The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR and World Agroforestry (ICRAF) joined forces in 2019, leveraging a combined 65 years’ experience in research on the role of forests and trees in solving critical global challenges.
Game-changing solutions for our ‘broken’ food system already exist. The Summit must recognise that policies need to include these solutions in more integrated approaches.
At a pre-Summit side event on 27 July 2021, speakers set out challenges and opportunities to improve the global food system as a lead-up to the United Nations Food Systems Summit on 23 September 2021 in New York City.
Moderated by Amy Ickowitz and Stepha McMullin of the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF), the event included speakers from diverse backgrounds and geographies, who presented key messages for global policy-makers.
Key messages for the United Nations Food Systems Summit
- Some ‘game-changing’ solutions already exist. We don’t necessarily need sophisticated new technologies to produce healthy foods sustainably. Using agro-ecological principles (including the integration of trees for food and for environmental services) is an existing game-changing solution that humans, including indigenous communities, have used for thousands of years.
- Tree foods not only provide us with the healthy nutritious foods that are in short supply for current diets but they also bring ecological benefits. Why are we not investing more in these ‘nature-based solutions’? Recognize trees as a nature-based solution for healthy diets and planet!
- Diversity of food-tree species is associated with sociocultural diversity and is important for food security. We need to encourage diversification of food-tree production, including by expanding markets. Cultural agri-food systems that are at risk of disappearing need to be conserved.
- Agricultural, environmental, food, climate and health policies are not integrated. This results in a lost opportunity for optimizing the contributions of trees for healthy diets of communities. We need more multi-sectoral collaboration and joint policy development.
- There has been recent policy recognition of the importance of forests and trees for sustainable food systems yet very little uptake. We need to start using the evidence generated to design much more diverse and inclusive food systems with strong policy guidelines and frameworks that are linked to broader agendas such as climate-change mitigation and adaptation.
Questions that the four speakers addressed included: How can tree-based systems foster transformative change towards healthy diets for people and our planet? and Why do these systems get such little attention? The webinar opened with a talk describing the direct and indirect ways that forests and trees contribute to food security and nutrition. Three speakers with knowledge and expertise from Asia, Latin America and Africa showcased tree-based interventions that are already improving diets and livelihoods while protecting the natural environment. Questions and answers from the audience followed. The presentations below have been edited for readability.
Terry Sunderland, Faculty of Forestry, University of British Columbia and principal scientist with CIFOR’s Forests and Livelihoods Programme
‘The global food system has been described in many ways but the term that often resonates with me is that it is a somewhat “broken” food system,’ said first speaker Terry Sunderland of the Faculty of Forestry, University of British Columbia and a specialist on tropical forestry. ‘We’re producing more food, very successfully, than we ever have before in human history but that’s mostly focused on calories rather than diversity and a lot of that food is wasted. There’re also vast inequities in the distribution of food and in food sovereignty — people wake up to either a daily feast or famine — and the distribution of food is extremely inequitable on a global basis. We’re not doing so well on maintaining diverse and nutritious diets on a global scale: a billion people are classified as “hungry” and 1–2 billion are classified as “obese”. We have a dichotomy in the food system.
‘There has been a strong dietary shift from more diverse, plant-based diets with complex carbohydrates to more commodity crops, with a stronger emphasis on meat production and more refined carbohydrate. Essentially, our food systems have become very simplified and this has a huge impact on nutrition overall. The dietary transitions we’re seeing are rapidly changing owing to increase purchasing power and the need to feed ever-growing urban populations from an ever-dwindling rural resource.
‘As well, the current agricultural system is a major driver of environmental degradation: we are simplifying not only our diets but also our landscapes and these landscapes are becoming increasingly vulnerable to catastrophic shocks, such as from climate-related pests and diseases and from volatile market forces. This is obviously problematic. Agricultural expansion is responsible for 40% of permanent loss of forests worldwide, meaning that those forests are not allowed to regenerate in any way. This is a permanent transformation, particularly, to oil palm, soy, cattle etcetera. We also know that vast amounts of the world’s fresh water — up to 70% — is used to support our agricultural systems. Soil erosion is a particular problem. And agriculture accounts for a significant amount of greenhouse-gas emissions — around 33% — because it relies heavily on fossil fuels for fertilizers and mechanization.
