the dialogue and allows us to really get multiple results and we've consolidated them in the past and this will help us to improve nutrition for everybody.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Isabel.
We'll go back to the room here in Geneva, if you could introduce yourself and then we have about two or three more speakers and then I'm afraid we'll have to close.
Please go ahead.
Thank you very much, Edward Boyle from the scaling up nutrition Movement.
I'll be brief.
Just in terms of the role that the CFS can play, really reinforcing the mechanisms for collaborative governance that we're talking about today, not just at the global level, but also at the national and subnational level and supporting these structures that connect and support the coherence across the different policies that are necessary for achieving healthy diets.
Um, Jen talked about the role of the nutrition Council in Brazil and similar mechanisms exist in many other countries, including the 67 countries that make up the scaling of nutrition movement where there are multi stakeholder, multi sector platforms for nutrition and dietary and food outcomes at the country level, and we're working with those platforms to bring in more stakeholders, connect them to the national food systems, conveners to climate actors, to humanitarian actors, and so on.
The other thing to mention is that these platforms don't always just include government sectors, but also representatives from civil society, from academia and also youth who have often played a really critical role in elevating evidence and advocating and making the links between these different policy priorities as well.
Just in terms of the role of the CFS, not just a global level, but reinforcing those mechanisms at national level as well.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Could I give the floor to doctor Lusen? Then we'll go online for one final comment.
Just a brief comment.
I agree with the majority of the comments expressed.
I do think that there is a missing component, which is the monitoring of commitments.
I'm looking at the guidelines of the voluntary guidelines for food systems and nutrition, which in many ways are a very important preamble for this conversation.
As of vulnerability, people centered approaches, gender equality, humanitarian are already addressed in these guidelines.
Getting to that stage, it was a milestone, let's put it in this way.
They reflect the The difficulties in this collaborative governance, but the necessary dialogues that need to happen.
However, without accountability, the needle is not going to be moved in any way and particularly as a collaborative mechanism, we won't have the opportunity to reflect on whether commitments have led to any spaces.
Building from that, I take it as a very positive way because that we are also naming The negative part is not only about promoting fruits and vegetables, as we have been saying is also mitigating other areas.
I think that in that sense, C the space that I see has evolved in that direction and is reflecting the multiple conversations that are happening.
What I'm trying to say here is that CFS needs to be the space for actually having the dialogues of relevant conversations without shying away from critical topics.
And from that, I believe that it's possible to achieve progress because if we don't shy away from the critical topics, then we can address in some way and conciliate interest.
Then from that we can monitor some type of progress and use that to reflect on whatever decisions have been made.
That part of monitoring, I would strongly think about how we can see.
Then we just cross because I didn't have the opportunity to say, I was in Rome last year and something that I saw as a very positive thing is the interventions from member states and even observers, I would say, were very similar between Geneva, WHA, and CFS.
And that's critical that we have it between this and I go back to the spirit of having this conversation in Geneva and Rome simultaneously because we need more diverse conversations because food is at the center of health, development, sustainability, humanitarian progress.
So just to reiterate that it is very important to have a stereo conversation.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Luce.
We're doing our best and thank you for your support for that.
We'll have one last comment from Online readout by an HLPE member.
Then I'll try and wrap up before handing over to the chair to close.
This is a contribution from doctor Amadi he's an HFPE member.
He's calling from he's intervening and joining from Iran, doesn't have a good connections.
He couldn't intervene directly, so I'm going to read his contribution.
The committee on world food security can contribute to improving economic access to affordable healthy diet mainly through its role as a global policy platform that shapes food security and nutrition governance.
Several practical pathways stand out.
First, CFS can strengthen policy convergence on healthy diet as a human right and policy objective, encouraging government to align agriculture, trade, and social protection policies so that affordability is not treated separately from nutrition outcomes.
This includes promoting guidelines that prioritize nutrient dense food over calorie dense ultra process initiatives.
Second, through evidence generated by its scientific arm, the HLP ECFS can further document how local food systems, smallholder production, and shorter value chain can reduce production and distribution costs while improving dietary diversity.
This evidence can guide countries toward investment strategies that lower market dependency on imported or processed foods.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Fata.
Thank you, doctor Ahmadi.
