A New Approach For Mainstreaming Sustainable Food And Agriculture In The Implementation Of The Sustainable Development Goals

This synthesis report for the regional workshop for Africa on "A new approach for mainstreaming Sustainable Food and Agriculture in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals" provides an overview of the presentations, a brief report on the discussions, and summaries of the conclusions.

Achieving the SDG targets requires the coordination of multiple government sectors. This paper is aimed at national and international actors who seek to work across sectors to achieve common development goals. Building on the available literature and on regional country studies, it emphasizes the role of multistakeholder collaboration at local and national levels.

This book describes initiatives and concrete examples on sustainable food production worldwide. In the current world scenario, where nations all over the world are struggling to accomplish the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and to ensure sustainable patterns for all, this book provides a contribution towards a more comprehensive and interdisciplinary understanding of the cross-cutting issues related to Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security. This interdisciplinary book supports the efforts to engage a commitment from all fields of science, to work together to provide knowledge that could help to address SDG2 (No hunger) and lead to the promotion of quality of life, by means of a more sustainable food production, and improved food security. This book is expected to fill the gap of publications in this field. It gives a special emphasis to a state-of-the-art descriptions of approaches, methods, initiatives and projects from universities, stakeholders, organizations and civil society across the world, regarding cross-cutting issues in sustainable food production. It includes examples of policies and practices case studies, examples of projects, institutional policies, innovative methods and tools and research outputs, which highlight the interdependence between sustainable agriculture and food security issues. It is expected that the “Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security” will make the many benefits of sustainable food production clearer and, inter alia, lead to an increase in the emphasis provided to this central theme.

This book examines the challenges and impacts of poor diets and nutrition from current food systems and the potential contribution of biodiversity and ecosystem services in addressing these problems. There is a strong need for a multi-level, cross-sectoral approach that connects food biodiversity conservation and sustainable use to address critical problems in our current food systems, including malnutrition. Building on research from the Biodiversity for Food and Nutrition Project (BFN), which aims to better link biodiversity, diets and nutrition, the book presents a multi-country, cross-sectoral analysis of initiatives that have promoted local food biodiversity in four countries: Brazil, Kenya, Turkey and Sri Lanka. This book offers a comprehensive summary of the BFN Project results in each of the four countries along with lessons learned and how this work could be upscaled or applied in other regions. It argues that the strategic promotion and use of food biodiversity is critical in uniting attempts to address conservation, nutrition and livelihood concerns. The book is structured around chapters and case studies encompassing the BFN Project with specific experiences related by partners who played key roles in the work being done in each country. By offering a comparative view capable of furthering dialogue between the respective countries, it is also meant to connect the individual cases for a “greater than the sum of its parts” effect. This means consideration of how localized activities can be adapted to more countries and regions. Therefore, the book addresses global issues with a foot planted firmly in the grounded case study locations. This book will be of great interest to policymakers, practitioners and NGOs working on food and nutrition, as well as students and scholars of agriculture, food systems and sustainable development.

This publication offers a systemic analysis of sustainability in the food system, taking as its framework the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda of the United Nations. Targeted chapters from experts in the field cover main challenges in the food system and propose methods for achieving long term sustainability. Authors focus on how sustainability can be achieved along the whole food chain and in different contexts. Timely issues such as food security, climate change and migration and sustainable agriculture are discussed in depth. The volume is unique in its multidisciplinary and multi-stakeholder approach. Chapter authors come from a variety of backgrounds, and authors include academic professors, members of CSO and other international organizations, and policy makers. This plurality allows for a nuanced analysis of sustainability goals and practices from a variety of perspectives, making the book useful to a wide range of readers working in different areas related to sustainability and food production. The book is targeted towards the academic community and practitioners in the policy, international cooperation, nutrition, geography, and social sciences fields. Professors teaching in nutrition, food technology, food sociology, geography, global economics, food systems, agriculture and agronomy, and political science and international cooperation may find this to be a useful supplemental text in their courses.

Using sustainable food value chain development (SFVCD) approaches to reduce poverty presents both great opportunities and daunting challenges. SFVCD requires a systems approach to identifying root problems, innovative thinking to find effective solutions and broad-based partnerships to implement programmes that have an impact at scale. In practice, however, a misunderstanding of its fundamental nature can easily result in value-chain projects having limited or non-sustainable impact. Furthermore, development practitioners around the world are learning valuable lessons from both failures and successes, but many of these are not well disseminated. This new set of handbooks aims to address these gaps by providing practical guidance on SFVCD to a target audience of policy-makers, project designers and field practitioners. This first handbook provides a solid conceptual foundation on which to build the subsequent handbooks. It (1) clearly defines the concept of a sustainable food value chain; (2) presents and discusses a development paradigm that integrates the multidimensional concepts of sustainability and value added; (3) presents, discusses and illustrates ten principles that underlie SFVCD; and (4) discusses the potential and limitations of using the value-chain concept in food-systems development. By doing so, the handbook makes a strong case for placing SFVCD at the heart of any strategy aimed at reducing poverty and hunger in the long run.

The FMM Annual Report for 2018 highlights the concrete results achieved through the continued support of key resource partners. This report details initiatives, innovations, impacts, outcomes and human-centred stories from the field. The report shows how deepening our engagement with resource partners and fostering new alliances is vital to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

These guidelines are primarily directed towards decision-makers responsible for integrating the goals and targets of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development into national policies and programmes. They will be of value to public and private actors, including investors, researchers and technical practitioners, involved in the broad area of food and agriculture, and rural development. Complementing FAO’s Common Vision for Sustainable Food and Agriculture and its five principles, this publication presents 20 practical and interconnected actions with the aim of transforming food and agriculture and driving achievement across the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).