‘What’s often neglected is the role of smallholding producers who live and work in very complex, multifunctional landscapes, estimated at around 2 billion people, producing an estimated 30–80% of the world’s food. Either way, it’s a significant amount of food. They produce a wide range of products, which provide individual and family and societal resilience against environmental and economic shocks. But, perversely, especially in the case of environmental degradation, very few smallholders receive subsidies compared to those given to North American and EU farmers who are heavily supported in monocropping farming.
‘And here is a big difference: smallholders’ systems tend to rely on temporary deforestation, managing forests for food in a patchwork of shifting cultivation compared to the permanent conversion for commodity cropping. Smallholders are recognized for their conservation of agrobiodiversity, which we need to breed pests-and-diseases’ resistant crops. Much of the developments that have happened in the last 40–50 years in terms of new and resistant varieties have relied on agrobiodiversity.
‘The contributions of forests to food security can be direct contributions, such as the harvest of bushmeat, wild fruits and other foods often rich in micronutrients, for both subsistence and sale as well as “safety nets” for when our agricultural systems don’t perform as well as they ought. Swidden agriculture is extremely important, where the existence of forests allows the creation of mosaic landscapes in predominantly forested landscapes.
‘Indirect contributions include forest ecosystem services that support food production — water regulation, soil protection, nutrient circulation, pest control, pollination and carbon-cycle regulation — and forest-generated income, such as the sale of non-timber forest products and timber, that often contribute to livelihoods’ strategies needed for agricultural production, fodder for livestock and, very importantly, wood for energy and cooking.
‘There have been a number of processes to understand the role of forests and food security. Two to highlight are a report commissioned by the International Union of Forest Research Organizations as part of their global forests experts panels, which was a very extensive review published in 2015, that aimed for the forestry community to understand the importance of forest management for food security and nutrition. I must admit that when I first came to the Faculty of Forestry at the University of British Columbia about three-and-a-half years ago, a number of people said to me, “What have forests got to do with food security and nutrition?” A lot of forestry professionals do not understand the role of forests in food security and, conversely, the United Nations Committee on World Food Security report was focused on getting the food security and nutrition community to understand the role of forests.
‘The next stage is how to use these findings to influence the policy agenda, to get food and forestry much better interlinked? And with the focus now on Sustainable Development Goal number 2, Zero Hunger, is that an entry point? The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations [FAO] has reported that it is possible to increase food security without clearing forests. A number of countries have achieved this.
‘The key messages from my standpoint are that 1) agricultural expansion into the forest frontier needs to be halted, as per numerous global agreements, such as the New York Declaration on Forests that states there will be a moratorium; 2) diverse tree-based and forest production systems offer advantages over monocropping systems because of their adaptability and resilience, both economic and environmental; 3) there are a multitude of ecosystem services provided by forests and trees that simultaneously support food production, nutrition, sustainability and environmental and human health — especially given the current pandemic and hypotheses about how that emerged — which are really coming to the fore in our understanding of multifunctional landscapes; and 4) managing multifunctional landscapes that integrate food production, biodiversity conservation and the maintenance of ecosystem services can contribute to food and nutritional security; and 5) forests and trees alone cannot achieve global food security but can play a major role. The discourses have started to change about how that can happen.’
