WHO Director General's remarks at the “Critical Agriculture: Tackling Food Insecurity and Trade Dependencies” roundtable discussion 20 November 2024

Parliamentary State Secretary Niels Annen,

Inter-American Development Bank President, Ilan Goldfajn

Excellencies, dear colleagues and friends,

My thanks to the Munich Security Conference for convening this discussion, and I thank Brazil for making hunger and food security a priority of its G20 presidency.

Food security is not simply a humanitarian issue: it's an issue of national and international security, as colleagues have already said, and it's also an issue of health security.

Just as food insecurity can exacerbate conflicts, so it can harm health, weakening the immune system and opening the door to disease.

More than two billion people, as you know, are food insecure, but progress on ending malnutrition in all its forms remains uneven and is too slow.

Food security requires regular access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food.

This makes the availability and affordability of nutritious foods, such as fruits and vegetables, especially important.

While international trade can enhance food availability and diversity, it also creates vulnerabilities. When countries depend heavily on a limited number of suppliers for their food needs, they expose themselves to market fluctuations, geopolitical tensions, and climate-related disruptions, as already have been said.

The COVID-19 pandemic illustrated how fragile our global food supply chains can be. And trade has improved access to diverse foods, as you know, particularly in regions with seasonal shortages or a heavy reliance on imports.

However, it has also increased access to highly processed foods and foods high in unhealthy fats, sugars or sodium, leading to increased risk of heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

Trade impacts what is imported, but also what is grown.

Protectionist policies and subsidies often prioritize staple crop production, limiting agricultural diversity, undermining food system sustainability, and further harming nutrition.

They can also allow low-cost production of ingredients such as corn syrup or palm oil, that are used to produce highly processed foods with no nutritional value.

As a result, the consumption and diversity of unsubsidized or less subsidized commodities such as fruits, vegetables and pulses have been discouraged as they are relatively more expensive.

It's vital therefore that trade policies are aligned with food security and nutrition goals. Not just food security, but the nutrition goals, and that tariffs and quotas do not harm public health goals.

These priorities are not mutually exclusive. This is not a zero-sum game. Multilateral trade organizations and cooperation can bring growth, ensure food security and better nutrition for all, and make trade work for sustainable development.

There are many things countries can do to improve food security, nutrition and their own national security.

For instance, strengthening local agricultural production;

Diversifying food sources;

And by providing essential nutrition actions, such as encouraging exclusive breastfeeding during the first six months of life.

WHO is committed to advancing healthy, sustainable food systems through platforms like the Committee on World Food Security and Codex Alimentarius.

Food, health and security are intimately linked.

As the father of medicine, Hippocrates, said, "Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food."

And then the economic returns - with nutrition it is the healthy child that will be a healthy adult and productive, and that's where the economic return comes.

Obrigado. I thank you.

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