Inside a new World Bank program to boost food security

Julian Lampietti, the World Bank’s manager for global agriculture practice, arrived in Berlin last week with a mission. It’s his job to lead the bank’s global strategy on agriculture and food and to help design its response on food and nutrition security. That means he’s been closely involved in preparing the Global Challenge Program on Food and Nutrition Security, which is set to officially launch later this year. Though details on the initiative are forthcoming, the overall goal is to strengthen food stability and availability and improve early warning systems so that communities are prepared for food crises. The bank also wants to mobilize more public and private investment in sustainable and resilient food systems. Lampietti, who is typically based at the bank’s headquarters in Washington, was in Berlin for the Global Forum for Food and Agriculture, or GFFA, where he met with agricultural ministers from around the world to discuss the program and how they might shift their public spending to improve sustainable food and nutrition security. In general, the bank is scaling up its food crisis response as hunger and food prices rise. The bank has identified food and nutrition security as one of eight “global challenges” it will focus on over the coming years under President Ajay Banga; others include energy access, pandemic preparedness and prevention, and climate change adaptation and mitigation. Devex caught up with Lampietti to discuss the program. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Nearly 30% of the global population, or 2.4 billion people, is moderately or severely food insecure. In your role, what are the current food security challenges you’re most concerned about? The food insecurity numbers keep rising, yet we are producing plenty of food at a global level to feed the 8 billion people. So something is terribly wrong with our food system that we can’t feed everyone or give them access to that food at an affordable price. At the same time, we’re seeing a food system where the rate of output increases is declining, particularly in places such as sub-Saharan Africa, and the volatility of that system is increasing. So we’re seeing more and more volatility in our food system. But what we are really focused on is not only feeding people but also transforming the food system. The world produces plenty of food, and we’ve been very good at increasing our production of calories. The challenge is that producing all of that food has come at a tremendous cost. And that cost is that our food system produces 30% of greenhouse gas emissions. It’s the leading source of biodiversity loss. It’s a leading source of water pollution. Due to overapplication of fertilizers, it’s causing a lot of bad diets and contributes to undernutrition, malnutrition, and obesity. And the people who work in our food system are some of the worst-paid people in any sector of the economy. And all of that put together is actually ending up costing our society a whole lot more than we ever imagined. How will the Global Challenge Program address what seems like a fairly overwhelming set of concerns? The program has three big pillars. One is how do we get ahead of food crises? So how do we have an early warning? How do we prevent the crisis from escalating? And how do we make sure that people get assistance? They need to be able to purchase food very quickly, because the longer you wait to address a food crisis, the more it’s going to cost you in all sorts of ways. The key here is having really good adaptive social safety nets and really good early warning systems. The second big pillar of the program is around nutrition. We know that if kids, for example, in their first 1,000 days, don’t get the right nutrition, there’s a lifelong cost to those kids, their families, and to society. So we have a big effort to make sure we’re addressing the nutrition question. It also goes to the point; you should not subsidize crops that don’t provide good nutrition. I’m not saying don’t consume sugar. I’m just saying, don’t have the government pay for it, because they’re paying more to fix the problem at the end of the day. And then the third and biggest part of this global challenge program we’re putting together is how do we change the way we produce our food? And that means trying to shift from things that are doing bad to things that are doing good. How do you actually achieve these goals? Governments of the world alone spend on the order of $600 to $800 billion a year subsidizing their agricultural sector. They spend vast amounts on social protection schemes that are not particularly well targeted and are not providing particularly nutritious food to people. So what we want to do to help this transformation take place is every dollar you can take away from doing something bad and put toward doing something good you actually win on both sides of the equation. Is that what brought you to GFFA? There are still a lot of problems, but there are a lot of countries that are starting to say, you know, this makes a lot of sense, and how do we get together on this? And how do we rethink or repurpose our agricultural support, our social policies to do things in a better way? And that’s one of the things we’re doing here at GFFA is creating a peer group of ministers and countries who are saying, yeah, this makes sense. It’s not easy. It takes time. You don’t want to do certain things, because they can really shake markets up in bad ways. But you can set yourself a trajectory and move along that trajectory. And if you have colleagues who are ministers of agriculture who you can learn from, that can be very, very encouraging. And so that’s a huge part of the platform we’re putting forward here, at this GFFA, is this notion you can’t have food security without food systems transformation. And the money to make these changes, a lot of it is already on the table. And we’re doing a lot of things with the other international financial institutions to make this more attractive. Can you give me an example? There are all these climate funds out there, like the Green Climate Fund. [But] only about 3% of climate finance is going to the agriculture and food sector. Yet, agriculture and food are producing 30% of the emissions. So how can we, as an organization like the World Bank, help the governments do more climate-smart and climate-friendly agriculture and access those funds? So there’s a real opportunity here, by sharing global knowledge, to make some connections that will produce better outcomes for the food system and, ultimately, stop the cycle that we’re on when it comes to food and nutrition insecurity. How have the discussions with the ministers been going? There are a lot of ministers that are interested in this topic. Some are not and some don’t understand it. And some have a lot of political things at stake. And so you have to go gently. It’s not something that can be done overnight. And each country has its own unique circumstances. So there’s no super silver bullet here. It’s a matter of sitting down and figuring out who the champions are and getting those champions to show that it’s possible to maneuver in a difficult space politically. And how do we get them to share experiences with each other, and then provide them the knowledge and the incentives so that they can push programs through in their countries.