The most recent broad swathe of FAO history coincides with the coming of age of the sustainability concept. A comprehensive guiding principle, sustainability grows to dominate thinking (though not necessarily practices) in the field of human development and the management of life on earth. This includes approaches to food and agriculture.
Productivism is de-emphasized; multiple strands of environmental, human rights and global health discourse converge. To this emerging paradigm, FAO and other partners contribute a muscular food security component. From the turn of the century onwards, the new vision is strengthened by the adoption of the Millennium – then Sustainable – Development Goals.
2013, WEST BANK AND GAZA STRIP A man tends to the vegetable garden he maintains on the rooftop of his home, West Bank and Gaza Strip. ©FAO/Marco Longari
By the 1990s, the model of industrial agriculture in much of North America and Europe had generated quantities of food unimaginable at the time of FAO’s foundation. Agribusiness consolidation and mountains of surpluses; animals fed and bred for ever greater yields; the spread of monocultures; the rise of ultra-processed foods – all testified to production modes and supply chains that filled supermarket carts but paid less heed to resource conservation, environmental concerns or nutritional balance. In much of the developing world, soils were eroding. Deserts expanded, forests receded. Wild habitats shrank. Agriculture remained cash-starved, essential needs unmet. Hunger and malnutrition still maimed lives in their hundreds of millions.
1995, IRAQ
A woman purchasing fruit from a stall at Baghdad market selling lemons, grapes and pomegranates. ©FAO/Rosetta Messori
The search is on for less industrialized, greener agricultural development models.
In 1996, Pope John Paul II told a World Food Summit convened by FAO that the persistent contrast between indigence and opulence was “unbearable to humanity”. A year later, FAO launched its TeleFood fund-raising campaign, putting millions of US dollars into farmers’ hands and financing projects in over 100 countries.
1995, IRAQ A woman purchasing fruit from a stall at Baghdad market selling lemons, grapes and pomegranates. ©FAO/Rosetta Messori
Sustain
1995-2020The third quarter-century
1996, ITALY
Pope John Paul II addressing the Plenary during the World Food Summit at FAO headquarters, Rome, Italy. ©FAO/Luigi Spaventa
1996, ITALY Pope John Paul II addressing the Plenary during the World Food Summit at FAO headquarters, Rome, Italy. ©FAO/Luigi Spaventa
Such initiatives drew on long-established wisdom: poverty and hunger feed off each other and should be tackled in tandem. But as an understanding grew of the broad arc of human aspirations, new, more explicitly political considerations came into the mix. The years that followed the end of the Cold War saw the role of good governance extolled by consensus.
2015, ZAMBIA
Beneficiaries of the Social Cash Transfer Programme in Zambia receive their payment. ©FAO/Ivan Grifi
Rome Declaration on Food Security – 1996 (excerpt)
We reaffirm that a peaceful, stable and enabling political, social and economic environment is the essential foundation which will enable States to give adequate priority to food security and poverty eradication. Democracy, promotion and protection of all human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the right to development, and the full and equal participation of men and women are essential for achieving sustainable food security for all.The fight against hunger becomes part of a broader discourse, incorporating the right to food and a focus on governance.
In the mid- to late 1990s, as the pursuit of food security became closely bound with the protection of the environment and human health, FAO stepped up work on controlling hazardous pesticides. Potentially fraught intersections were meanwhile opening up between the world of farming and that of intellectual property law. In 2001, years of negotiations gave birth to the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources in Agriculture. Brokered by FAO, the document provided for the equitable sharing of genetic material among plant breeders, farmers, and public and private research institutions.
2015, ZAMBIA Beneficiaries of the Social Cash Transfer Programme in Zambia receive their payment. ©FAO/Ivan Grifi
As one millennium shaded into another, further dimensions and liabilities were coming to the fore. Among them – a legacy of gender inequality, amid evidence that food insecurity hits women and girls harder; the loss of biodiversity, which jeopardizes the food sources of impoverished communities; the plight of indigenous people, often marginalized, their unique agricultural knowledge at risk; and the extent to which strong institutions help keep hunger at bay.
