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The United Kingdom must change what it eats and the way it grows food as the current eating habits are destroying the environment, which in turn endangers the country’s food security, a government commissioned report said.

In order to stop “terrible damage” to people’s health as well as the environment, the report recommends consumption of meals with more vegetables and fruits and less fat, sugar and salt.

The National Food Strategy’s report also suggests to introduce a sugar and salt reformulation tax, with the revenue to be used to expand free school meals.

“The way we produce food is doing terrible damage to the environment and to our bodies, and putting an intolerable strain on the National Health Service,” said the report’s author Henry Dimbleby, adding high obesity rate has been a major factor in the island country’s tragically high fatality rate. The author noted it is high time to seize the moment to build a better food system, Reuters reported.

The report, commissioned by the government in 2019, also recommends measures to safeguard Britain’s natural environment, by investing in sustainable farming techniques.

The report sets out how diets will need to change over the next ten years in order to meet the government’s existing goals on health, climate as well as nature.

By the year 2032, fruit and vegetable consumption will have to rise by about 30%. However, the consumption of food high in saturated fat, salt and sugar will have to go down by nearly 25%.

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The European Union (EU) carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) may change trade patterns in favour of nations where production is comparatively carbon-efficient but do little to lessen climate change,  an UNCTAD report warned.

The report shows the CBAM’s potential implications on carbon emissions, international trade, income generation, employment opportunities inside and outside the EU, with a special focus on developing and vulnerable countries.
Announced on July 14, the CBAM is likely to introduce new CO2 emissions-cutting measures transitionally in the year 2023 and finalize them before 2026.

“Climate and environmental considerations are at the forefront of policy concerns, and trade cannot be the exception. CBAM is one of these options, but its impact on developing countries also needs to be considered,” UNCTAD Acting Secretary-General Isabelle Durant said.

The report confirms that launching the CBAM would lower part of the carbon leakage produced by the different climate change ambitions between the EU and other countries.  

The UNCTAD report goes on to say that several of the EU’s trading partners exporting goods in carbon-intensive sectors have expressed concerns that the new carbon border adjustment mechanism would substantially curtail their exports.

“Exports by developing countries across the targeted carbon-intensive sectors would be reduced by 1.4% if the CBAM is implemented with a price of $44 per tonne of embedded CO2 emissions, and by 2.4% if it’s implemented with an $88 per tonne price,” said the report.

However, the consequences would differ significantly by country depending on their carbon production intensity as well as export structure.

Nearly a tenth of the global population – up to 811 million people – were undernourished in 2020, said a new report titled “The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World.” The report is jointly published by FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and the World Health Organization (WHO).

The number of undernourished people in the world continued to rise in 2020.

Between 720 and 811 million people faced hunger.

Check out the @UN interactive report on the State of Food Security & Nutrition in the world
👉https://t.co/10sy4698OF#SOFI2021 #FoodSystems pic.twitter.com/7coiKRpv0E

— FAO Knowledge (@FAOKnowledge) July 12, 2021

Facts & Figures:

More than half of all undernourished people (about 418 million) live in Asia followed by Africa (282 million) and Latin America and the Caribbean (60 million).

However, the sharpest rise in hunger was witnessed in Africa, where the estimated prevalence of undernourishment is more than double that of any other region.

The world is not on track to end hunger & malnutrition by 2030.

Between 720 and 811 million people faced hunger in 2020.

We must transform our agri-#FoodSystems so everyone has access to the food they need.

📙UN Report 👉 https://t.co/TG4RSQ1rzs
#SOFI2021 pic.twitter.com/CqnVzkriXm

— FAO (@FAO) July 12, 2021

The report goes on to say that about 30 percent of the global population did not have year-round access to adequate food. Also, gender inequality too intensified i.e. for every 10 food-insecure males; there were 11 food-insecure females last year.

Based on current trends, the report estimates that Sustainable Development Goal 2 (Zero Hunger by 2030) will be missed by a margin of approximately 660 million people.

Recommendations:

· Integrate humanitarian, development and peace-building policies in conflict areas, such as through social protection measures to prevent families from selling their assets in exchange for food.

· Climate resilience needs to be scaled up across food systems.

· Strengthen the resilience of the most vulnerable to economic adversity through in-kind or cash support programs to reduce the impact of food price volatility.

· Lower the cost of nutritious foods with interventions along supply chains.