Phrang Roy, The Indigenous Partnership for Agrobiodiversity and Food Sovereignty
‘I belong to an indigenous community in Northeast India. Indigenous peoples have a sacred relationship with Nature. For example, amongst the Khasi, my particular community, and the Karen of Southeast Asia, when a child is born the umbilical cord is tied to a tree to signify the bonding and connection to Nature. The indigenous peoples of Eastern Polynesia also have a similar practice: they bury the placenta from a new-born at the base of a fruit tree so that the substance that nourished the foetus nourishes the tree. This sacred relationship with trees has led indigenous peoples to create ingenious food-gathering and food-production systems, often planting many soil-building trees in swidden fallows, integrating nitrogen-fixing trees into swidden lands to promote productivity. The indigenous peoples of Northeast India through to Southwest China have adopted Alnus nepalensis as a nitrogen-fixing species for a very long time but it is only recently that it has been reported. Trees, therefore, are very much a part of our food system, which is why we have been shouting from the hill-tops that indigenous food systems are already existing game-changers to boost nature-positive production. We hope that the UN Food Systems Summit will listen to us!
‘The Indigenous Partnership that I lead, together with one of our local partners, conducted a mapping of agrobiodiversity and dietary diversity in 32 villages of Northeast India. We found that, on average, a village has about 200 food plants, including crop varieties, mushrooms and condiments; a few villages had even more than 300 food plants. We also found that fruits were the most diverse category of food plants, with any one village having 30–40 types of fruit trees, both cultivated and wild. Yet, despite the richness of fruit trees, only 25% of respondents consumed fruits in the preceding 24 hours.
‘We, therefore, also conducted dietary diversity surveys using FAO’s dietary diversity scores to raise awareness of the importance of consuming at least five out of the 10 groups of fruits. We have also been supporting food festivals and agrobiodiversity walks where elders and botany students walk through local landscapes to identify wild edibles, forgotten fruit and nut trees and trees of importance for food production in swidden agriculture and important for bees and other pollinators. These walks often end up near a sacred forest where a meal with the collected edibles has been prepared, often with some specially recruited chef helping community members to glamourise the use of local, wild edibles. This has been quite a successful program.
‘A few months ago we studied the prevalence of moderate-to-severe food insecurity in 18 indigenous villages in Northeast India, using FAO’s Food Insecurity Experience Scale. The study showed that severe food insecurity is virtually non-existent while moderate food insecurity in 2020 was experienced by around 11% as against the South Asia level of 44% and the global level of 30.38%. This is an example of how the integration of trees and other plants can provide high levels of food security. However, more work has to be done to enhance the nutrition status of community members through better use of available local resources such as plants and trees.’
Alain Touta Traoré, Solidagro, Burkina Faso
‘How does the transition to agroecological practices help to create agroforestry parks? What is the contribution of trees to this type of agricultural production system for food and the environment?
‘Burkina Faso is a Sahelian country, with 600–800 mm of annual rainfall, marked by food insecurity in quality and quantity combined with a severe degradation of natural resources. The livelihoods of 85% of the population are generated by the agricultural, livestock and forestry sectors, representing two-thirds of the national wealth. Yet there is heavy degradation of ecosystems and decreasing agricultural yields despite the very significant increases in quantities of chemical inputs, such as fertilizers and pesticides.
‘In this context, we are using agroecological practices, such as “zai” pits, stone lines and assisted natural regeneration. The latter is appropriate to our dry conditions because we cannot water plantings. And they are local trees not imported species. The local trees produce fruits, seeds and nuts that are very, very important for the population. If we want people to protect trees it is important to present to them what they can have after they do the work. We also present to them an economic valuation of trees.
‘In conclusion, we still need better coordination between sectors such as agriculture, forestry, livestock and trade; improved financing for the management of agroforestry parks and resources; sensitization at all levels, from farmers through to the national and international communities, on the need to promote agroforestry systems; and reconciliation of the regulatory frameworks and policies with the realities on the ground.
‘Farmer-managed or assisted natural regeneration is a long-term investment in land, for economic and ecological purposes. This investment must itself be protected to create incentives for people to manage it sustainably. FMNR is a credible and, in many cases, more effective alternative to reforestation, especially in the context of climate change. Farmers who introduce trees onto their farms should be rewarded for the services they provide for both ecosystems and society. For example, through financial incentives or other forms of support or subsidies; tax exemptions; micro-credit; long-term credit.’
