The EAT Forum brought together a wide range of experts from the worlds of food, climate and health, and discussed challenges and opportunities linking food, health and sustainability exploring crossovers of these themes and of the science, business and politics concerned.
About the EAT Forum
The Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR) is a Strategic Partner and co-sponsor of the EAT Forum. EAT – the Stockholm Food Forum, an informal forum, creates an arena where science, politics and business are able to share insight and ideas around nutrition, health and agricultural sustainability, towards our common goal of sustainably feeding a healthy world population.
EAT aims to spearhead a holistic approach to today’s food related challenges. Population growth, climate change, human health, resource management, sustainability and food security are independent fields of science and research – but they are also important political issues and exciting business opportunities.
EAT is initiated and dynamically-driven by the Stordalen Foundation (featured recently by the Gender in Agriculture Partnership), with Stockholm Resilience Centre as main academic partner, and a wide range of other relevant partners, including GFAR. The Stockholm Food Forum was professionally organized and dynamic, with a range of high-profile speakers, albeit mostly from Europe and the USA, across the range of areas involved and a number of senior UN Officials involved. These talks can be found on: http://www.eatforum.org/talks
The Global Forum on Agricultural Research is a strategic partner to the EAT Forum, with the aim of building cross-linkage between the Global Forum’s work in agriculture and food, and expertise in the increasingly-related fields of nutrition and health. Mark Holderness, GFAR Executive Secretary, attended on behalf of GFAR partners and GFAR also helped to directly support the participation of civil society organizations and participants from developing countries.
Vibrant presentations: Challenging the norms
Johan Rockstromm of the Stockholm Resilience Centre set the scene very well for the conference, emphasizing the inter-connectedness of food, health and ecosystems in this ‘anthropocene’ age and the enormous and urgent challenges faced by humanity in reshaping food systems over the next 5-10 years, to meet future needs in truly sustainable ways.
Former Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre questioned whether our political systems, with their short term vision and separation of Ministries, are ‘up to the job’ of grasping the reality of the interconnection between these issues and breaking through current institutionalized silos. He foresaw a great threat to democracy if these issues are not addressed. Similar comments were made by Richard Horton, Editor-in-Chief of ‘The Lancet’, who argued passionately that threats of ecological strains, inequalities of societies and uncontrolled overconsumption would lead to the decline of civilizations unless checked.
The hidden costs
HRH The Prince of Wales, by video, challenged the drive for “cheap” food that has actually produced the opposite effect, with a tremendous underlying and hidden cost for production systems that is not factored into food prices. He called for economic and policy measures that, through full-cost accounting, reflect the real cost of production and so show the real business case for sustainable food production and drive change in farming systems that pollute and deplete natural resources.
Former US President Bill Clinton gave a keynote speech in which he emphasized the interconnectedness of food, health and the environment for the future of the world. He highlighted the challenges of the Type2 diabetes epidemic in the US, India, the Middle East and North Africa, associated with inappropriate consumption. Highlighting the massive health care cost from diabetes and consequences of obesity in the USA, Mr Clinton emphasized how changing diets was the most important solution to this, through ready measures such as reducing sugared drinks in schools.
Addressing the persistent spectre of hungry and undernourished children facing lives blighted by stunting, he considered throwing small farmers off their land to make way for production for other countries “a terrible mistake”. Rather, the Clinton Foundation was working to help small farmers meet countries’ food needs sustainably and move towards export from there.
Mr Clinton highlighted that farmers are both smart and are natural environmentalists. By supporting sustainable farming practices and cutting out hidden costs such as providing storage facilities and transport access to markets, the Foundation has helped Malawian smallholder farmers production grow by 2.5 times and incomes grow by 576%, as proof of the concept of smallholders feeding the world and doing so sustainably. He called on governments themselves to take up such measures and give smallholder farmers a future.
Medical science was also strongly represented, with talks from eminent medical and nutrition Professors, including Walter Willett, Chair of the Nutrition Department at the Harvard School of Public Health, Tim Lang of the Centre of Food Policy at City University London and Christopher Murray of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, University of Washington.
