With the presence of ministers from Guyana, Honduras and Uruguay, IICA presented a document on food systems that rejects the classification of “broken” and underscores productive strengths and the need for adequate assessments to help in policy design

San José, 22 April 2024 (IICA) – With the presence of the Ministers of Agriculture of Guyana, Honduras and Uruguay, the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) presented the document “On 'broken' food systems and other narratives” with a call to recognize the productive strengths of a sector that has exponentially increased its capacity to provide food to humanity at increasingly affordable prices and in harmony with nature.

The work is co-authored by researchers Eduardo Trigo, Eugenio Díaz-Bonilla and Rosario Campos, and describes the most notable moments in the history of global food systems, emphasizing their phenomenal expansion in recent decades, when the world's population increased from about 3 billion in 1960 to nearly 8 billion people today. In that period, production increased by an even greater proportion, since there are currently 30% more calories available and almost 35% more protein per capita.

According to the study, this expansion was achieved with an increase in global agricultural land use of less than 9% between 1960 and 2021, and food prices that, in real terms, are 14% below the levels of the 1960s and 1970s.

Despite this, the levels of hunger, still persistently high, the difficulties in accessing healthy diets, the increase in obesity, the high level of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the harsh living conditions of a large part of the population that exist in different stages of production and industrialization have given rise to a narrative that claims that “food systems are broken.”

Díaz-Bonilla, IICA advisor and senior visiting researcher of the IICA/IFPRI program; and Trigo, agricultural economist and leading expert in agricultural development issues, stressed in the presentation that any assessment of the functioning of food systems must be approached in a well-balanced way. These analyses must consider not only their weaknesses but also their strengths, in order to obtain adequate diagnoses to design policies that correct negative aspects, enhance existing benefits and involve the greatest number of stakeholders in a positive transformation that contributes to the fulfillment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement.

“The document aims to delve deeper into the reality of food systems to better understand the logic of their operation. Much progress has been made since the 1960s when widespread famines were predicted until the present day where, despite the fact that the population in the world and in the Americas multiplied by more than 2.5-2.6 times, the supply of calories and proteins per capita at the world level is currently between 30-34% higher than six decades ago, and even more so in the Americas,” said the Director General of IICA, Manuel Otero.

“For these and other reasons, we do not believe that food systems are broken, or failed, or subtract value because they have more costs than benefits, as some narratives argue, although improvements are obviously necessary in various dimensions,” he stated.

The Minister of Agriculture of Guyana, Zulfikar Mustapha, said that the document “allows us to highlight aspects that will contribute to us having the best strategies and designs to improve food systems,” at a time when the Caribbean country is seeking, together with its partners of the Caribbean Community (Caricom), to drastically reduce food imports by boosting production, and reduce the high cost of healthy diets by modernizing its agri-food sector.

“We live in very extreme times. Our region is one of the most vulnerable to disasters, to climate events, and within this framework we must offer safe products and compensate farmers for mitigating these problems. The document contributes to thinking about the agriculture of the future, about trends; we cannot keep doing the same thing, otherwise we will have more food insecurity. Guyana commends IICA for putting into perspective the agriculture of the Americas, by facing problems such as consumer demands, production strategies, nutrition and food security," he indicated.

For his part, the Minister of Livestock, Agriculture and Fisheries of Uruguay, Fernando Mattos, also president of the Inter-American Board of Agriculture (IABA) – the highest governing body of IICA and made up of 34 ministers – considered that “the approach of the document is the right one,” and highlighted the productive capacities of food systems in the Americas and their strength to “increasingly produce more using fewer natural resources.”

“The failures often come from the functioning of markets and trade, because there can be no political, democratic and social stability without more liberalization of trade,” and regretted “the growing obstacles to trade, which are increasingly focused on environmental aspects and not based on science.”

Laura Suazo, Secretary of Agriculture and Livestock of Honduras, thanked IICA “for bringing up these very important issues for public policymaking” and indicated that “our job as decision-makers is to ensure production so that there are incentives, and create means to strengthen rural life and livelihoods; otherwise, we will be perpetuating social systems with inadequate consumption patterns. This is an urgent call to action. In Honduras, we are working successfully to combat malnutrition and food insecurity. I encourage IICA to create more strategies and solutions to produce more, considering consumption and distribution.”

Claudia Palacios, the Colombian journalist and writer, was the moderator of the event.
 
Latin America and the Caribbean, a productive power
 
The document highlights that, given this situation, it is necessary to consider whether this is the best approach to involve stakeholders, particularly farmers, in efforts aimed at solving problems and increasing current benefits, in order to advance in the fulfilment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the goals of the Paris Agreement.

“A data-driven analysis shows that food systems need adjustments, but the positive aspects must be strengthened and not interrupted, especially in the case of the Americas, a continent crucial for global food security. Latin America and the Caribbean has outpaced global growth over the past five to six decades and increased its share of total global agricultural and food production from 10% in the 1960s to around 13% today. Since the 2000s, the region has also become the main net food exporting region in the world,” indicates the document produced by IICA.

The author goes on to say: “The region is also key in the environmental aspect, since it has six of the ten richest countries in terms of biodiversity and houses a good part of the globe's natural resources. Therefore, it plays a central role as a carbon sink in the planetary cycle of water and oxygen, in the preservation of biodiversity and in the mitigation and adaptation to climate change.”

Thus, according to the Díaz-Bonilla and Trigo study, any increase in agricultural production in the region will have to come from greater productivity based on science and technology, which can not only reduce current GHG emissions, but also expand the capacity of agriculture as a carbon sink.

In this way, the authors explain that “agriculture is the only sector that can simultaneously help with mitigation, adaptation and resilience, making it a considerable part of the solution to climate change, as the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean have already shown, as pioneers in the widespread adoption of no-till farming and sustainable livestock farming.”

For this reason, the work concludes, “we propose a more balanced narrative and approach, which not only foregrounds weaknesses, but also highlights current strengths. In this way, there will be a greater chance of having an adequate diagnosis to design policies that correct the negative aspects, enhance the existing benefits and involve the largest possible number of actors in a positive transformation that will contribute to the fulfilment of the SDGs and the Paris Agreement".

Link for download: https://repositorio.iica.int/handle/11324/22073

More information:
Institutional Communication Division.
comunicacion.institucional@iica.int