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The breakout discussions were rich in conversation but had relatively few areas of divergence. Only a handful of noteworthy instances of differing opinion rose to the top. One participant shared that sustainability might be an outdated term, and that regeneration is a better term to be using since regenerative systems deliver economic value for the farmer and for society. Another participant pointed out that instead of it being one term over the other, we should consider focusing on both sustainability and regeneration in the narratives and solutions for food systems. There were also two oppos... Read moreing opinions on sustainability goal setting. One participant expressed when a company sets a goal and does not meet it, there is the danger that the bar gets lower and lower, and nothing gets achieved. Another participant made the point that setting goals is important and it is okay if they are not perfectly achieved because when the ambitious goals are set the whole industry reacts. And finally, another participant noted that salmon isn’t the most affordable protein option, and accessibility and affordability must be key considerations for food systems transformation. Yet, as a highly innovative and young sector there are many learnings which could be shared with developing sectors to support global food system transformation. Overall, across all breakout groups, there was consistent agreement that food system transformation needs to deliver healthy and sustainable foods, embrace responsible (and regenerative) production methods, and encompass equity and social justice to address the most vulnerable among us. Read less

How can transparency and sustainability certifications help contribute to the UN’s vision for a transformed food system? Participants discussed how transparency is key in setting sustainability standards and being accountable if they are not met. It is important to be transparent about what was reached and what was not rather than simply changing the metric after the fact to align with the outcome. Participants noted that industry and government leaders are starting to understand the importance of nature-based solutions for protein production rather than simply minimizing the negative enviro... Read morenmental impacts. Certifications may aid in this continued adoption. Sustainability certifications can continue to be improved through third-party auditing and other oversight mechanisms. Several participants noted that certification schemes are more of a risk mitigation tool for food systems and may be especially useful for investment decision making. Certification matters since it is easy for investors to understand these schemes. For example, if 40% of companies are ASC certified, it is clear they are managing environmental, social and corporate governance issues well. Participants felt certifications are not the be-all and end-all, but are a part of risk mitigation. And finally, sustainability certifications are one way for pre-competitive platforms to effectively manage long-term goals. For example, GSI set a focused and ambitious goal of 100% ASC certification and 40% of production is now ASC-certified, up from 0% in 2013. This is the fastest uptake of similar certifications (e.g., Forest Stewardship Council, Marine Stewardship Council) of its kind. Read less

How can feed innovations help contribute to the UN’s vision for a transformed food system? Participants agreed that to reduce food system impacts, private sector stakeholders must discover and implement more eco-friendly feed ingredients for aquaculture and other protein sectors. One example came from Grieg Seafood, where their team is working with World Wildlife Fund to assess 400+ feed ingredients across many ESG indicators and mitigate the highest risk ingredients. As the aquaculture sector adopts feed innovations, participants saw on opportunity to apply learnings across the value chain ... Read moreand even to other protein sectors. To further support a reduction in the use of marine ingredients, the aquaculture sector has been investing in non-marine sources rich in omega-3 fatty acids, such as algae, canola crops and insects, and also in improving the efficiency of use of off-cuts and trimmings from other sectors to reduce food loss. In 2015, GSI and its associated feed companies issued a global tender to uncover commercially viable, non-marine alternative sources of omega-3 fatty acids to reduce the environmental impact of fish feed. The tender was a crucial signal to the R&D arena industry needs in a manner which accelerate their development, shortening the innovation process by many years. It resulted in the introduction and industry-wide application of non-marine fish feed ingredients (e.g., reducing fishmeal and fish oil use and increasing algae oil use). It boosted the variety and number of feed options available to the industry while reducing strain on fish stocks. Industry feed companies are now working with multiple providers, incorporating these fish-free ingredients into industry feeds. This approach could be transferrable to other sectors, given its success for salmon farming. Additionally, one participant noted that producing food where it will be consumed will be important to address extreme poverty and smallholder farmers in emerging economies. It can be done by "creating shared value" where feed companies teach techniques and sell feed to produce formulations to raise the livelihoods of smallholder farmers. Read less

How can sustainable finance help contribute to the UN’s vision for a transformed food system? Several participants stated that the whole financial system is taking responsibility in a positive shift. But, they think the trend of standard and opportunity assets is coming to all industries, including food. The finance industry can be a key leader in driving transformations to restore the oceans and co-collaborate to be a strong voice together. If the financial sector signals that it wants changes, the private sector can move forward at a rapid pace. Participants agreed that there are more and ... Read moremore investors looking at how to integrate environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) across their sector. To really drive systemic change in the food and agriculture sector, more research is needed alongside a bigger regulatory push globally like the EU Taxonomy initiative. Participants encouraged quality regulation to support best practices from the private sector and reflect trade-offs that are required. Regulatory frameworks are important to keep sustainable finance at the helm of change, and the EU Taxonomy initiative is a clear example of this. There is a clear way to drive sustainable transformation within the finance sector by making investments with clear key performance indicators (KPIs). In addition to industry metrics and reporting schemes, proper measurement of KPIs in the financial sector is key. Investors can put up the capital to help change, but to sustain it, it must be accepted and valued throughout the value chain to the end consumer. Read less