Developing nations chasing GDP growth as a fast track to progress found that food insecurity came at a price. Studies showed African countries forfeiting up to 16 percent of annual output as child malnutrition curbed educational attainment, reduced workplace longevity, dented productivity and drained public health systems.
Corporate strategy components,
FAO 2000-2015 Strategic Framework (excerpt)
- improving the opportunities available to the rural poor to strengthen, diversify and sustain their livelihoods by taking advantage of the potential synergies between farming, fishing, forestry and animal husbandry (…);
- supporting efforts to strengthen local institutions and to enact policies and legislation that will provide for more equitable access by both women and men to natural resources and related economic and social resources;
- improving the efficiency and effectiveness by which the public and private sectors respond to the multiple and differing needs of disadvantaged rural populations (…);
- promoting gender-sensitive, participatory and sustainable strategies and approaches, based on self-help, capacity building and empowerment, to improve the skills of the rural poor and local, civil society and rural people's organizations.
2012, SWEDEN
FAO’s Nordic office co-organizes United Nations Day, Sweden. Young girl with MDG “tattoo”. ©FAO/Linn Liviin Wexell
2012, SWEDEN FAO’s Nordic office co-organizes United Nations Day, Sweden. Young girl with MDG “tattoo”. ©FAO/Linn Liviin Wexell
In short, as a new century dawned, the international community concluded that to cure one ill, you had to tackle many. The job of human development could be divided into tasks, but it succeeded or failed as a whole; all levers must be pressed at once.
In 2000, the United Nations adopted eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a detailed to-do list for humanity. The same year, the language in FAO’s Strategic Framework displays much the same spirit – far-reaching but precise, ambitious yet mindful of specifics. More directions of action are envisaged, more stakeholders acknowledged. The roles of the private sector and civil society are explicitly recognized.
2019, LAO PEOPLE’S DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC
Local children water a kitchen-garden at the Farmer Nutrition School, Lao People’s Democratic Republic. ©FAO/Manan Vatsyayana
FAO’s lens is now more sharply trained on smallholder farmers, community-level concerns and nature-based solutions; more responsive to expectations of inclusiveness and accountability; angled less towards abstract aggregates and more towards vulnerable demographics. Conservation and sustainability enter a lexicon once dominated by intensification and productivity.
2019, LAO PEOPLE’S DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC Local children water a kitchen-garden at the Farmer Nutrition School, Lao People’s Democratic Republic. ©FAO/Manan Vatsyayana
Overall, there is much advancement. Extreme poverty is halved. Hunger diminishes. A host of other measures of wellbeing improve. In 2015, a galvanized international community steps up the pace with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), also known collectively as the 2030 Agenda. The world is now reaching for exhaustivity: there are 16 goals, plus a methodological one, mapping every avenue of social and environmental progress, from health to gender equality to life below water. A further 169 targets mark out areas of action, complete with over 200 indicators.
Prominent among the SDGs, just behind the paramount priority of ending poverty, is Zero Hunger. FAO provides technical input as the Goals are formulated and ends up the UN-designated custodian agency for a variety of indicators. Among these are hunger itself; agricultural sustainability; women’s ownership of land; water stress; fish stocks sustainability; and sustainable forest management.
Zero Hunger is enshrined in the Sustainable Development Goals, with FAO designated custodian for several indicators.
As FAO’s responsibilities expand, so does its toolbox. With so much measuring to do, the Organization flexes its statistical firepower and number-crunching capacity. It develops applications that connect smallholders to markets, help manage livestock and control the spread of crop-destroying pests. Drones take to the skies to assess the risk of natural disasters. Educational programmes set out to mentor young farmers and rejuvenate the agricultural labour force. Training is provided for people to start urban and indoor farms, tunnel gardens and hydroponic orchards.
