Is our food system really broken?

The Global Food Security Summit is about to get under way, where political leaders and experts will come together to discuss how to make urgent progress on Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2: to achieve zero hunger and end all forms of malnutrition by 2030.

Around 345 million people experience acute food insecurity according to the World Food Programme – an increase of 200 million compared to pre-pandemic levels. And the UN has warned we are not on track to achieve this global goal.

So how did we get here? And do these alarming numbers mask longer-term progress towards achieving SDG 2?

This episode paints a full picture of global hunger and malnutrition today. We ask whether the food system is really broken, and how the humanitarian system can better respond to food crises around the world. Our guests also share their hopes for what can be achieved at the upcoming Summit.

Speakers

• Sara Pantuliano (host), Chief Executive, ODI
• Valerie Guarnieri, Deputy Executive Director, Programme and Policy Development, World Food Programme
• Dr Stella Nordhagen, Senior Technical Specialist, Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN)
• Dr Luka Biong Deng Kuol, Adjunct professor at Institute of Peace, Development and Security Studies, University of Juba, South Sudan
• Steve Wiggins, Principal Research Fellow, ODI

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro (Sara Pantuliano)
• 3:01 Is the hunger crisis getting worse? (Dr Stella Nordhagen)
• 4:24 The global outlook (Dr Luka Biong Deng Kuol)
• 7:24 Recent trends and challenges facing WFP (Valerie Guarnieri)
• 9:33 A more positive longer-term picture (Steve Wiggins)
• 12:13 The need for better coordination, policies and preparedness (Dr Luka Biong Deng Kuol)
• 14:35 Changing the humanitarian system (Valerie Guarnieri)
• 18:01 Examples of progress (Dr Stella Nordhagen)
• 23:05 How to accelerate progress (Dr Stella Nordhagen)
• 27:11 Food inflation
• 28:32 Is the food system broken? (Steve Wiggins)
• 31:09 Hopes for the Global Food Security Summit

Transcript

0:00 Stella Nordhagen

Hunger is a solvable problem as long as the political commitment and the prioritisation are there. So what I would like to see is a renewed global commitment to this issue and in particular to see countries and other powerful stakeholders speaking with 1 voice on the importance of protecting food access amid conflict and stabilising food prices in the wake of the effects of conflict.

0:34 Sara Pantuliano

Welcome to Think Change. I'm Sara Pantuliano, ODI's Chief Executive and your host of Think Change. The Global Food Security Summit will be held in London on the 24th of November. The summit will bring together political leaders and experts to discuss how we make urgent progress on food security on SDG goal number two, that is to achieve zero hunger and to end all forms of malnutrition. The UN has sounded the alarm that this goal is way off track and it will not be achieved by 2013. The World Food Programme estimates that the number of people that are experiencing acute food insecurity is at 345 million across the 79 countries where they work. This is an increase of 200 million compared to pre pandemic levels. We know that food insecurity is driven by many factors, and that includes a challenging political and funding environment and a lack of adequate leadership. And so together with the climate emergency, conflict, economic shocks, these warnings come as no surprise. But do the UN warnings paint a full and complete picture of global hunger and malnutrition? And is the humanitarian system capable to respond to food crises and meet the current challenges? And if not, how can we make the system better? And last but not least, What of the wider picture of malnutrition? Are we making progress to meet SDG 2 of zero hunger by 2030? Well, I have a great group of colleagues and friends with me today to help unpack these issues and answer these fundamental questions. I'm really delighted to welcome Luka Biong Deng Kuol Luka is an adjunct professor at the Institute of Peace, Development and Security Studies at the University of Juba. Together with Luca, I have Valerie Guarnieri, Assistant Executive Director, Program and Policy Development at the World Food Programme in Rome. Also joining us is Stella Nordhagen, Senior Technical Specialist at the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, also known as GAIN in Geneva. And last but not least, our own Steve Wiggins. Principle Research Fellow at ODI. Welcome to you all. We clearly face a crisis of hunger. But is it getting worse? And if so, how and why? Stella, I'll start with you.

3:00 Stella Nordhagen

Sure. Thanks very much, Sarah. So I think the question of is it getting worse depends a lot on which time period you look at, right? And I think It is getting worse if we look at since the past few years, about since the coven 19 pandemic, the prevalence of hunger of undernourishment increased by about 1. 5 percentage points. And that doesn't sound like that much, but that results in 150Million additional undernourished people than just a few years earlier. And as you said, we're really not on track to meet those global goals. But at the same time, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that we were making huge progress on addressing hunger and undernourishment long before this period. The prevalence of undernourishment declined steadily for decades until about 2015. In 1970, for example, it was estimated that over a 3rd of the population of low and middle income countries was undernourished, which is almost twice as high as it is now. And we've seen major decreases in the frequency of famines. In the late 1800s, They were over 60 times more common than today. And even in the 1970s and 80s, more than 10 times as common as today. So, in the long view, we've done a lot to address hunger and malnutrition. But what we've seen in the last few years is really stalling out and having that crisis come back and threatening our progress on these global goals.