What role do you see for pre-competitive platforms in enabling food systems transformation? Many participants agreed that pre-competitive platforms are a necessary component to drive change at speed and scale. Several participants thought this model was useful for food systems transformation, but it may only be feasible for industries that are more consolidated. It has been difficult for much of the food and agriculture sector to move in this direction because it is complicated to organize and to incorporate smaller farmers and producers in such models. Participants also noted that there is a ... Read moreneed to communicate the value of pre-competitive collaborations more broadly to investors and other stakeholders. Pre-competitive platforms work for many reasons. They enable the costs necessary to transform industries around shared environmental goals to be spread more widely, while adhering to legally abiding guidelines. They also help reduce the duplication of efforts and resources while allowing companies to learn from each other on what works and what doesn’t. Another key learning was that we can reduce the burden and demotivation of lofty sustainability goals by working together, not just within the salmon or aquaculture industry but also across the supply chain and with other protein industries. Challenges are coming at accelerating pace and producers need to share information about environmental improvements with fellow producers much more quickly and adeptly if we are to respond effectively. Read less

What role do you see for public private partnerships in enabling food systems transformation? Participants noted that the private sector – along the entire value chain – has an essential role to play and is the driving transformation in many parts of the world, but there is room for improvement. Food and agriculture companies have significant power to enable food systems change, but there needs to be a focus on shared value across the system, rather than siloed business entities. It was stated, “One of the key parts [of change needed] is to move private sectors towards a food systems act... Read moreor rather than a private business [actor].” Participants noted that CEOs have shareholders they need to respond to immediately, whereas government generally has longer to introduce and measure the impact of policy changes. They felt that private sector can move faster and could ideally help broker conversations with government for urgency and speed. Participants also emphasized the importance of a company’s environmental and social sustainability efforts being prioritized across teams; they should be cross-cutting versus siloed to one division. Participants shared that the private and public sectors must collaborate and design science-based messages based on best practices and existing technologies, which will feed into transparency. Participants noted that public private partnerships are critical for enabling emerging practices, but they are often high risk for not delivering on promised outcomes. Guidance must be given to make sure they are successful, especially regarding the development of new technologies and emerging sectors. One key learning is to introduce staggered or phased investment from the private sector to ensure the program doesn’t end immediately after the government takes over. There also needs to be more clear adoption of maximum lease terms that incentivize industry investment – many times a company will not invest in something unless they are likely to see returns later down the line. Read less

Participants agreed that the link between environmental challenges, climate change, malnutrition and economic inequality is becoming clearer. Society is looking to the convergence of nutrition and sustainability for solutions. Change at speed and scale is essential to ensure global food systems can provide healthy, sustainable foods. There is a tremendous – and essential – role for the private sector to play in delivering innovation, collaboration and transformation for food systems. Participants believe the aquaculture sector has proven experience mobilizing responsible production progres... Read mores. It shows how a sector can work collaboratively to identify and implement solutions to environmental challenges at a global scale. This experience is transferrable to other sectors. Discussions focused on different levers of change where aquaculture has experience (sustainable financing, transparency and sustainability certifications, and feed innovations), but common themes were revealed. Participants deemed the following necessary to better realize private sector’s potential for impact: more transparency and disclosure; more transparent reporting; more effective carbon foot-printing disclosure; decoupling deforestation up and down the value chain; and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology and standardization. Participants emphasized that progress cannot simply occur in a private sector silo. There’s a critical need to link science-based regulations, knowledge transfer from big to small companies, and holistic business policy frameworks. Ideally, this approach will enable momentum, collaboration and accountability from the United Nations as well. Participants saw a clear role for private sector to partner with the United Nations and public institutions; they recognized that each of these groups has a unique and vital role to play. Another key theme was that food security equates to national security. Private sector must ensure that nutrient-dense, responsibly produced food is accessible, particularly in the most vulnerable communities. There was clear recognition that private sector efforts must go beyond food security and environmental sustainability, and support livelihoods and social equity. Ultimately, private sector must drive major shifts in mindsets, rules of operation and business models to create equitable, sustainable and healthy food systems. Given that the private sector is often at the forefront of change to keep a competitive edge, participants saw an opportunity to better harness this angle. Through activities such as certification or sustainable investment, there is opportunity to motivate and mobilize further transformation. Several participants had experience working with Global Salmon Initiative (GSI) – either as a GSI member company or NGO partner – and GSI was frequently noted as an example of how industry can work together for science-based environmental improvement and hold itself accountable for achieving ambitious sustainability commitments (e.g., working to achieve 100% of member production to be Aquaculture Stewardship Council [ASC] certified). Over the past eight years, GSI has united 40% of the global farmed salmon industry to develop a unique and proven model of change. It uses the critical mass of industry to set ambitious goals based on where the need is greatest (e.g., reducing pressure on fish stocks through feed innovations), create dedicated expert task forces to share best practices and problem solve, and report transparently each year on progress made. While salmon alone will not feed the world, it is an important part of the solution in providing healthy, sustainable protein while also sharing knowledge with developing sectors. To date, this model of doing business has resulted in GSI’s annual release of an industry-wide sustainability report with independently audited environmental and social data. It’s driven the development of novel and more eco-friendly feed alternatives through direct partnership with feed companies, reduced average antibiotic use by 60% and led to improvements in fish health and welfare. Measurable progress can be seen across the salmon farming sector and across the seven regions where GSI operates. GSI’s model of knowledge sharing, transparency and innovation for environmental improvement is a blueprint that could be replicable across other sectors. As one participant noted, “Most of the work on animal protein to date is driven by reputational risk issues. But animal proteins are the place where we should be pushing for a GSI-type model. We need to make sure they’re reducing key impacts, not just improving reputational risk. Reputational risk reduction is about credibly and measurably reducing key impacts.” Read less

