Global Trends on Nutrition From the perspectives of agriculture

[Audio] Global Trends on Nutrition From the perspectives of agriculture.

[Audio] In this slides, I am going to talk about global trend of international dialogue on food, nutrition and environment during last 70 years. This trend is classified into roughly three phases, transit from simple single sector approach toward more complex systemic approach. This is a reflection of the problem we faced in each period of time and efforts trying to find solution..

[Audio] This is four main contents explaining each stage of transition as explained in the previous slides. 1. History of global environmental issue 2. History of food security concept 3. Toward systemic approach 4. Food system and planetary health diet.

[Audio] 1. History of global environmental issue.

[Audio] Overview of international dialogue about global environmental issue and agriculture..

[Audio] Initiation of global dialog about overall lifestyle of modern human being and destiny of earth can be tracked back to 1970's. Thorough its publication, "The limits of Growth", "Club of Rome" published a cautiously article on current mode of human lifestyle which heavily relying on non-renewable resources. After around ten years, the concept of environmental pollution introduced new aspect, non-point source. Before this time, pollution problem was more simple. In most cases, geographic scale was as small as town or community, polluter and victim ware clearly identified. This is a case of point source pollution. However after introduction of non-point source, we came to understand that our lifestyle itself is leading pollution, and geographic scale is much bigger than traditional case of pollution..

[Audio] In line with expansion of the concept of pollution, experts start accumulating evidences regarding relationship between traditional mode of agriculture and global environmental damage at the time of late 1980s. Traditional mode of agriculture was sustainable during long human history, however due to increasing population pressure and economic competition of natural resources, environmental pressure reached to the state that normal environmental regeneration process cannot catch up with. These include over-grazing, over-cultivation, and deforestation which results in three global environmental problem, GHG emission, Soil degradation, and biodiversity loss. To solve the situation, three international convention was agreed among leaders from over 180 countries at Rio-summit in 1992, namely, UN Framework Convention for Climate Change, UN Convention for Bio-Diversity and UN convention for combatting desertification. Through these process one of the most important concept for international development was proposed, that is, the concept of sustainable development. This concept is further deepened and reflected into global agenda now. Sustainable Development Goal..

[Audio] At the time of Rio-summit, one of the key argument was, how to balance role and responsibility among industrial nations and developing nations. As you can clearly see in the graph, amount of GHG emission was almost same between industrialized nation and developing nation. However if we look back historical accumulation, majority of emission have been done by industrialized nations. In fact, wasting non-renewable natural resources was key economic model of development at least up to 1980s. Under that situation, to carefully balance the role and responsibility, international community introduced new concept, so called, "Common But Differentiated Responsibility". This meals all the country in the world have common responsibility, but in considering historical, cultural situation and historical background, extent of the duty each country will shoulder may different..

[Audio] Since Rio-summit, researcher and experts have been continuously updating knowledge and evidence about both positive and negative aspect of agriculture to global environmental issue. Negative aspects includes GHG emission related to agriculture practices and biodiversity loss due to land use change. Positive aspects includes function of carbon storage of well managed farmland, and role of farmland as secondary habitat of wild life such as wetland..

[Audio] What is environment friendly diet?. What is environment friendly diet?.

[Audio] As explained in the previous section, there are number of positive and negative environmental impact from agriculture. Even the case of GHG emission, major technical area includes enteric fermentation and manure management for livestock, fertilizer management from farmland, methene emission control from paddy field, fuel and energy use for machinery, and carbon storage through forest and land management. Let's see the contribution of each technical area in the following slide...

[Audio] This pie-chart, shows share of GHG emission under different type of economic activities. We can see that the biggest emission comes from heat and energy sector accounts for 35% of total GHG emission. Agriculture and forestry sector is a second biggest sector, which accounts for 25% of total emission. When further disaggregated, half of the emission is from forestry and remaining half is from agriculture. Within agriculture sector, enteric fermentation hold largest share of 40%, followed by manure management as 16%, chemical fertilizer management as 13%, and methene emission from paddy field as 10%..

[Audio] Based on the finding, possible mitigation measures are also being investigated. In 2021, LANCET summarized those technologies in its publication, EAT-LANCET. It proposes to minimize negative environmental impact coming from current dietary habit under three strategies, (1) dietary change, (2) sustainable intensification technology, (3) reduction of food loss and waste. First and third strategy simply try to reduce negative environmental impact by reducing total consumption. Second strategy is focusing on technical innovation to reduce GHG emission while improving overall productivity. Number of technologies have been proposed, verified and demonstrated for extension. In this slide, key technologies are summarized for four technical area, enteric fermentation, manure management, chemical fertilizer management, and land use change..