· Tackle poverty and structural inequalities by boosting food value chains in poor communities

· Strengthen food environments and changing consumer behavior

11 people die of hunger and malnutrition each minute and that the number of people facing famine-like conditions globally has increased 6 times over the last year, said a new report titled “The Hunger Virus Multiplies” by Oxfam.

The anti-poverty organization said that the death toll from famine outpaces that of COVID-19, which kills around 7 people per minute.

“The statistics are staggering, but we must remember that these figures are made up of individual people facing unimaginable suffering. Even one person is too many,” said Oxfam America’s President and CEO Abby Maxman, adding starvation continues to be used as a weapon of war, depriving civilians of food and water and impeding humanitarian relief.

Some of the world’s worst hunger ‘hotspots’ include conflict-ridden Syria, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, South Sudan and Yemen that have witnessed a rise in extreme levels of hunger since last year.

3 Key Drivers of Food Insecurity

· Conflict

· COVID19-induced economic shocks

· Climate Crisis

“Warring parties must first forge peace, and governments must focus their resources on social protection and programs that address the needs of vulnerable people and save lives now, rather than on arms that perpetuate conflict and hunger,” said the report.

In order to end the hunger crisis, as per the brief, governments must rebuild a fairer and more sustainable global economy. It goes on to say that they must eradicate underlying inequalities that widen the gap between rich and poor people. 

Africa was making significant progress in reducing poverty, hunger, and malnutrition, but due to COVID-19, this progress has recently stalled, and in a few cases reversed, said a new report by the Malabo Montpellier Panel that called on governments to reorient African food systems.

The report titled “Connecting the Dots: Policy Innovations for Food Systems Transformation in Africa” states that the next level of policy-making will need a more holistic as well as nuanced approach that operates within the inter-linkages of policy domains such as farming, education, health and environment. The report goes on to furnish concrete evidence on the vital role played by food systems in reducing poverty levels and improving livelihoods in Africa, particularly in rural areas.

From the experience of four countries – Malawi, Ghana, Morocco and Rwanda – the report presents five recommendations in order to resume momentum towards reducing hunger and malnutrition levels:

·         Ensure multi-sectoral coordination across government departments in order to reflect the interlinkage of food systems transformation.

·         Facilitate evidence-based and guided experimentation and innovation of policies and accelerated science capacity for technical solutions supporting broad food systems change.

·         Institutionalize monitoring, evaluation and learning for impactful planning and implementation

·         Integrate food systems transformation into long-term national growth agendas.

·         Enhance CAADP (Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme) indicators to reflect the complexity of food systems

As policymakers look to the future, key lessons must be drawn from the experience of the last few years, said the report. Governments must reorient future trajectories so as to “build back better” and plan for beyond 2030.

Given the inherent complexity of food systems, policy approaches are more likely to be effective if they move beyond agriculture and food production where it trade-offs can be better managed and synergies could be leveraged.

Leading agri-biotech firm Micropep technologies announced that it has raised EUR8.5 million (USD10 million) in Series A funding round led by Supernova Invest along with FMC Venture.

The funds will be utilized not only for development of proprietary discovery platform but also for disease control and weed suppression.

France-based Micropep, which was spun out from Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), provides an innovative discovery platform for the development of novel peptide-based biological products for farming.

“In an industry that has been challenged by a shrinking discovery pipeline, active ingredients that are slowly being phased out and increased pest and weeds resistance to chemicals, our technology provides a ground-breaking alternative,” said Thomas Laurent, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, adding peptides and small proteins are of paramount importance for sustainable crop protection solutions.

Romain Sautrau, Investment Director at Supernova Invest, termed Micropep’s advanced technology as a way to disrupt future agriculture. While Amar Singh, FMC Ventures MD noted Micropep’s pioneering technology can enhance plant traits without altering plant DNA.

Founded in 2016, Micropep identifies as well as enhances the expression of naturally occurring regulatory peptides (miPEPs) that can temporarily regulate the expression of microRNAs of plants and their targeted genes, thereby conferring resistance to pathogens.

For physical grain trading in Brazil, leading software provider to agribusinesses – Barchart – has joined hands with Grão Direto. Under this partnership, Grão Direto’s proprietary database of Brazil’s grain prices is to be made available in Barchart’s analytics platform i.e. cmdtyView.

In addition, Barchart will also manage both API distribution as well as licensing for the data as part of their best-in-class global grain price offering.