Today’s global food systems face unprecedented challenges, and at the same time, offer many opportunities to drive widescale health, social and environmental progress. This Dialogue explored the role that private sector can play in achieving a more sustainable future for food systems, based on practical examples from the aquaculture industry. As the world’s fastest growing food sector, aquaculture plays an essential role in global food systems. To ensure this growth is managed responsibly, industry stakeholders have united in game-changing ways to develop and introduce sustainability impro... Read morevements at speed and scale. This Dialogue explored how lessons learned from aquaculture’s environmental sustainability journey could be applied to other aspects of the food system – and how private sector can play a lead role in motivating and embodying the transformations necessary to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and build more resilient, and healthy food systems. Over the years, aquaculture stakeholders have driven a rapid uptick of sustainability certifications, improvements in traceability, introductions of novel feeds, collective action on climate impact and mitigation, and many more efforts. Advancements like these are difficult, if not impossible, to achieve as individual companies, and often take significant resource and time or only engage few companies. In this Dialogue, participants discussed and demonstrated how through private sector mobilization and multi-stakeholder collaborations these accomplishments have been made possible, could be improved moving forward, and could be transferred to other sectors. Participants heard directly from Sophie Ryan, CEO of Global Salmon Initiative (GSI), Jason Clay, Senior Vice President of Markets at World Wildlife Fund (WWF), José Villalón, Corporate Sustainability Director at Nutreco, and Kristina Furnes, Global Communications Manager at Grieg Seafood about the role and impact of private-sector leadership on food system change. These speakers addressed how they have worked towards environmental improvements in their own organizations or in partnership with private sector, providing illustrative examples of what is possible. For example, Sophie Ryan and Jason Clay spoke to the nearly decade-long partnership between GSI and WWF, and how the experience and success of GSI’s pre-competitive model for responsible farmed salmon production could provide a blueprint for scaling environmental improvement across other food sectors. Through a mix of keynote remarks and breakout discussions, this Dialogue identified best practices and future pathways for sustaining this momentum – both across and beyond the aquaculture industry. Breakout groups focused on the role of the private sector for activating food system change overall, while also diving more specifically into three “levers” of change: sustainable finance, transparency and sustainability certifications, and feed innovations in aquaculture. Through the examination of these key topics, participants concluded that rapid and large-scale improvements are needed to provide nutritious food to a growing population. Additionally, examples from the aquaculture sector, like GSI’s efforts to unite the salmon farming sector in providing consumers around the world with more responsibly raised salmon, provide an example for how other private sector actors could come together in similar ways for food system transformation. Read less

SEE REPORT AND STATISTICS ATTACH

SEE REPORT AND STATISTICS ATTACH

At the beginning of the presentations, we have succinctly shown that Summit after Summit, FAO that recently turned 75 years old and since the 1970s have been proposing these types of World Meetings, has not managed to end this human scourge. Possibly this instance (GFS 2021) can serve, rather than to spend or direct funds and resources of the countries towards these unsustainable initiatives or projects, to help ensure that they are directed in the first place to processes of high social impact and resolution of the problems of rural development, improve the quality of life, education and heal... Read moreth and support the initiatives of independent science, which based on Agroecology (really the first support of what the UN at least calls in the papers, Solutions based on Nature), can come true. Read less

