Globally 86 countries have legislation to mandate fortification of at least one industrially milled cereal grain. Different fortification requirements between nations may create some practical difficulties for intercountry trade.
Until every child in the world goes to bed nourished properly, we cannot rest. Our food systems are moving us in the wrong directions: hunger levels are rising, undernutrition levels are at severe risk of rising, obesity is increasing, we are off track to meet climate targets, biodiversity is being squandered, not enough decent jobs are being created and community resilience is being undermined.
24 World Food Prize Laureates from across the globe, dedicated to driving change in food systems, are calling on the leadership of the United States Administration to help end world hunger. The World Food Prize Laureates submitted an open letter to the President of the United States of America, Joseph R. Biden Jr., calling on the new Biden-Harris administration to help achieve the global goals on food.
Keeping the food systems working during the pandemic is essential through our support to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that produce, transport, process, and market most food for low-income consumers globally. The more so as people increasingly rely on traditional forms of retail. In fact over 90% of fruit and vegetable produced in low-income countries are sold by traditional small retailers.
Global food systems are powered by private sector investment and entrepreneurs, micro, small, medium, and large. Staple food fortification is an extremely effective, low-cost, food systems intervention with enormous potential to reduce micronutrient malnutrition across large populations.
On Thursday 18th February don’t miss the "GAIN Interview Cruncher- Response to COVID-19 from food systems angle" at 2pm CET. The webinar will host the experts to discuss the Keeping Food Markets Working initiative, what’s at stake and why this is so relevant in building our food systems forward better.
Food systems are notoriously complex. Many actors are involved, from subsistence farmers through to multinational corporations with more economic power than many small nations, and from informal ambulant vendors through supranational bureaucracies.
This slide deck offers recommendations on the provisions of nutritious foods during the global COVID-19 pandemic and is part of a broader effort to develop an implementation support programme, supporting employers to implement Workforce Nutrition programmes.
With the Nutrition for Growth and United Nations Food Systems Summits scheduled in 2021, ambitious new multi-stakeholder commitments and actions are expected for better access to safe nutritious food. In 2019 the world was already off-track to achieve SDG2 - Zero Hunger - and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic is expected to exacerbate this gap requiring stronger financing and actions for nutrition.
