IFSN- ACTIONAID SUBMISSION FOR THE ONLINE
CONSULTATION ON HUNGER, FOOD AND NUTRITION SECURITY
Theme 1:
What do you see as the key lessons learned during the current Millennium
Development Goals (MDG) Framework (1990-2015), in particular in
relation to the MDGs of relevance to hunger, food insecurity and
malnutrition?
The Millennium Development Goals agreed by world leaders provided a pathway
with clear objectives and indicators to track and monitor progress on poverty
reduction. This has helped accountability, as world leaders have been constantly
requested to account for their efforts to meet the MDGs targets., However, MDG 1
and its sub-targets have not been able to address the increased inequality, the
lack of coordination at international and national level, and the failure in
the governance of the food system. As a result there are still unacceptable
amount of undernourished people concentrated in developing countries along
with an unsustainable food system. Thousands of hectares of land are under
biofuel and animal feed production to meet the food and energy demand of
developed countries. Although the poverty reduction target is likely to be
reached 1, increased inequality continues in the global trend. This is, among
others, due to the prevalence of only quantitative methods, which cannot capture
the difference between the entitlement to rights, and the full enjoyment of those
rights, as well as the accountability of states as duty bearers.
ActionAid believes that entrenched poverty, growing inequality and inadequate
access to food and resources are the major barriers to achieving the right to food
for all. Most people are not hungry due to lack of food availability instead they
are too poor to access the available food2. Ensuring greater access to food – the
ability to produce or purchase food – highlights the central role of poverty
reduction in the fight against hunger and depravation.
An holistic approach is needed to address the root causes of food insecurity.
Reducing hunger and malnutrition starts with much fairer access to resources,
employment and incomes in rural areas. Agriculture, especially smallholder
1MDGs
Development Report 2012, UNDP. With regard to the hunger target in relation to the overall MDG1,
preliminary estimates indicate that the global poverty rate at $1.25 a day fell in 2010 to less than half the
1990 rate. If these results are confirmed, the first target of the MDGs— cutting the extreme poverty rate to
half its 1990 level—will have been achieved at the global level well ahead of 2015. However, hunger
remains a global challenge with the FAO estimates of undernourishment setting at 870 million the people
living in hunger in the world1. This continuing high level reflects the lack of progress on hunger in several
regions, even as income poverty has decreased. Progress has also been slow in reducing child under
nutrition. Close to one third of children in Southern Asia were underweight in 2010. Another alarming date
is that while gender equality and women’s empowerment are key, gender inequality persists and women
continue to face discrimination in access to education, work and economic assets, and participation in
government1. Violence against women continues to undermine efforts to reach all goals. Further progress to
2015 and beyond will largely depend on success on these interrelated challenges
2 De Schutter 2009
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and family farms, can play a key and catalytic role in the improvement of
rural livelihoods. Many of these smallholders are women, who face additional
constraints compared with men due to discrimination, cultural factors and
unequal access to productive resources. Only bold actions and sustained efforts
to democratize and rebuild food systems will ensure increased access to food
and feed the future generations, fairly, sustainably and equitably along with
preserved natural resources, forests, and enhanced biodiversity.
Reducing chronic food waste, tackling over-consumption and the diversion of
enormous quantities of grains for animal feed and biofuels away from human
consumption is absolutely essential. Nevertheless this must be coupled with
support for women and men smallholder farmers and producers to a paradigm
shift towards climate-resilient ecological agriculture to confront the challenges
of poverty, hunger and climate change.
Any new framework beyond 2015 - to address food insecurity and malnutrition should be based clearly on the following factors, which were largely missing in
the MDG 1 on food security and hunger:

Right to food. The Right to Food approach empowers the rights holders –
food insecure and malnourished people - and holds the duty bearers
accountable on food security and malnutrition. The post 2015 framework
should stipulate governments to enact and implement the Right to Food
legislative framework in the countries.

Women’s access and control over natural resources is key to achieve
food security. Many studies show that women control over land result in
increased food production and food security. An ActionAid forthcoming
research is collating evidence to showcase how women’s secure access to
land contribute to their empowerment and the enjoyment of other rights.3

Importance of investments in agriculture: greater and responsible
investment in agriculture is essential for food security and poverty
reduction in poor countries. In achieving food security for all, the level of
public spending into agriculture should be monitored within the overall
ODA commitment and other regional agreed targets. National policies
should promote greater investment for smallholder sustainable
agriculture. Besides, the investments made by smallholder farmers
deserve respect and recognition as private investment.