These talks spelt out very clearly the enormous health burden being created globally not just by malnutrition among the poor, but also by poor diet in the wealthier and emerging economies and the need for urgent change in global consumption patterns. They also called for more integrated metrics that counted the true cost of poor nutrition and unsustainable agricultural practices. They considered that productivity alone does not reflect the full cost and impacts of agriculture and nutrition. Effective metrics must incorporate future scenarios for health. The right form of quantification would reflect pathways from agriculture, to diet, to health AND that from agriculture to climate change, water availability, antibiotic efficacy etc.
Other speakers highlighted dimensions including the need to reduce food waste, the business implications of sustainability and methods for assuring and certifying sustainable systems in different sectors.
Mark Holderness also took part in an EAT Forum working group on Scalability. Chaired by Frank Rijsberman, CEO of CGIAR, participants included Peter Holmgren, Director–General of CIFOR, the noted environmental activitist Vandana Shiva and Kwesi Atta-Krah, leader of the CGIAR Humid Tropics Research Programme. This group explored the implications and value of scaling-up and finding ways of certifying sustainability that better link agricultural produce to its landscapes of origin.
From a one-off meeting to a movement for change
David Nabarro, Special Adviser of the UN Secretary General on Food Security and Nutrition, spoke very powerfully on the value of multi-stakeholder movements. Addressing the importance of collective action to address the interaction of Food, Agriculture, Health and Nutrition, David Nabarro highlighted many issues that also have direct relevance to GFAR’s own role as an international catalyst for change, as well as that of EAT:
“The emergence of transformative movements highlights the interdependence of actors in each area and the recognition that, while governments have to be at the centre of policies, there is a big role for civil society, farmers, business and other groups to participate in the shaping and implementation of policy and the actions needed for the future of our world.”
“This engagement of multiple stakeholders is more than public-private partnerships, it is a recognition that, in real life, it is collective action by multiple groups towards clear and agreed goals that is the key to the future.”… “We need to address this critical intersection of agriculture & food, of what we eat, whether we are healthy and whether our planet has a long term future.”
He recognized the governance challenges in multiple-stakeholder movements, but that “This is the kind of world we will see in the future – movements of change in different areas. To transform EAT into a movement to alter patterns of production and consumption, the starting point must be in seeking ways to catalyse change, in ways that are both humble and courageous, taking big risks while doing it, but not telling others what they should do.”
“We need to step out of our comfort zones, combine science with emotions and avoid being stuck in the straitjackets of our own disciplines. To be a movement for change we have to widen our critical mass and be prepared to step out and work with others who may hold different views. Communication is at the heart of the process.”
“We need to trigger change in patterns of food consumption, marketing and production, developing food systems for sustainable and healthy diets. The EAT Forum interfaces sectors, institutions and countries. It is at these interfaces where some of the greatest gains are to be made.”
He recognized also that “creating movements puts huge pressures on institutions: institutions define themselves by the compartments in which they sit – but movements define themselves by their goals. For success we need radical transparency and 360 degree accountability, to stay at interfaces and outside the compartments and avoid becoming boxed in by institutional frameworks.”
Next steps
Through this well organized and innovative discussion, partners present recognized that the EAT Forum had gone further than other fora in cross-linking these agendas. The high-level, dynamic involvement from agricultural and medical science, politics and business sends a strong message across different sectors. The EAT Forum is now anticipated to become an annual meeting, with the next event in July 1-2, 2015.
The basis is laid for an active multidisciplinary movement working across these areas, in which GFAR and its multi-stakeholder constituencies are well placed to play very valuable roles, particularly in broadening the scope of discussion to other regions of the world and bringing more direct involvement from experts, communities and policy makers from developing countries.
There are very extensive areas of cross-over with the transformative agenda of GFAR. Through strategic partnership with EAT Forum, mutual efforts will continue to address the interface of agriculture, nutrition, health and sustainability.