Food security exists when
“….all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life…” 1996 World Food Summit.
To achieve food security goals, all four dimensions must be fulfilled simultaneously: availability, access, utilization and stability.
Food security continues to be a global priority, constantly at risk due to a range of factors, including climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, conflicts, financial instability, and the loss of biodiversity. In the past few years, this priority, already the focus of Sustainable Development Goal 2 of the United Nations 2030 Agenda, has become an even more urgent international priority due to the conflict in Ukraine, and the resulting rise in food prices.
Food security involves diverse challenges, starting with logistical problems affecting farmers’ access to production factors, farm labour availability, and livestock trade, in addition to problems related to market and supply disruptions that can lead to local food shortages and higher prices, especially in the case of perishable foods.
In April 2020, FAO and the African Union jointly committed to protect food security during the pandemic crisis, (Meeting of African Ministers for Agriculture – Declaration on Food Security and Nutrition during the COVID-19 Pandemic (Final)), underscoring the growing logistical tensions in food markets that should be mitigated by “shortening supply chains”: producing more, better and, if possible, locally. They also pointed out how food supply depletion and reduced cash availability among African urban dwellers could pose risks to social stability.
In accordance with the UN agencies reports on these issues, it would be desirable to further focus resources on strengthening food security, particularly by adopting specific measures, such as increasing investments in agriculture, improving access to new agricultural technologies, fostering access to credit, new technologies, and information for farmers, supporting small-scale food producers, conserving local plant and animal genetic resources for food and agriculture, and adopting measures to counter food price volatility.
Food security can be strengthened by promoting access to food for all, especially of sufficient quantity and quality, and through the diversified and ecologically sustainable production of food at local and/or regional level, fostering the nexus between the protection of natural resources, agriculture, nutrition, health, and labour, with a focus on crops with higher nutritional value and/or greater resilience to climate change.
The emphasis is on food system transformation (UN Food System Summit 2021– The UN Food Systems Summit +2 Stocktaking Moment 2023), as a systemic approach grounded on the set of multifaceted links between people, organizations, technologies, environment and other aspects of production, as well as biodiversity. Aligning our agrifood systems with the SDGs requires multilateral, cooperative, targeted and rapid actions based on a whole-of-society approach, in order to build a sustainable agricultural sector capable of producing healthy food, while also protecting natural resources such as soil, water and air, that is climate resilient and meets animal welfare standards, preserves biodiversity and is competitive. In the wake of the UN Food System Summit, developing countries presented their UN National Pathways to food systems, as an important tool to support and further discussions on food system approaches, providing key elements to develop projects aligned with local needs and requirements.
The initiatives implemented by AICS aim to introduce good sustainable agricultural practices, while emphasising the close link between the environment, hunger and migration, and acting accordingly, by providing more social and economic opportunities. This approach should also include promoting the continuity of food supply and distribution chains and improving the livelihoods of small-scale farmers, livestock breeders and fishers, also recognizing the central role played by women and young people in sustainable agriculture, livestock and fisheries.
AICS, through its Office VI, and with the support of AICS field offices abroad, actively participates in coordinating food security activities with its partners, inside and outside the EU, to align the objectives at Country level and integrate actions with different partners, as a means to achieve complementarity and synergy. In particular, AICS pursues food security issues through the Office VI by actively participating in several international working groups, including the G7 Food Security Working Group (FS WG G7), the Global Alliance for Food Security (GAFs), the Global Donor Platform for Rural Development (GDPRD) (whose Secretariat, in Rome, is hosted at IFAD) with an AICS representative as co-chair, the UN Coalitions developed on the sidelines of the 2021 Food System Summit; moreover, it is driving participation in the UN Agroecology Coalition and is part of the working groups of the UN Zero Hunger Coalition, the School Meals Coalition as well as the HDP Nexus Coalition, which is the remit of Office II.
At European level, AICS, through its Office, participates in the HARDs meetings (Heads of Agriculture and Rural Development) group managed by the European Commission’s DG INTPA. In Italy, the Agency, also through Office VI, follows the work of the National Committee on Food Security coordinated by the Foreign Ministry’s DGCS.