Increased local production and access to natural resources.
ActionAid field surveys4 revealed that that communities with sufficient
food production were better placed to face the food crisis while the
households with land entitlement were better off during the food crisis.
(...In fighting for their rights to claim land, some women are de facto empowering themselves, sometimes
quite dramatically, and once they feel secure about their land access some feel empowered to do more – not
just for themselves, but for their children first and then their communities...) From Marginalization to
Empowerment: The Potential of Land Rights in Contributing to Gender Equality - Empirical evidence from
Guatemala, India and Sierra Leone. ActionAid-to be published.
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4 37. Aftab Alam, 2011. How to Remedy the Food Crisis: Exploring Causes and Effects at the National Level Food Files.
http://www.actionaid.org/sites/files/actionaid/food_files_4_web_issn.pdf
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The post 2015 framework should include the country’s implementation of
the Voluntary Guidelines on land tenure to provide secure access to land,
fisheries and forests as a mean towards the full realization of the right to
adequate food.
What do you consider the main challenges and opportunities towards
achieving food and nutrition security in the coming years?
Challenges
The following issues, which will continue to exert a major impact on food
security and nutrition, should be factored in the post 2015:
Food price rise due to the declines in stocks to use ratios of some of most
heavily consumed grains, long-term decline in investment in agriculture,
diminishing productivity growth from green revolution technologies such as
hybrid seeds, climate-induced supply shortfalls, specifically the increased
incidence of droughts and floods, depleted soils and water tables resulting from
unsustainable production, explosive growth in demand triggered by the
expansion of biofuels, increased oil and fertilizer prices, speculation in oil and
food commodity futures markets and unabated trade liberalisation. Volatile food
prices destabilize food producers and consumers, and make impossible for
farmers to make well-informed investment choices.
Increased impact of climate change - in the form of drought, floods, hurricanes,
erratic rains, biofuel, land grabs, and food waste etc - is a growing challenge for
food security. Post 2015 strategies should include climate related concerns and
building resilience of communities against climate shocks, investment in
sustainable models of production, including climate resilient sustainable
agriculture.
Opportunities
The food crisis has driven the attention back to the importance of investing in
more sustainable agriculture. It has also made clear the failure of the food system
governance and the huge bill that developing countries had to pay for lack of
coordination. The reformed Committee on World Food Security (CFS) has
attempted to respond to the crisis by building a new food governance system
with the right to food at the centre of any food security strategy. Putting together
UN Agencies, Donors, Governments, private sector, civil society, IFI, and all the
relevant stakeholders working on food security, the CFS provides the foremost
food security platform to provide guidance and space for coordination,
cooperation, consensus building, and continue learning process.
The result of this effort has been the development and the endorsement of the
Voluntary Guidelines on the responsible governance of tenure of land, fisheries
and forests, and the adoption of the Global Strategic Framework. Both the
documents provide political and technical guidance on the way to manage
national land tenure systems and national human rights-based strategy, with the
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overarching goal of supporting the progressive realization of the right to
adequate food in the context of national food security.
All Governments should refer to these instruments when developing their
national food security policies, and develop and/or strengthen mapping and
monitoring mechanisms in order to better coordinate actions by different
stakeholders and promote accountability.
The reformed CFS has committed to support countries in developing an
innovative mechanism, including the definition of common indicators, to monitor
progress towards food security. As stated by the GSF, objectives to be monitored
should include nutritional outcomes, right to food indicators, agricultural sector
performance, progress towards achievement of particularly MDG1, and
regionally agreed targets. The CFS also committed to develop an innovative
mechanism to monitor the state of implementation of the Committee’s own
decisions and recommendations, so as to allow for the reinforcement of the
coordination and policy convergence roles of the CFS. This is to be considered
the foremost opportunity to advance on the accountability agenda, and to
provide “international voluntary agreements” with teeth to enable their effective
implementation.