AGROECOLOGY, ECOAGRIFOOD SYSTEM AND SOCIOENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH: A WAY FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT– GLOBAL FOOD SUMMIT 2021 14 de Mayo de 2021 – Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador y Colombia. https://www.youtube.com/c/GEPAMAFADU The meeting convened by the GEPAMA Group of Landscape Ecology and Environment, FADU, of the University of Buenos Aires and AGROECO2 of the UNGS, was held as INDEPENDENT DIALOGUE under the open window of the DIALOGUES towards the WORLD FOOD SUMMIT 2021. The meeting was attended by prominent world, regional and local specialists in the field of AGROECOLOGY, such as Mig... Read moreuel Altieri, Clara Nicholls, Walter Pengue, Richard Intriago, Silvana Buján, María Esther Lasta, Daniel Díaz, Francisca Pancha Rodriguez, Andrea Rodriguez, Karina Bidaseca, Roxana Villegas, Luis Moro, René Montalba (in part of the meeting) and the registered participation of more than 350 stakeholders from practically all of LAC and other regions. The most important topics touched on, were linked to the COVID19 crisis, the concern for both the co-option of Agroecology and the Summit indicated by the powerful groups of digital agriculture and Big Data, the environmental, social and health impacts of agriculture industry, the change in the world and Argentine food diets, the role of public policies and the relevance of the peasantry in favor of AGROECOLOGY and the ECOAGROFOOD SYSTEM in towns and cities. It was clearly highlighted that it is through Agroecology and a locally-based Eco-agri-food System where the most efficient and beneficial path is found not only for farmers but also for consumers, and the special role of these systems in crisis situations such as those that we have now. We also face the importance of strengthening proximity chains, peasant marketing channels, the support of science and technology to these productive needs, access to land, water, genetic resources, self-production systems of food and education in it - and from early childhood - the role of culture and ancestral wisdom in a constructive dialogue of peer-to-peer knowledge and the transgenerational strengthening of this transmission. The statement of Dr. Miguel Altieri shedding light on the role of Agroecology in these times - which can be heard towards the end of this broadcast - has made very clear his concern about the impact of these World Encounters and especially the role played by Organizations such as FAO, CGIAR and other multilateral entities with enormous responsibility for the problem posed such as food, the co-optation problems involved and the true integral sense of what agroecology is and what is not, as shown by the vision of one of the its main global diffusers. At the beginning of the presentations, we have succinctly shown that Summit after Summit, FAO that recently turned 75 years old and since the 1970s have been proposing these types of World Meetings, has not managed to end this human scourge. Possibly this instance (GFS 2021) can serve, rather than to spend or direct funds and resources of the countries towards these unsustainable initiatives or projects, to help ensure that they are directed in the first place to processes of high social impact and resolution of the problems of rural development, improve the quality of life, education and health and support the initiatives of independent science, which based on Agroecology (really the first support of what the UN at least calls in the papers, Solutions based on Nature), can come true. And avoid emptying the field of people and filling it with machines and data ... Read less

1. Access to local products 2. Policy improvement for farmers and producers 3. Food labeling 4. Focusing on how to actually prevent food waste rather than how to reduce it

1. Achievement of consensus through collaborative and problem-solving discussion. 2. Creating a universal language to define a problem and developing a productive discussion 3. Created a Learn and Share model 4. Expanding of knowledge about nutrition 5. Provided evidence-based information

1. Lack of nutrition education (culinary nutrition) among chefs and wider hospitality workforce 2. A need for more community-oriented projects with a strong emphasis on food education 3. Going back to the roots: A soil for food - food for soul 4. Need for actions to improve transferability of the Mediterranean Diet in the non-Mediterranean Regions 5. More food education, particularly about typical Mediterranean products (olive oil, grains, cheese) needed in German speaking countries 6. Need to create platforms to develop collaborations and important bridges between scientists, producers and co... Read morensumers. 7. A need to create a social prescribing network in Switzerland, German speaking countries and Central Europe 8. Possible implementation of culinary medicine through social prescribing networks to reduce the burden on healthcare 9. A lack of data and evidence in the Central European region (Slovakia, Czech republic, Poland, Hungary) 10. Making food education obligatory at elementary schools. Read less

1. Comprehensive exploration of food systems, particularly in German speaking countries and greater Central European region. 2. Emphasis on traditional agricultural commodities that are highly consumed in Switzerland and nearby regions like cocoa, Mediterranean products, dairy and grains. 3. Examination of links between Action Track 1 and Action Track 2. 4. Discussed Mediterranean dietary patterns in the greater region of Switzerland - cultural adaptations, culinary practice, knowledge of chefs, success of community-minded projects, social prescription through food and culinary education