“cmdtyView is the premier platform for physical commodity analytics, and this exciting new partnership with Grão Direto enhances our global offering even further with Brazilian grain data,” said Barchart CEO Mark Haraburda. 

“Grão Direto’s mission aligns with our own efforts to enhance the agricultural industry through technology, and we’re thrilled to work with them to expand our coverage into new markets and provide users with access to inland grain prices for Brazil,” Haraburda added.

“We are very proud and excited to collaborate with Barchart and being able to extend the reach of our data to benefit their clients around the world,” said Grão Direto CEO Alexandre Borges Silva, adding its offerings help a number of grain growers, buyers and brokers in efficient trading and generation of real value in operations that puts the company in a unique position to provide market intelligence solutions for the Brazilian market.

For the first time in 12 months, global food commodity prices dropped in the month of June. The FAO Food Price Index, which tracks changes in the international prices of the most globally traded food commodities, averaged 124.6 points in June 2021, down 2.5% from May.

The plunge in June reflected decline in the prices of vegetable oils, cereals and dairy products, which more than offset generally higher meat and sugar quotations.

The FAO Vegetable Oil Price Index decreased by 9.8 percent in the month, marking a 4-month low, while the Rome-based FAO’s Meat Price Index rose by over 2%.

Moving against the overall food price trend, FAO Sugar Price rose by 0.9 percent month-on-month. According to the UN food agency, uncertainties over the impact of non-favorable weather conditions on crop yields in Brazil exerted upward pressure on prices.

As per the latest Cereal Supply and Demand Brief, FAO’s forecast for worldwide cereal production in 2021 has been lowered marginally. Similarly, forecasts for world coarse grains production have been cut back too.

In contrast, the forecast of global rice production in 2021 has undergone an upward adjustment since June, with a record of 519.5 million tonnes of rice now likely to be harvested in 2021, up about 1 percent from 2020.

Appreciating Bangladesh for its remarkable implementation capacity, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) President Gilbert F Houngbo noted that the country is presently the largest portfolio of IFAD worldwide and one of the best performing ones with best practices in multiple areas.

This absorptive capacity of Bangladesh is a glaring example for many other developing countries in the world, Gilbert said during a ceremony at the IFAD Headquarter in Rome, Italy.

“Bangladesh is one of the very few countries which receive highest development assistance with significant project implementation capacity along with the active representation in the Executive Board and Governance Structure of IFAD”, Mr Houngbo noted.

The South Asian country’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative also congratulated the IFAD President for his reappointment as the sixth president of IFAD, underlining his dynamic leadership to attain the record level of commitment of about US$ 1.55 billion for IFAD in spite of the COVID-19 situation.

While describing the “development journey” of Bangladesh under the charismatic leadership of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the ambassador briefed him about the splendid performance of Bangladesh in the agriculture sector which received global recognition. The ambassador also apprised IFAD President that Bangladesh achieved food self-sufficiency under the leadership of PM Sheikh Hasina.

According to a new report released by the FAO and OECD, governments need to accelerate their efforts in order to meet global food security and environmental targets within 10 years until the 2030 deadline for achieving SDGs.

The report titled ‘OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2021-2030’ also describe expected trends based on existing policies, highlighting key areas where additional effort is required to meet the SDGs.

Key Takeaways

• The challenges of eradicating hunger will differ among countries. According to the report, average global food availability per person is projected to grow by 4% over the next decade.

• Consumers in middle-income countries could increase their food intake, while diets in low-income countries will remain largely same.

• The report suggests that the biofuel sector would expand at a much slower pace than over the past two decades. It further adds that biofuel production may use a falling share of the main feedstock commodities, except for sugarcane.

• Investments in improving yields and improved farm management will drive growth in global crop production.

• The report states that future demand for food is directly influenced by several factors, including population, income growth-cum-distribution, demographic changes, and food prices.

• The publication assumes that food demand will be additionally shaped by socio-cultural and lifestyle-driven changes in consumption patterns, including continuing urbanization and rising female participation in the workforce, plus rising consumer awareness.

• Trade remains especially significant for resource-constrained countries, which are highly reliant on importing basic and high-value food commodities.

• By 2030, over 33% of the agricultural production of Latin America and the Caribbean is likely to be exported. Given growing regional imbalances, using trade restrictive policies could have adverse effects on global food security, nutrition and farm livelihoods.