Another important opportunity is offered by the International Treaty on Plant
Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. (PGRFA), adopted by the ThirtyFirst Session of the Conference of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the
United Nations on 3 November 2001. The Treaty recognizes the enormous
contribution of farmers to the diversity of crops that feed the world, establishes a
global system to provide farmers, plant breeders and scientists with access to
plant genetic materials, and ensures that recipients share benefits they derive
from the use of these genetic materials with the countries where they have been
originated. Farmers’ rights are formally recognized and the Contracting Parties
should take measures to protect and promote these rights.
The current attempt on further regulating seeds by using (and abusing)
Intellectual Property Rights represents a threat for the rights of farmers to save,
use, exchange and sell farm-saved seed, as well as to access and participate in
benefit sharing. The Treaty calls for protecting the traditional knowledge of
these farmers, increasing their participation in national decision-making
processes and ensuring that they share the benefits from the use of these
resources, and helps maximize the use and breeding of all crops (also the localused not commercial crops) and promotes development and maintenance of
diverse farming systems.
ActionAid and IFSN support local seed banks in order to help preserve local and
traditional knowledge, seed diversity, and economic accessibility to good quality
seeds for farmers5.
Seed Banks for neglected and under-utilized species – Nepal. Climate Resilient Sustainable Agriculture,
experiences from ActionAid and its partners- http://www.actionaid.org/publications/climate-resilientsustainable-agriculture-experiences-actionaid-and-its-partners
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Theme 2:
What works best? Drawing on existing knowledge, please tell us how we
should go about addressing the hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition
challenges head on. Provide us with your own experiences and insights. For
example, how important are questions of improved governance, rightsbased approaches, accountability and political commitment in achieving
food and nutrition security?
The Human rights based approach and the importance of the political
commitment in achieving food and nutrition security
ActionAid and IFSN strongly support the human rights based approach to
poverty. Human rights approach as applied to food implies that food insecure
and malnourished people are put at the centre of national food security
strategies, and empowered by Governments in assessing their vulnerabilities
and how to respond to them. States as duty bearers, should be accountable on
food security and nutrition. States have been provided with tools such as the
Voluntary Guidelines for the progressive realization of the right to adequate food,
and most recently the Global Strategic Framework, that provide guidance for
developing effective institutional and adequate legal frameworks, establishing
independent monitoring mechanisms, and implementing these frameworks to
achieve the progressive realization of adequate food. Countries who have
followed the prescriptions of the Guidelines have been able to progress on
hunger reduction, but no indicator or target in the MDGs framework has been
developed to monitor the implementation of these international instruments.
The successes in Brazil, India and Malawi provide guidance and inspiration6. In
these countries the role of Government in developing participatory food security
strategies based on the right to food and with the active participation of several
stakeholders in designing interventions proved to be a success in reducing the
hunger in each country. States should commit to develop legal frameworks,
rehash and development of appropriate institutions and policies with the
participation of stakeholders. Analyzing successes in Brazil, India and Malawi
highlight the following major lessons that can be replicated by other countries:
1. Government commitment and promotion of the Right to Food
2. Pressure from civil society to introduce and improve the programmes
3. Decentralized implementation and participation
4. Cost-effective programmes
Increased local production and access to natural resources as precondition
for the realization of the right to food
Lessons learnt from the 2007/2008 food crisis includes that people resilience
draw from increased production and greater access to natural resources.
6
Success in reducing hunger, lessons from India, Malawi and
http://www.actionaid.org/sites/files/actionaid/successes_in_reducing_hunger__lessons_from_india_malawi_and_brazil.pdf
Brazil,
IFSN
2011,
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Communities with sufficient food production were better placed to face the food
crisis while the households with land entitlement were better off during the food
crisis. To contrast, the latest wave of FDI are having devastating impacts on rural
communities and their access to land. Rural people who gain their livelihoods
from land are dispossessed by foreign and national investors who take
advantage of weak governance and legal loopholes in the national systems.
OECD estimated that 83% of farmland acquired is dedicated to the production of
export crops.. Current investments are also looking for access to natural
resources (land and water) and acquisition of land for biofuels production with
little benefits for local people.
