Dialogues on Sustainable Food Systems: from production to consumption
The third workshop of the EU-funded “Farm to Fork” project will take place via videoconference on 24-25 November. Experts, policy makers as well as public stakeholders from EU and Asean countries will participate in focused discussions around “Sustainable Food Systems” topics.
Climate change, loss of biodiversity, and the degradation of our lands and oceans are threats to our life as we know it and to life on Earth in general.
In response to these threats and as part of the Green Deal, in 2020 the European Commission proposed ambitious EU actions and commitments to transform our food systems (the Farm to Fork Strategy) into global standards for competitive sustainability, the protection of human and planetary health, as well as the livelihoods of all actors in the food value chain.
Asean countries, which already face some effects of these global threats, such as soil depletion, extreme weather events or costal erosion, but also nutrition issues, have plans and strategies in place. These dialogues seek to provide an arena to find the common grounds, principles and types of actions that can sustain the relationship between both regions. In particular, discussions will focus on how they can cooperate and join their efforts to push their respective, and common, food systems towards sustainability and make them more resilient.
The main purpose of this technical workshop is to provide a platform to experts from the EU and Asean countries to discuss and identify where and how EU-Asean cooperation could be reinforced and coordinated, targeting sustainability and resilience of food systems.
Discussions will cover the following main topics: Dialogue on Soil health and innovation; Dialogue on sustainable use of pesticides; and Dialogue on food loss and waste.
All three topics should allow looking into strategies, policies and practices, harnessing the multiple stakeholders of the food systems and the different levels of changes that would be desirable. Presentations from speakers will be followed by a panel discussion on existing or foreseeable synergies between approaches that could pave the way for collaboration, including how this collaboration could support the transition at global level.
Background information:
The adjustment of food systems, which were also documented and called upon in the UN Food Systems Summit in September 2021, needs to take into account the various contextual differences across the planet regarding cross-cutting issues such as land degradation or food loss that ultimately affect how food is produced, processed, transported and consumed.
The question of sustainable food systems goes beyond the means of production and is also subjected to several nutrition challenges such as undernutrition and hunger. These challenges persist while new and multiple forms of malnutrition rise. In particular, food-borne non-communicable diseases such as cancer, obesity, and cardiovascular conditions put pressure on people and health systems.
Although global awareness grows, commitments are made and some solutions are designed and implemented, there is still a need to rapidly and firmly put more actions in place and to foster worldwide cooperation and coordination.
This series of regional and country-focused workshops are funded by the European Commission’s Service for Foreign Policy Instruments (FPI) under the Farm to Fork Strategy (F2F), which is the EU plan to contribute to solving food challenges, and, to this end, proposes pathways for change towards sustainability that provides environmental, health, social and economic benefits.
