"Think big" for the global food trade to boost nutrition
Director General of FAO: Institutions that want to increase the availability of food often favor those that are not healthy.
World food trade is essential for all countries, but it is necessary to reform its rules and regulations in order to boost trade in healthy and nutritious food, instead of simply cheap, said today the FAO Director General, José Graziano da Silva.
Facilitating the export of basic products to feed the planet was a post-war imperative. But this transcendence has changed, since "basic products became synonymous with industrialized processed foods" and the danger of obesity is a threat today as serious as hunger, said Graziano da Silva, saying that "now things are changing completely. "
He explained that the popular "farm-to-table" model of the food chain does not take into account the complex realities of food systems. "Most of the important things we do," he said, "go beyond the fork."
The regulatory environment of food, which includes laws, regulations, production protocols, subsidies and disclosure of information, should be redesigned "to protect healthy foods and not food in general," said Graziano da Silva. "Promoting healthy food is part of FAO's mandate, and I would even say it is an obligation."
The Director General of FAO participated in the presentation in Rome of the 2018 Global Food Policy Report, published by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). This year's edition focuses on how to control the growing discontent with globalization.
"We must go beyond production," said Shenggen Fan, Director General of IFPRI, noting that the key challenges in pledging to end hunger include nutrition, employment, migration and open exchange. knowledge and information.
"We need trade, since all countries, without exception, need to exchange products to feed their population. The question is what kind of exchanges, "said Graziano da Silva.
Noting that there is a proliferation of trade tensions with respect to fresh produce in particular, he suggested that it is obsolete "to apply the same rules to the export of a product from Brazil to Japan to something produced in the vicinity to be sold in a farmers' market. in the same city".
As a result, mass-produced processed foods, often with an excess of saturated fats, salt and sugar, are actually favored by the current rules.
"To ensure that future food systems provide healthy food for all people, we will need a profound change," Graziano da Silva said, noting that this would involve a lot of work on the part of regulatory bodies such as the Codex Alimentarius.
"We'll have to think big if we really want to make this change."
The IFPRI report
Trade is essential to achieve global objectives in the eradication of hunger, said the Director General of IFPRI.
International trade increases food availability and can help increase its diversity, such as when tropical fruits are shipped to temperate countries during winter, and cereals travel in the other direction, Fan said.
In the past 40 years, the global proportion of food calories crossing international borders increased from about 12 percent to more than 19 percent, according to the IFPRI report.
The food trade affects issues beyond calories and consumption. Fan cited the example of China's "virtual water" imports through food imports from Brazil, Canada and the United States, without which the aquifers and rivers that exist in China itself could be depleted.
Fan concluded by stating that to ensure that the positive aspects of trade outweigh those potentially negative, it is important to create an environment that is inclusive, especially for the small farmers of the planet.
Source: www.fao.org
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