Public investment have declined over the past 20 years: the share of public
spending on agriculture in developing countries has fallen to 7%, even less in
Africa. Donors ODA going to agriculture has fallen from around 10% to 5%. Only
recently major attention is given to the fact that small food producers undertake
the bulk of investments and that 500 million small scale producers feed the
world population. This encourages a shift from how to regulate international
investments towards how to create the appropriate conditions to facilitate and
support farmers own investments. In this regard, public policies are crucial to
mobilize national spending in supporting of farmers investments. The following
measures should be given adequate attention within the post 2015 framework:
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-
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Full implementation of the Voluntary Guidelines on the responsible
governance of tenure of land, fisheries and forests in order to ensure
and strengthen people’s secure access to land, fisheries and forests so as
to progress on food security.
increase the level of public spending in the agricultural sector by
setting an ambitious target for investments in agriculture. Efforts to build
national systems to collect timely and disaggregated data by sex and age,.
leverage investments in agriculture that deliver on food security while
respecting human rights, protecting the environment and promoting
women’s empowerment. Public policies should create the enabling
conditions for farmers own investments and promote public investments
for public goods, including research and development.
The role of women and the need of food policies targeting specifically
women
Women play a critical role in agricultural production in developing countries,
where they comprise , on an average, 43 percent of the agricultural labour force.7.
ActionAid’s work in empowering women farmers and helping them gain control
over resources and incomes has had significant positive impacts on raising
agricultural productivity and improving household food security and nutrition.8
Hence keeping women at the centre of policy discussions regarding food security
FAO (2011),The State of Food and Agriculture: Women in Agriculture: Closing the gender gap for
development, p. 3
8 The Long Road from Household Food Security to Women’s Empowerment: Signposts from Bangladesh and
The Gambia,
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can deliver remarkable economic and social benefits.
Governments and other duty bearers should ensure policies and practices that
facilitate women farmers for a better life and greater contribution in the fight
against hunger and malnutrition. ActionAid experience 9 underscores the
following measures be given adequate attention within the post 2015
framework :








Women farmers’ participation in gender specific policies on food, hunger
and agriculture
Access to and control over land
Access to financial services including social transfers
Gender appropriate farming inputs
Access to clean water
Appropriate extension services and trainings
Appropriate research and technological development
Appropriate marketing facilities
In practice, targets and indicators should empower women to participate equally,
whilst ensuring specific needs of women are also met, eg in terms of land rights.
Targets and indicators need to be supported by sex disagreggated data and data
use. Progress here would be supported/complemented/driven by a stand alone
gender equality goal, ensuring specific focus on tackling broader causes of
inequality, such as violence against women and girls.
The promotion of climate resilient sustainable agriculture and agroecology
The fact that still 870 million people suffer from hunger, and the majority of
them live in rural areas and are women, confirmed that a complete shift is
needed towards a model of agriculture that deliver on food security while
protecting the environment and promoting women’s empowerment.
After the 2007/2008 food crisis, World Bank 10 affirmed that agricultural
investment was the most appropriate and effective strategy for poverty
reduction in rural area, where the majority of poorest people live. Unfortunately,
the World Bank proposed solutions were drawn from the Green Revolution
prescriptions without taking into any account the lessons learnt. The social and
ecological costs of the Asian Green Revolution are visible to everyone, with loss
of biodiversity, soil depletion and land degradation, water pollution,
concentration of land and rising social inequality, and the replacement of locallyused crops with cash crops for export.
The other dominating assumption that free trade would have provided food for
all ensuring global supply also failed, as the 2007/2008 food crisis showed how
unequal market power has benefited traders while developing countries have
http://www.actionaid.org/sites/files/actionaid/policy_briefing_investing_in_women_smallholder_farmers.pdf
10 WB 2008
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seen their food bill hugely go up.11
IAASTD report stated that business as usual is no longer a solution and we need
to promote a more sustainable model of production, hence the need to invest in
agro-ecology.
ActionAid believe that states should commit to change their policies, investment
and practices in favor of agro-ecology. ActionAid experiences and reports
underscore the potential of agro-ecology to improve food production, improved
income, and climate change adaptation12. The important lesson we draw from
the 2007 and most recent food crisis is that developing countries cannot rely on
a few number of commodity traders for their food security, but should build
their food security on localized diverse food security systems, with the use of
buffer stocks and food reserves to stabilize prices and guarantee food supply in
case of shocks or climate related events.
The “productivity” narrative focusing only on increasing productivity to feed 9
billion people in 2050 should be challenged by the fact that world produce
enough food to feed everyone. Solution lays in the reform of the food system
which should provide everyone with the means to access food. Agroecology
proved effective not only to increase productivity, but also in its capacity to
meet the multiple challenges of climate change, hunger reduction, building
resilience, empowerment of women small holder farmers13 14 15.