Ana Euler, Embrapa, Brazil
‘Embrapa is a national organization committed to the development of agriculture in Brazil, a country which exports food and feeds more than a billion people worldwide. Brazilian agriculture is very diverse and we as Brazilians are very privileged because we can access food produced mainly by family producers. I work in the Amazon and in this region food systems are even more diverse because we have a lot of forests and forests are a great source of food and are the basis of food security for a very large number of people.
‘Our forests have been inhabited for the last 10,000 years. Eighty species of food trees and other kinds of crops were already domesticated or semi-domesticated in the 15th century by indigenous populations living in the Amazon Basin. There are about 200 species in the Amazon forests that are considered “hyperdominant”, meaning they represent the majority of individuals out of the more than 16,000 species in the Amazon. And 25% of the hyperdominant species are different kinds of food palms.
‘In 2009, the federal government produced the National Plan for Social Biodiversity Products, which recognizes 41 Amazonian food-tree species that are relevant for nutrition, food security and socioeconomics. These food-tree species’ products are produced by traditional peoples of Brazil: indigenous people, rubber tappers, Brazil-nut gatherers etcetera. This area represents 25% of the Brazilian Amazonian territory.
‘One example is the “açaí” [Euterpe oleracea], a native tree of the Amazon, the fruit of which is the basis of daily diets for hundreds of thousands of Amazonian people, with about 1.5 million tonnes of fruit per year and almost 90% being produced from around 1 million hectares of native forests. This fruit reaches wider markets: 85% is regional consumption and the rest international. It generates almost USD 1 billion for local producers. It is considered a symbol of Amazonian culture and is important for food security, health, conservation and income generation not only in rural areas but also in the cities. It is bringing middle-class people to rural areas. And young people are returning to rural areas to work with forest management. Açaí may open the market for other Amazon fruits and we hope in the future that açaí from natural forests may be recognized not only as an important source of food but as a product that helps with the preservation of the Amazon, the conservation of culture and the traditional role related to biodiversity, that the national and international markets may appreciate açaí producers and that the açaí production chain may not repeat the mistakes of the rubber and other Amazonian extracted products.
‘The richness of food-tree species in the Amazon is surprising — there are at least 100 potential food-tree species — and is directly associated with sociocultural diversity [Sustainable Development Goals 11, 12]. It’s important to encourage families to diversify production and expand the markets for these products associated with their territories [Sustainable Development Goals 8, 12]. The dynamic conservation of these agrifood systems may be included as a strategy to reduce deforestation and increase the Human Development Index [Sustainable Development Goals 1, 2, 13, 15].’
Discussion
Question: What needs to be done to bring forest foods into the food system?
Terry Sunderland: ‘I’ve been involved in the IUFRO consultation and also the Committee on World Food Security. When the CFS report was presented at the Summit in late 2017, the political feedback we got was extremely positive: “This is great! You’re generating all this evidence.” Every single delegation who spoke was very positive about the evidence that was presented, the potential roles of forests and trees and how they can be integrated into sustainable land management etcetera. Four years on, what’s happened? Nothing really. So, there’s a missing link between the evidence and the policy and I’m not quite sure where that link is. We are emerging from an unprecedented time: the last 16 months or so have been pretty horrific for a lot of people, for society and for the economy. I keep hearing this, “Build back better” and all of that and I don’t know if this presents an opportunity for us to start thinking about the way that the food system is contributing to biodiversity loss and deforestation because it has been precipitated, hypothetically, by the pandemic or that the pandemic has been a result of incursion into the forest frontier… and the evidence still points in that direction. There is a lot of movement in the academic and development worlds about how can we have our agriculture in a much more sustainable way. This is the entry point and this Summit is a fantastic opportunity to rethink our food systems.
‘The other major problem is the reliance on technology. We hear, “What technologies can we introduce to improve food security?” when in fact the technologies are already there. We need to tap more into smallholders’ knowledge of managing complex landscapes and less into the “sexy” technologies that will be great for the groups that develop them but less impactful for achieving food security and dietary diversity.’