Yeah.
It's now my pleasure to try to wrap up this very, very rich and dense session.
I was going to try and do a summary of the first couple of panels, but I think that's impossible because I really have to hand over to the chair.
I will just reflect back to you or echo back to you the things that I heard about the role of the CFS because I think that's the most, let's say, functional part of the discussion for the purposes of the CFS.
Um There were several speakers who spoke about the valuable work that the CFS has already done and its relevance for healthy diets, the different voluntary guidelines from the right to food to the food systems and other tools.
But as we just heard, what is being done to monitor the implementation and the impact of these guidelines and where is the accountability in the system to make sure that all of the work that's being done here to promote this dialogue is actually having an impact somewhere.
The importance of looking at what's happening at the national level in terms of participatory governance structures that reflect the CFS or might be linked to the CFS at the national and sub national levels.
The examples were given of Conse and the sun movement.
The importance of promoting again and again, this dialogue between the WHO and the Rome based agencies including through the CFS.
This is a platform where all of those agencies can come around the table as equals.
I importance of continuing the dialogue on some of the more contentious issues, we heard a lot.
Let me just highlight a couple of the issues as Lynette highlighted, policy convergence on what.
Many of the things that were said in the room, I think did converge, but some to me sounded like there might be some trade offs there and we need more focused discussion so that we can really at least have a dialogue about them.
Many people spoke about the importance of local territorial markets, but we also heard about the importance of international trade.
Are these two conflicting types of markets? Do they align? Do they not align? To what extent can we promote both of them? That could be one area.
There was a lot of discussion about the importance of planetary boundaries, but is healthy food also necessarily good for the planet or not? That discussion about where do you put that? Maybe we should be talking about healthy and sustainable diets all together at once.
I don't know.
But that interaction between human health and planetary health, we heard also about the importance of one health.
Um, so maybe with that, I will just wrap it up like that.
It's difficult to wrap up everything, but thank you, HLP, for reminding us that the affordability of healthy diets is a topic in the upcoming critical and emerging issues.
This is a chance, as you know, for the CFS to pick this topic up if there's sufficient interest among members to integrate it into the upcoming multi year program of work.
So thank you to all the speakers.
Thank you to the secretary, and with that, I would like to pass it over to the chair for his closing remarks, Professor Nablus.
Thank you.
I would like to thank all the speakers and participants for this rich, insightful and highly constructive discussion.
Also, a special word of appreciation goes to Maria for her supporting and guiding us through today's dialogue and also I wish to extend my thanks to doctor Fatah and Alexandra, as well as for the CFS Secretariat for their hard work and also for the interpreters being with us today.
Today's exchange have reinforced a central point improving the affordability of healthy diet is invincible to tackling hunger and all forms of malnutrition.
At the time when there is 2.6 billion people cannot afford healthy diets, the urgency of this challenge cannot be overstated.
What has emerged really from our discussion is that the affordability is not only, it is about prices or incomes.
It is about food systems or our systems.
It is shaped by how our food systems function, by inequalities within the across countries, and by the multiple shocks that continue to affect food security and nutrition, including economic instability, climate change, and conflicts.
While many of these challenges require action and political commitment beyond the scope of the CFS, today's dialogue has reaffirmed the importance role of this committee that can be played.
First, our policy products, including the CFS voluntary guidelines on food systems and nutrition and right to food guidelines offer a strong normative foundation to support countries and stakeholders in addressing barriers across including affordability.
Second, the CFS has a unique convening power and can bring together governments, UN agencies, civil society, private sector, and research institution to reduce fragmentation, strengthen coordination, and foster collaboration.
Third, CFS can serve as a space for learning and exchange and today's dialogue has demonstrated the value of collaborative governance workstream in advancing shared and understanding and collective actions.
So let me conclude by thanking you all once again for your active participation and openness to engage.
I look forward to continuing this important conversation with all of you and seeing you at Rome Nutrition Week, which will be the end of this month from May 25th to May 29th, also as well as to be in the CFS plenary session for the 54th session next October.
Thank you all.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
The meeting is officially closed.
I would just like to ask all the panelists to come maybe gather here for a picture, a group picture.
Thank you very much and goodbye to Rome and everybody else, Chao.
Chao, thank you.