2012, BOLIVIA (Plurinational State of)
Cultivating quinoa as part of the “Semillas Andinas” project, Bolivia (Plurinational State of). ©FAO/Claudio Guzmán
Much emphasis falls on strengthening what comes to be known as food value chains: these offer small cultivators outlets for their produce and ensure quality control; they provide decent jobs and help indigenous communities meet demand for niche and premium foodstuffs. Logistical solutions are thought up, and intense advocacy is deployed, to reduce loss and waste. (Loss alone is estimated to wipe out one-seventh of all food grown.) Above all, FAO begins to rethink food systems in their entirety and campaign for their transformation, aiming for a virtuous policy circle that combats poverty, fights hunger and malnutrition, and protects fragile ecosystems.
2012, BOLIVIA (Plurinational State of) Cultivating quinoa as part of the “Semillas Andinas” project, Bolivia (Plurinational State of). ©FAO/Claudio Guzmán
Yet all of this takes place against the doubly hostile clock of resurgent conflict and extreme climate variability. Some of the least developed countries suffer most. In southern Africa, crippling droughts and murderous floods alternate, triggering cyclical hunger emergencies. Small island developing states, low on resources and socially vulnerable, bear the brunt of cyclones and hurricanes. In wealthy countries from North America to Oceania, devastating fires occur with increasing frequency. In parts of the world, traditional and time-tested farming practices die out; elsewhere, homogenized diets, rich in calories but poor in nutrients, stoke a wave of overweight and obesity. Many nations cumulate both phenomena. In some cases, violence and instability act as accelerators of structural food insecurity.
2017, South Sudan
Women carry a sack with fishing kits and seeds to be distributed by FAO in Padding, Jonglei, South Sudan. ©FAO/Albert Gonzalez Farran
In the second decade of the new millennium, protracted armed conflicts acquire a tragic normality. In Syria, South Sudan, Yemen and northeast Nigeria, hostilities rage or simmer for years, claiming thousands of lives and leaving millions on the edge of famine. Hunger is being used as a weapon of war. In 2018, the dispiriting kinship between food insecurity and conflict is explicitly recognized by the UN Security Council.
UN Security Council Resolution 2417(2018) (excerpt):
Recalls the link between armed conflict and violence and conflict‑induced food insecurity and the threat of famine, and calls on all parties to armed conflict to comply with their obligations under international humanitarian law regarding respecting and protecting civilians and taking constant care to spare civilian objects, including objects necessary for food production and distribution such as farms, markets, water systems, mills, food processing and storage sites, and hubs and means for food transportation, and refraining from attacking, destroying, removing or rendering useless objects that are indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, crops, livestock, agricultural assets, drinking water installations and supplies, and irrigation works, and respecting and protecting humanitarian personnel and consignments used for humanitarian relief operations.As peace declines, harmful gases pile up and biodiversity recedes, hunger numbers, which had been shrinking for a decade until the mid-2010s, start creeping up again. The 2020 report on The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World – an authoritative, FAO-led piece of research – shows nearly 700 million people still undernourished, with a full two billion experiencing some broader form of food insecurity. With just ten years to go until SDG2-Zero Hunger comes due, the odds of delivering it are lengthening.
2017, South Sudan Women carry a sack with fishing kits and seeds to be distributed by FAO in Padding, Jonglei, South Sudan. ©FAO/Albert Gonzalez Farran
2020, CHILE
Lo Valledor, the main wholesale market in Chile, continues to provide the public during the COVID-19 health emergency with protective measures for their collaborators and the community. ©FAO/Max Valencia
At the time of writing, the COVID-19 pandemic, beyond its quantifiable toll in human lives and GDP points, threatened to deepen fragilities in humankind’s relationship with food – an impromptu litmus test for the precariousness of rural employment, for the brittleness of supply chains, for the thin line which in many countries divides livelihoods from destitution. From FAO’s perspective, part of the response lies in all-out partnerships and systematic innovation.
2020, CHILE Lo Valledor, the main wholesale market in Chile, continues to provide the public during the COVID-19 health emergency with protective measures for their collaborators and the community. ©FAO/Max Valencia