Phrang Roy: ‘What we need to do, and to accept, is what Terry said at the start, that we are functioning with a “broken” food system. The second thing is to recognize that there are systems that have been in place for a very long time, with strong evidence to support them, that are “game-changers”. But I’m not so sure that the Food Systems Summit will reach this because from my experience, trying to push the indigenous agenda — to see it as a game-changer — has been a tremendous fight and not because people are against it but somehow they think that this is a little bit of “voodoo science”, despite the facts. So I would say that the first step that is required if we want to make a change is to acknowledge and recognize that there are existing game-changers in the world today. That’s it, that’s the most important point. The next is the misinformation that we and all marginalized groups are considered “vulnerable”. We are not vulnerable: as I showed to you, many of our villages have zero hunger level, but we have been put in situations of vulnerability because of industrial agriculture, because of extractive industries. It’s very important to respect the rights of communities, the rights of peoples and the rights of women to ensure that they can play a role. The last point is that these traditional systems do have their gaps but those gaps can be filled by co-creation of knowledge that is inter-cultural, by which I mean the gathering together of traditional ecological knowledge and scientific knowledge as equal partners. Bearing in mind that in traditional ecological systems, women play a very important role. In modern scientific knowledge, men, and patriarchal values, dominate.’
Alain Touta Traoré: ‘For me, having more visibility of trees in our food systems. It’s important to have trees, especially in a Sahelian country like Burkina Faso where trees are not valued or in great quantities. This is the first thing. The second is that it’s important to train in the combination of trees and agricultural production. Third, to encourage producers to plant and protect trees, it’s very important to present them with economic valuation and then environmental issues. First, producers need food then they need money. We also need to advocate for more finance to promote agroforestry. And for this we need evidence of the economic and nutritional support from trees to present to policy-makers so that they can say, yes, our populations need more funding so they can make more money and eat well. To consumers, we can say, you are eating badly, and encourage them to eat better.’
Ana Euler: ‘First, what was really successful and had great impact was to create incentives for local production to focus on that, because we know and we love our food and we need to be able to effect this food. But when we go to the supermarket we find a very reduced amount of food and mostly from agricultural systems. We have public schools all over Brazil. According to the law, every single municipality has to buy at least 30% of their school food from local family farmers. In the Amazon, especially, they produce food from the forests. This is very important to generate income, diversify the food system and, the most important and beautiful: to protect the Amazon. Because if the people have the opportunity to produce from the forest, they will not convert the forest to agriculture. Development of this market, and we’re not looking at international markets, was important: it’s a huge country with a huge population with power to consume. This was a very successful policy. Another policy was the Social Biodiversity Plan that started to focus on raising awareness about these production chains that were invisible. It’s a federal law that states that 41 products are able to be bought by any public institution — schools, hospitals, prisons — representing a huge population that must be fed every day. At least 30% of the food served daily at these public sites are bought from local family farmers. This means a huge market for them and a huge incentive for diversification of production. Of course, we have other strategies to promote open markets, agroforestry, organics, agroecological certification. The private sector has a big role nowadays. A lot has been talked about environmental sustainability and governance, with the private sector assuming a compromise with the food-security production chains, which means a better relationship with the surrounding producers and a better image to consumers both local and international. In the case of açaí, it was the private sector who started the production chain and the government who now comes with policies to organize it. I hope that açaí can be the flagship species for thousands of other species that we have here. When we put açaí in the national and international markets, we hope that consumers can be more sensitive to other Amazonian products.’
Watch the recording of the event
World Agroforestry (ICRAF) is a centre of scientific and development excellence that harnesses the benefits of trees for people and the environment. Knowledge produced by ICRAF enables governments, development agencies and farmers to utilize the power of trees to make farming and livelihoods more environmentally, socially and economically sustainable at multiple scales. ICRAF is one of the 15 members of the CGIAR, a global research partnership for a food-secure future. We thank all donors who support research in development through their contributions to the CGIAR Fund.
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