4:21 Sara Pantuliano

Thanks, Stella. Luka, what's your assessment?

4:24 Luka Biong Deng Kuol

Maybe the most important question is, is where is this happening? These, uh, crises of hunger because zooming into the geographical, I think is very important. Definitely. So, Southern African countries seem to be the one facing hunger, and it actually undoubtedly, it is a hotbed of active food insecurity, famine like conditions. And as indicated earlier, also, the two thirds of African countries have levels of hunger that are rated as very serious with 75 percent of the countries dependent on on food aid are from South, Southern African countries. But not only that, if you zoom in, it is about the whole of Africa. It's the epicenter of food crisis and a hothouse for more than 70 percent of the world's hungriest people. But then why I'm saying this trend is going to continue, it is the drivers of this crisis of hunger. I'm going to identify a few of them. One, there's a governance deficit in these countries. And I think that the key of democratic transition, it leads to capturing the state. And especially in the oil producing, uh, countries. But having the least becoming less concerned about their citizens, and I think this issue of government deficit is extremely very, very important. And there's been a very clear case of unconstrained increase in military spending and given the fact, as you mentioned, the issue of leadership deficit, second climate change. Which is true, climate change is a real problem facing this country, especially the Horn of Africa. But I think for me, climate change and the implication are not actually the cause for this crisis. It is the weak policies and governance deficit. The 3rd driver, I think, is a reliance on agricultural capitalism. Again, it's a manifestation. Of of a weak and lack of public policy that could be able to provide an alternative and diversified economy. And the last 1, before the last 1, unfair trading structures. Yeah, we need to accept the fact that the Western countries are actually highly subsidising the domestic agriculture, making these countries becoming so dependent. On food imports. And the last one, crisis of multilateralism. I think this is a big, a big challenge in the sense multilateralism is shaken both in terms of its core foundation and its operational capacity, the world's increasingly becoming fragmented, which is also affecting the whole lot of, uh, if you look at the Ukraine and the Middle East, I think we're going to see the train of a dwindling of humanitarian assistance to these countries.

7:10 Sara Pantuliano

Thanks, Luka. It's hard to disagree with your analysis and the pictures you paint. Valerie, from your vantage point and World Food Program, how do you see Luka's assessment? Well,

7:24 Valerie Guarnieri

Well definitely we see hunger needs rising, malnutrition rising. You shared some of the figures there. Last year at WFP, we broke all kinds of records. We raised more money than ever.$14 billion. We reached more people than we ever re- had reached before. 160 million people. But as many as that is, it's still less than half of the people facing acute hunger. Um, we reached 28 million people with, uh, with nutrition services, but that's a fraction of the people who are affected, uh, by wasting and by acute malnutrition. So needs have been outpacing resources for some time and and now this year for the very first time since I joined WFP 23 years ago. Funding is going down sharply, not just for WFP, but for the broader humanitarian sector and the immediate impact of that is cuts. So we're now undertaking our largest scale down in history, cutting rations for refugees and other population groups, dropping millions of people from our roles. We're reaching 10 million less people in Afghanistan than we were reaching last year. We have huge access constraints in places like Sudan, like the Democratic Republic of Congo, parts of Ukraine and now in Gaza. So humanitarian space is also shrinking. So it is just really a dire situation that we're facing and political will. More financing and, uh, and full respect for international humanitarian law are key to ensuring that we can address this crisis.

9:16 Sara Pantuliano

Thanks Valerie. That's not the kind of, you know, record breaking performances we'd like to hear about. Steve, I mean, beyond, you know, the humanitarian response, it's inevitable when the crisis becomes so deep. How else should we address this crisis of hunger?

9:34 Steve Wiggins

Sarah, I'd like to follow up on the line that Stella was was putting forward, which is contextualising recent events, recent shocks to to to food systems by looking at the longer term record on reduction of hunger. Now Stella talked about under new measures of under under nourishment, which tend to capture the headlines. These are measures which come first and foremost from FAO where they are modeling under nourishment based on a lot of assumptions. They are not observing it. They're not counting it, but we do have a way of counting hunger, and that is through the demographic and health surveys which measure the stunting of children under the age of five. That is, children who haven't got the growth that is expected for their age. And if we look since 1990 at the record shown by the demographic and health surveys, we see remarkable reductions in the percentage of children who are stunted over that period. What some people do not realize is The trend for the reduction of stunting has accelerated since roundabout 2005 and above all in Sub-Saharan Africa. Not everybody knows that if you check the demographic and health surveys since 2017 to see whether recent crises have impacted levels of stunting of children. The 13 countries which have reported ADHS survey since 2017, in 11, there has been no change in the reduction of stunting since 2017. In one there has been a pause and in the other there has been an increase in stunting of one percentage point. So yes, of course we have crises at the moment. But the medium to long term picture is one of reduced levels of stunting, and I can't find any evidence that over the last five or six years, that that rate of reduction has in any way stalled.