The post 2015 framework should look at:




support for small scale farmers and peasants and producer groups in
their ecological approaches
support for diversified food systems that build on local and traditional
knowledge
support for participatory research and plant breeding that combines
indigenous and traditional knowledge with science and modern
technology
programmes to phase out input subsidies schemes for agro-chemicals in
favor of subsidies to promote ecological agriculture.
Furthermore, how could we best draw upon current initiatives, including
the Zero Hunger Challenge, launched by the UN Secretary General at the
Rio+20
UN
Conference
on
Sustainable
Development
(www.zerohungerchallenge.org), and the Global Strategic Framework for
Food Security and Nutrition elaborated by the CFS?
11
Four big commodity traders known as “ABCD” (ADM, Bunge, Cargill and Dreyfus) controlled an estimated
73% of international grain trade . Cobwebbed Report, ActionAid/IFSN
12 Climate Resilient Sustainable Agriculture, experiences from ActionAid and its partners13 http://www.actionaid.org/sites/files/actionaid/policy_briefing-_smallholder-
led_sustainable_agriculture.pdf
14 FED UP – Now’s the time to invest in agroecology –
http://www.actionaid.org/sites/files/actionaid/ifsn_fed_up.pdf
15 Seeds And Sisterhood, By Joanna Kerr, Aa Ceo, Hosted By Oxfam Online Discussion Essay November 2012
Making The Food System Work For Women Www.Oxfam.Org
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The Zero Hunger Challenge initiative launched by the UN Secretary General
announced very ambitious objectives including the 100% access to adequate
food at all times, strong reference to the enjoyment of the right to food and the
diversified food systems. This is an excellent contribution to the post 2015
framework, which should be complemented with adequate policies as
highlighted by the Global Strategic Framework.
The GSF should be considered as the most comprehensive basis to build the new
framework for the post 2015.
The new framework should also build on the reformed CFS as the foremost food
security platform for coordination and coherence, as well as the model of
governance to promote at regional and national level. All the stakeholders should
be involved in the formulation of human-rights based food security strategies,
with the active and full participation of those most affected by food insecurity.
Ultimately, increasing efforts are needed to develop monitoring mechanisms in
order to better coordinate actions by different stakeholders and promote
accountability.
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Theme 3:
For the Post-2015 Global Development Framework to be complete, global
(and regional or national) objectives, targets and indicators will be
identified towards tackling hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition. A set
of objectives has been put forward by the UN Secretary-General under Zero
Hunger Challenge (ZHC):
a. 100% access to adequate food all year round b. Zero stunted children
less than 2 years old c. All food systems are sustainable
d. 100% increase
in smallholder productivity and income e. Zero loss or waste of food.
Please provide us with your feedback on the above list of objectives – or
provide your own proposals.
For the post 2015 framework, ActionAid and IFSN support a food and nutrition
security goal which point at zero hunger .
The development of specific targets can start from here, and ActionAid and IFSN
recommend the following to be included. All the actions needed to create or further
improve systems that enable the data collection to measure the progress.
A specific target on the right to food, monitoring progress in incorporating the right
to food into national constitutions. Specific ad hoc indicators, used by the UN Special
Rapporteur on the right to food, should be included in the set of targets related to
measuring the progress on the right to food.
A specific target on women’s secure access to land (measuring access and control
over land by women), built on the findings of the SOFA 2011 and the recently
adopted VGs on land tenure. Women’s access and control over land should be
differentiated as a separate target. Women’s access to land should be constantly
measured as target towards the full realization of the right to food.
A specific target on investment in agro-ecology. An ambitious target for
investments in agriculture within the ODA 7% commitment and other regionally
agreed targets - such as Maputo declaration of 10% of national budget - should
be introduced. A minimum percentage of local sourced food production (based on
local production capacity) should be introduced by country. This would boost
agricultural local production, ensure country self-sufficiency, prevent
dependency on international market for food provision.
A specific target on accountability, tracking countries which fully endorse,
domesticate, implement the relevant agreements on food security and nutrition,
namely the VGs for the progressive realization of the right to adequate food, the VGs
on responsible governance of tenure of land, fisheries and forests, the recently
adopted Global Strategic Framework, and the FAO Rome Principles.
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