Innovative approaches to sustainable agriculture and food - Main contents

How do we shape a world which is free forever from hunger and undernutrition? How can we inspire global action to support the 2 billion people still living in hunger and suffering from malnutrition?

Today I found myself in a 16th Century palace in Brussels at a high level gathering of ministers, experts, policy architects, practitioners and academics. The setting may be historical but our discussions today were firmly focused on the future. The purpose of our meeting was to share thinking on innovative approaches for the kind of inclusive and sustainable agricultural development that will ensure a world forever free from hunger and undernutrition. The atmosphere was charged with ambition and drive as we set out on our journey towards the new vision of development captured in the Sustainable Development Goals.

We firmly believe that an innovative approach to inclusive and sustainable agricultural development is key, such as setting up open partnerships with civil society and the private sector and initiatives such as Scaling up Nutrition, or SUN - which is a movement open to all partners and which puts partner countries in the driving seat, and increasingly seeks to ensure agriculture plays its part in ensuring improved nutrition for all. Ambitious, challenging, and for some not-doable in the short term - but for us it is the engine behind our journey towards the new vision of development set out in the Sustainable Development Goals. Our challenge is to push the boundaries of expectation and our capacities to deliver. And the key word here is "together" - for this gathering itself was an important moment to testify to the tremendous power of partnership. To show how we can address our common challenges head on, using all the tools that exist to stop undernutrition and the diseases linked to hunger.

At the same time, living up to our individual responsibilities matters more than ever. As Commissioner for International Development, I am acutely aware of this, not least with regard to the bold commitments we have made on nutrition. Four years ago, the EU pledged to support countries to reduce the number of stunted children under the age of five years by at least 7 million by 2025. We then moved quickly from words to action, with the EC announcing €3.5 billion for the period 2014-2020 within the Action Plan on Nutrition framework.

The first progress report for nutrition produced by the Commission has been recently finalised - and it does not disappoint. It has been developed in response to the growing demand for new models of collaboration and multi partnerships to achieve food security and sustainable development in the framework of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

In short, it provides a compelling account of how a clear focus on strategic prioritisation can help to support a paradigm shift in the way that EU Delegations tackle undernutrition. I say this because of the evidence: no less than 40 delegations now have formal agreements with each of the national governments, to rigorously incorporate nutrition within their planning and programming frameworks. These 40 countries were home to 40% of the world’s stunted children in 2012. They also had high rates of maternal anaemia and child wasting (i.e. children who are low weight for their height).

But the report goes further than this: through an innovative tool that we have called ‘Nutrition Country Fiches’ we can now provide a country specific vision of the nutrition situation. They also offer a snapshot of how EuropeAid's funding for nutrition is actually being programmed across a range of sectors to accelerate progress in reducing stunting. I believe that these Fiches are a powerful tool to coordinate efforts and advocacy among development partners at country level.

Crucially, the Progress Report demonstrates that EU funding for nutrition has risen for the second year running. I am encouraged by these results.

This report has only confirmed to us the strong need to align member states’ assistance, both humanitarian and development, around our shared priorities. Together with my colleague Christos Stylianides, Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid, I have recently seen first-hand a remarkable example of such partnership in the context of Ethiopia.

I must be honest, however. The progress report also makes for sober reading. While advances have been made, our analysis lays bare the scale of the challenge that we collectively face to make undernutrition a thing of the past. I for one am ready for this challenge, and I very much hope I can count on you too.