Can We Transform World Food Day Into A Celebration?

Droughts are worsening and extreme weather events are increasing in intensity. Conflict is driving food insecurity rates higher. And “under our feet, all the time, soils are degrading,” says Sieglinde Snapp, Director, Sustainable Agrifood Systems Program for CIMMYT. We’re seeing what Dr. Evan Fraser from the Arrell Food Institute at the University of Guelph calls “cascading crises.”

The results are alarming: At least 733 million people around the world—one out of every 11 people—are facing hunger, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Almost 3 billion people globally can’t afford a healthy diet.

With World Food Day approaching on October 16, we have the chance to reflect on the state of our food and agriculture systems, to sit with the fact that we have a lot of work to do to change the reality we face. But fortunately, we have solutions at our fingertips.

The theme of this year’s World Food Day is “Right to Foods for a Better Life and a Better Future.” That’s spot-on: Everyone deserves affordable access to healthy, nutrient-rich, safe, and delicious food.

And to make this happen, we need to diversify our food and agriculture systems: “Diversity is the foundation of nature’s benefits,” Snapp says. “Diversity improves diets and livelihoods.”

But it’s not just a diversity of foods that we need. We also need a diversity of people, practices, and thought to truly nourish the world.

This year, the prestigious World Food Prize will be awarded to Dr. Cary Fowler, the U.S. Special Envoy for Food Security, and agricultural scientist Dr. Geoffrey Hawtin in recognition of their leadership in preserving and protecting the world’s crop biodiversity and global food security.

I have so much respect and admiration for Dr. Fowler, and his work helps illuminate a powerful solution to a multitude of these cascading problems: He’s encouraging farmers and governments to grow “opportunity crops” like cowpea, millet, sorghum, and other ancient and resilient foods that have been overlooked in favor of so-called “staple crops” but are actually very effective in building soil health and profitability, especially if storage, processing capacity, and market access can be improved in places like sub-Saharan Africa.

Another solution to building a meaningful right to food access—and this should be obvious!—is empowering women and girls. Equal rights for women are not only an ethical and moral imperative, but we can make significant progress toward solving the hunger crisis when we stop systematically undervaluing at least 50 percent of the world’s population.

“Women are unquestionably the most important actors” in our food system, says Tom Pesek, Senior Liaison Officer at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. When it comes to food systems transformation, “women and women farmers are uniquely positioned to play an outsized role in leading this shift.”

So many advocates have been saying this for decades, and frankly, it’s a little frustrating how often we have to hammer home this point when we know that, if women had access to the same resources as men—education, land, access to credit and financial services, extension agency support, and, let’s face it, respect—they could lift as many as 100 million people out of hunger, according to the FAO.

And women are, often, the ones growing the foods that are actually nutritious! Foods like those opportunity crops; foods like fruits and vegetables that contribute to agrobiodiversity. Empowering women in all aspects of their lives is both practical and powerful, and improves the well-being of both the people and the ecosystems that surround them.

But to make sure that solutions work for women farmers, they—and producers of all genders, ages, and nationalities—need to be central in these conversations.

“We need to be thinking differently. We need to be prioritizing practices that are good for the farmer,” says Jeffrey Herrick, a Senior Advisor in the Office of the Special Envoy for Global Food Security, U.S. Department of State and a Soil Scientist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

That requires making space for food producers to have a literal seat at the table. They need to be central to providing in-person input at international dialogues like the U.N. Biodiversity Conference and U.N. Climate Change Conference, which this year is called COP29. And they need to be able to co-create solutions with scientists and entrepreneurs that will actually address the problems that producers are experiencing in fields, ranches, and boats.

It’s encouraging to see that this is starting to happen more. In Zambia, Good Nature Agro is working with farmers to develop ways to prevent post-harvest losses and more sustainably manage their farmland. The McKnight Foundation is supporting farmer research networks around the world to co-create ecological solutions tailored to the region they’re working in. And the organization Global Alliance of Latinos in Agriculture aims to create a world where farmers and ranchers thrive globally—and they plan to bring hundreds of producers to COP30 in Belem, Brazil, next year. (I’m so excited to witness that, by the way, and it was an honor to hear from the organization’s CEO, farmer Gerardo Martinez, at Climate Week NYC).

“When we think about solutions, we need to think about holistic solutions,” says Jahan-Zeb Chowdhury, Global Lead of the Environment and Climate Cluster at the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD
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That means taking a harder look at the way capital is flowing to ensure that farmers have the resources they need to transition to more regenerative agriculture systems. “Smallholder farmers are producing one-third of the global food,” Chowdhury says, “yet they are receiving only 1.7 percent of total climate finance.” This needs to change.

This World Food Day, Food Tank is proud to partner with the Arrell Food Institute and FAO on the Arrell Food Summit in Toronto, Canada, which has been designated as the official North American World Food Day 2024 event. The Summit is bringing together agri-food leaders and experts to dive into solutions like diversity, empowering women, and putting farmers in the drivers’ seat to create a more safe and sustainable global food system—a food system that works for everyone.

For now, World Food Day is a time of hard work and difficult conversations. But my hope is that, in the not-so-distant future, World Food Day will actually be a day to celebrate a transformed food system that nourishes us all with equitable, accessible, affordable, healthful, delicious meals.