Food Security

Global food systems today are in need of transformation. Billions of people are poorly nourished, millions of farmers live at subsistence level, enormous amounts of food go to waste and poor farming practices are taking a toll on the environment. Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 will require food systems that are inclusive, sustainable, efficient, nutritious and healthy.
Achieving a true transformation of food systems requires a holistic approach – one engaging all stakeholders and deploying a wide array of actions such as improved policy, increased investment, expanded infrastructure, farmer capacity-building, consumer behaviour change and improved resource management. Technology innovations, combined with other interventions, can play an important role in enabling and accelerating food systems transformation.

The Agricultural Outlook 2018-2027 is a collaborative effort of the OECD and FAO prepared with input from the experts of their member governments and from specialist commodity organisations. It provides a consensus assessment of the ten-year prospects for agricultural and fish commodity markets at national, regional and global levels. This year’s edition contains a special chapter on the prospects and challenges of agriculture and fisheries in the Middle East and North Africa.

The Global Risks Report 2016 features perspectives from nearly 750 experts on the perceived impact and likelihood of 29 prevalent global risks over a 10-year timeframe. The risks are divided into five categories: economic, environmental, geopolitical, societal and technological.

The report also examines the interconnections among the risks, and through that analysis explores three areas where global risks have the greatest potential to impact society. These are the concept of the “(dis)empowered citizen”, the impact of climate change on food security, and the potential of pandemics to threaten social cohesion.

The report also takes an in-depth look at the how the global security landscape could evolve in the future; sharing the outcomes of a year-long study to examine current trends and possible driving forces for the future of international security.

Horizon 2020 has a single overarching objective: the achievement of scientific, technological and societal impact based on excellent research and innovation projects. It aims to achieve economic impact by supporting industrial competitiveness, economic growth and job creation. It aims to achieve societal impact by developing the means to respond effectively, quickly and efficiently to the urgent societal challenges (climate change, loss of biodiversity, ageing, etc.) Europe is faced with.

This brochure, which presents examples of research and innovation projects funded through past EU programmes and constitutes a record of impact, shows that the ambitious goals set for Horizon 2020 are fully justified.

From 2014 to 2020, Horizon 2020 brings all EU research and innovation funding together under a single programme with three key objectives:

- Excellent Science: Strengthening the EU’s position as world leader in science and attracting the best talents to work together across Europe;
- Competitive Industries: Strengthening industrial leadership in innovation to get Europe back on the path to growth and job creation;
- Better Society: Innovating to tackle societal challenges shared by all Europeans, across seven key themes: Health, demographic change and well-being; Food security, sustainable agriculture, marine and maritime and inland water research and the bio-economy; Secure, clean and efficient energy; Smart, green and integrated transport; Climate action, environment, resource efficiency and raw materials; Europe in a changing world -inclusive, innovative and reflective societies; and Secure societies – protecting the freedom and security of Europe and its citizens

Anticipating future developments in global agriculture is by no means a simple exercise. In the last few years, many of the acute phenomena observed have complicated further the formulation of long-term prospects. The turbulence of world agricultural markets, the price spikes of 2008 and 2011, the wide climate variability experienced in important production regions, and the enhanced linkage among agriculture and other markets such as the energy and the financial markets have propelled interest in revisiting the relations among agriculture, its natural resource basis, economic development, food security and population growth. Discussions of the relationships among these phenomena are lively, as are those on what can be done to prevent the onset of more frequent and more critical conditions in the coming decades.
Given its various fields of expertise, FAO is at the centre of the technical debate on these themes. In 2009, FAO organized an expert meeting and forum around the question of “How to feed to the world in 2050”. This initiative was supported by papers authored by world-class experts. This work has been revisited, and is now presented in this volume.