The FAO report highlights the incidence of high hunger conflict

A new document submitted to consider and ratify the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s highest-profile event puts conflicts with climate change and economic crisis as causes of food insecurity and malnutrition.

The document entitled ‘Changing Agro-Diet: Moving from Strategy to Action’ outlines food and agriculture, outlining strategies to meet the challenges of producing adequate food while conserving the planet. Research shows that the vast majority of people suffering from chronic food insecurity and malnutrition live in conflict-affected countries, while 40 to 60 percent of the last 60 years have been armed conflicts. Induced, funded or sustained by natural resources’.

The day before, on the virtual day of the conference, which will meet until the 18th in virtual form, FAO’s chief economist Maximo Toro presented the document.

The expert, among other features, points out that ‘in recent years, the increase in the frequency and intensity of conflicts, along with the extreme occurrence of climate change and the recession and reduction of economies, have exacerbated global hunger and undermined efforts to combat malnutrition, especially in low- and middle-income countries.

Furthermore, the text points out that they reduce availability, disrupt access to food and health care, as well as weaken social security systems.

It also says that this factor, along with climate change, is depleting and deforesting renewable natural resources, disrupting agricultural livelihoods and agro-food systems.

Extraction activities are concentrated in rural areas, including indigenous areas, and are a recurring cause of socio-economic and ethnic-regional conflicts.

An irregular world in which international and national conflicts persist is one of the future scenarios, the document pointed out and noted that agro-food systems will be affected by disruptions in various areas of socio-economic and environmental systems.

The report outlines the FAO’s organizational approach to accelerating innovation, technology, data, governance and organization with the goal of changing today’s agri-food patterns and keeping no one hungry in tomorrow’s world.

jha / smp