[Audio] In this slide, technologies are summarized for three technical area, rice cultivation, biodiversity, and water resource..

[Audio] 2. History of food Security concept Now In this section, I am going to explain historical transition of international food security dialogue..

[Audio] Currently, there are over 200 of definitions for "food security". However by selecting key agreement among senior officials from the government, we can capture the transition of the food security concept itself. During 1960 to 1970s when number of countries were facing serious hunger, the core concept of food security was "food availability". Key target in agriculture policy was, how to increase productivity. Green revolution was initiated during this period. Rapid productivity improvement of three major staples, wheat, rice, and maize significantly contributed to increase of staple supply especially in Asian and Latin American countries. However in 1980s, after dramatic growth in staple productivity, we could still observe hunger in number of countries. People started to realize that food availability is one issue, but there is another critical barrier for food security, that is, food affordability. Accessibility was added as another key issue for food security. In 1990s, when we come to see steady progress in hunger reduction, we understand that even population who avoid serious food insecurity, often fell into malnourished state due to low quality of diet. Quality of diet was then added as key issue for food security. In 2015, global development target was updated from Millennium Development Goal to Sustainable Development Goal. One of key change in relation to food and nutrition is MDG goal 1 and SDG goal2. During MDG, food security target only define prevalence of undernourishment, acronym as POU. In this case, POU count only number of hunger population. While in case of SDG, the target is expanded as "to eliminate all forms of malnutrition", which cover not only serious hunger, but also obesity, micronutrient deficiency, chronic undernutrition and so on..

[Audio] Probably one of the most known current definition of food security is the one agreed in 1996 at World Food Summit held in Rome. Food Security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food which meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life..

[Audio] Now I am going to explain why the concept of food security evolved by expanding its focus to cover volume, equity, and quality. During 1950s, many country were at the risk of serious hunger. One of the key issue for development was "hunger reduction" After green revolution in 1960s-1970s, world grain supply have been relatively excess. International price decreased accordingly Nevertheless, the world still see great number of population suffer from hunger and we come to recognize hunger as a matter of disparity during late 1970s – 1980s. By mid-80s, symptom of food security were investigated deeply and time dimension were added (chronic and acute food insecurity) Furthermore, food security debate come to emphasize quality aspect of diet in 90s.

[Audio] In this slide, I tried to draw overall picture that explain an incident occurred during 2007-2009 and follow up discussion, which made a significant impact on international food and nutrition security dialogue. In the next slide, I summarize what happened during 2007-2009 and what key question was triggered based on this experience. These explanation covers big box on left side of the slide, plus small box next to it connected through blue arrow, with a set of green label..

[Audio] In 2007/2008, however, world grain stock level reached lowest level in 30 years. This was caused by oil price surge, bad weather in Australia and Europe, rapid demand growth of energy crop for bioethanol, biodiesel, This experience raised multiple issues to international agricultural community including Carrying capacity of the world Sustainable use of bioenergy Responsible agricultural investment Monitoring / regulating speculation, trade embargo Resilience to the price fluctuation / natural calamity.

[Audio] Then, I am going to explain remaining part of the figure in the previous slide. It is about what have been discussed among global health experts during almost same period. It was well understood that nutrition and food security were non-divisible component. However, it was not effectively harmonized in implementation In 2008, LANCET released series of scientific papers to alarm limited support in Nutrition and science based evidence on various nutrition intervention The message received great attention from international community including G8 / G20. Number of initiatives have been launched including Scaling Up Nutrition, established in 2010 SUN focused on "First 1000 days", "13 prioritized nutrition intervention", "multi-sector approach including Agriculture, Health, Hygiene, and Education" In 2013, Six Global Nutrition Target was adopted by WHO.

[Audio] Finally, all the discussion explained last few slides were summarized and reflected as much as possible in the process of Sustainable Development Goal dialogue. Dialogue on SDG started from the review of achievement of MDG. In terms of MDG goal1, there were three key findings. (1) Target to halve POU was nearly achieved , (2) however, issue still remains as regional discrepancy, and (3) Further action required for hunger elimination To overcome remaining issue, disparity, several focus needs to be emphasized. (1) support on groups left behind including small scale farming household, (2) how to improve vulnerable production assets. In addition, in order to reflect recent progress on global dialogue on nutrition, it was important to expand the scope from only hunger into improvement of "all forms of malnutrition" As a result, several key concept were integrated in SDG goal2 as follows, Elimination of hunger To Cover all forms of malnutrition, including acute malnutrition, chronic malnutrition, overnutrition Support on family farming Support resilience enhancement, which is a common challenge of current vulnerable population.

