Today kicked off the Pre-Summit for the United Nations Food Systems Summit and Prof Sheryl Hendriks took part in the End Hunger Coalition Session. Here is what she had to say:

COVID-19 has exposed the lack of resilience and deeply-entrenched inequalities in food systems and has increased the number of hungry people. Populations in crisis are disproportionally vulnerable to the impact of the COVID pandemic.

Globally, moderate and severe food insecurity has been slowly increasing since 2014. In 2020, the increase was equal to the sum of increases over the past 5 years. Although it is not yet possible to fully account for the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is estimated that in 2020 more than one in five children under 5 years of  age were affected by stunting (being short for age – a sign of chronic hunger). While 6.7% of the world’s children suffered from wasting (low weight-for-height) – a sign of acute and severe hunger. The COVID pandemic is expected to drive rates of stunting and wasting up.

Adverse and extreme weather events, economic downturns and conflict cause large-scale hunger. But hunger is also disproportionately experienced by those who are poor, marginalised and displaced. Fragile countries are disproportionally burdened. Inequalities in society and the food system make food inaccessible to the most vulnerable populations and deny people of dignity and basic human rights.

Women and girls are disproportionately affected by such crises. Any disruption to a child's nourishment carries long-term consequences. Therefore, ending hunger is a development imperative. Hunger and undernourishment rob children of the chance to grow, develop and learn. Hunger deprives a child of their future potential in society, the workforce and the economy, trapping generations in lives of poverty and perpetuating hunger and undernourishment. Hunger perpetuates a vicious cycle of deprivation across generations.

Ultimately, low human productivity affects GDP and society. We have seen the fragility of systems and expect that the reprioritisation of domestic and international funds to cope with increased hunger in the midst of a health crisis will cancel the past decade's economic growth, especially in Africa where one in five people are hungry. Countries such as my own, South Africa, will not rise to the aspirations of the SDGs unless we overcome hunger both in the country and the region.

Ending hunger goes beyond increasing production. Food systems offer the opportunity to consider comprehensive ways to address the root causes of hunger. The Science Group and its partners has set out ways in which this can be achieved and the Action Track has collated packages of solutions to support these efforts. These efforts recognise that complex problems such as ending hunger require a package of comprehensive and supportive efforts by stakeholders working together - from the benefits of mechanisation in developing country agribusiness contexts, digital extension services and greater access to appropriate information for farming and nutrition, circular economy ideas to minimise waste, encouraging women’s leadership and providing appropriate food assistance and social protection programmes to enable participation on the food system.

By way of illustration, food systems include a number of ‘hidden costs’ that make unsustainable and unhealthy food cheap while making sustainable healthy food expensive and unprofitable. Unsustainable production undermines the quality of natural resources, may rob communities of livelihood assets and pollute the environment, disproportionately affecting the health and livelihoods of the poor. Unsustainable food system practices may trap the poor in low wages and undesirable and unsafe working environments. Hunger is perpetuated.

One of our Summit preparatory analyses showed that the true cost of these hidden environmental effects were roughly 78% of the total expenditure on food per year and the impact of unhealthy food on our health was roughly 133 times the expenditure on food per year. A double tragedy. However, there are many ways of correcting this through incentives, disincentives and transparency and accountability systems. The magnitude of change required to address these challenges and make food systems fairer, more sustainable and recilient and healthier requires deliberate, coordinated action from all stakeholders, including strong, enabling support from governments.

Remember to tune in tomorrow for the second day of the Pre-Summit which you can access here.