[Audio] 3. Toward systemic approach Now I am going to explain final part of this video, about systemic approach, which become increasing popular during just last a few years..

[Audio] Competition & trade-off. Competition & trade-off.

[Audio] Now, let's start from explaining what is systemic approach and why we need it. In the very first slide, I explained about global trend of international dialogue on food, nutrition and environment. It can be divided into three phase, single sector approach, competition and trade off, and systemic approach. In the earlier days, agriculture sector try to achieve different objective focusing on single target. However, experts started to realize that single sector approach may cause unexpected negative or positive impact to non-target. Then we start considering multiple objective at one time, to make optimal balance among different approaches. Typical example of unexpected negative impact is, relationship between nutrition, environment, and agriculture. As it was already explained, if we focus only on production expansion, it gives negative irreversible impact to global environment. If we focus on balanced food supply, increased supply of animal products especially for developing world, it will again give serious damage to global environment. There is also competition between food security and nutrition improvement. Because some group of people suffer from hunger or acute malnutrition which stable supply of dietary energy is essential component, while other group of people suffer chronic malnutrition or micronutrient deficiency which diversified, balanced diet play a critical role. Systemic approach is a way to identify optimal balance among set of different policy target..

[Audio] Through the course of international dialogue on global environmental issue (i.e. SDG, climate change, biodiversity, etc.), it was identified that various human activities, deeply connecting each other, giving positive and negative impact to the environment Systemic approach was taken to clarify complex interrelationship among various human activities and find out optimal balance among them.

[Audio] During last decade, integration of food security and nutrition have shown remarkable progress. And now, experts tries to integrate environment in this framework through application of systemic approach. This direction became clear during last a few years through Food System Summit, N4G, and publication like EAT-LANET..

[Audio] What is planetary health diet? Now before closing, I am going to introduce planetary health diet quickly, the concept proposed by the publication titled EAT-LANCET in 2021..

[Audio] Key concept of planetary health diet is to recommend optimal diet balance in considering not only nutrition, but also impact of dietary culture to global environment. The report conduct meta-analysis using existing scientific literature to capture latest reliable figure regarding relationship between dietary culture, nutrition, health, and environment. And based on the result of this meta-analysis, planetary health diet is summarized as set of recommendation of daily recommended intake of key food groups. The result of meta-analysis clearly shows that current dietary culture is not healthy enough in most of country/region. It also clarify current dietary culture is giving irreversible environmental impact. Lastly, it conduct several scenario analysis to identify possible pathway for human being to ensure healthy diet and lifestyle while maintaining environmental sustainability..

[Audio] In the left side, you can see for each nine food category, recommended daily intake is shows in gram-per-capita-per-day. This is a recommended value determined based on existing scientific literature about nutrition and environment. In the right side, you can see pie-chart which compare these recommendation and actual food supply in each region. There is very big difference by region, oversupply and undersupply by different commodity group. Each region is unique, as well as not complying planetary health diet at all..

[Audio] This chart show environmental impact of six scenario with different technology option. The scenario includes (1) Dietary shift, which follow planetary health diet, (2) Halve waste, which reduce food loss and waste by half, (3) PROD, adoption of high yielding technology. (4) PROD+, adoption high yielding technology more intensively, (5) COMB, adoption of technology combination including high yielding, GHG emission reduction and other, (6) COMB+, more intensive application of COMB Six kinds of environmental impact is verified in this assessment, which includes biodiversity loss, GHG emission, land use change, fertilizer management, water usage and other. Hight of each pie indicates the extent of damage to the environment. Red line set for each environmental category is border line for sustainability. As you can see, under most of six environmental category, only COMB+ option can fit within border line..

[Audio] Possible actions to harmonize competition and trade-offs.

[Audio] As a conclusion of their analysis, EAT-LANCET propose three key strategy to minimize competition and trade-offs, while enhance synergy and impact among food security-nutrition-environment triangle. Dietary changes towards healthy diets Technological and management-related changes in food production (sustainable intensification) Reductions in food loss and waste.

[Audio] Thank you very much!. 10/8/2023. 34. Thank you very much! Any question / feedback?.