11:42 Sara Pantuliano

So you paint a better picture in the medium to long term, um, Stephen. That's something we should, you know, obviously celebrate and understand better, why, you know, the wider trends are more positive, while of course, you know, we are confronted by these more immediate challenges where we see, um, immediate, you know, food crisis and, um, this discussion about rising famines. Luka, how do you assess this contrast between what we've heard, you know, from Valerie and what Steve was just describing?

12:14 Luka Biong Deng Kuol

I think sometimes I believe it is very important in such context to focus on some of these public policies and institutions, because we tend to becoming operational in terms of not be strategic in our intervention, and especially in the areas of the preparedness or food system or social protection, or even issues of political accountability mechanism. And the only I observed in my experience, the issue of the coordination of collective decision making mechanism during during this during the situation. I think I found I saw it. We wasted a lot of time. Lack of coordination, and it would be good to have this would inform integrated programs and join and join programming. And the other thing Sara is the issue of early warning system. We may need to have these. It has been shown some of us engage in this establishing local early warning system in such a situation. And, uh. I believe the current early warning system not to have all the capacity to, to, to anticipate, but I think it should be linked and be informed by, in some of these countries, they have developed conflict early warning system and early response, and this is a missing part where they should be able to be integrated into this. Definitely, I want to say also, having a solid direction of supporting national food security policies. It's extremely very important and that we could have a very long term vision of how you would like to do. And then the last 1 is the issue of the oversight and political accountability. And I think some of us, we went inside context. Sometimes we forget. These local institutions are so important in front of, fighting their own accountability and also the social protection. We come in most cases as if we are a substitute to us to to to such a mechanism. It's trending those tradition institutions extremely very important as a basis for us to respond to some of these crises.

14:11 Sara Pantuliano

Thanks Luka Valerie, luka raises a good point. You know, what can we do to make the humanitarian system more strategic, you know, better coordinated, less operational to really try and reduce, um, the food crisis that we're seeing and getting, you know, the system to intervene earlier before the precipitate. That's something that the two of us have discussed many times.

14:35 Valerie Guarnieri

Yeah, well, I mean, and I think fixing the financing of the humanitarian assistance system is key to that, both in terms of increasing the quantity, but also the quality of humanitarian financing to allow, the type of, uh, support, uh, that invests in basic services, invests in local systems and local solutions, um, and that enables anticipatory action at scale, uh, so that support can be provided for people to take actions in advance of crises. We have great early warning systems now. Modern technology allow information to be in the hands of affected people much sooner than before. Uh, and we know what it means to act on this, but sim, we simply have the tools, but not the wherewithal yet to put those tools into action at scale to enable people to take those, those, those actions that they need. So fixing the humanitarian financing system is, uh, is, is key in terms of action, putting people 1st is absolutely essential,people, their own agency, their own capacities is what they need to be able to rely on in the context of an emergency. So. Investing in people supporting their capacity is, um, is key, uh, to ensuring their survival and their quicker recovery, um, in, uh, in, in crisis. And as humanitarian system actors, we know when we're dealing with food crises, when we're dealing with, uh, crises in, in nutrition. That partnerships and multisectoral action are necessary. There is no single actor that can meet the needs in this space. We need to find ways to work together collaboratively to bring the scale and quality of assistance to, uh, to, to, to bear and maybe last I would highlight the importance of innovations that help both reduce cost and increase the efficiency and effectiveness of our our work. And this means partnering also beyond the sector of humanitarian and development actors. But looking at bringing research and science to bear the increased engagement of the private sector to bear as as well in addressing these rising humanitarian needs.

17:05 Sara Pantuliano

Thanks, Valerie. I mean, of course, what you're saying in terms of fixing the, the financial side of the humanitarian system goes back to the politics, because that's where we see donors struggling, you know, to support anticipatory action or, you know, to support long term development if you want, because in reality, until, you know, the famous CNN effect comes on our screen, it's very hard to get the level of resources that we need, you know, to stave off this crisis. And, you know, we're all trying to push this transformation around supporting local actors. But again, we see how difficult it is, you know, to get donors to support local responders more directly is because of the fiduciary risks and challenges that, um, they, uh, they grapple with. I want to go back to the positive side, this progress that we have made to reduce malnutrition. Stella, can you tell us what has driven these improvements that Steve talked about?

18:00 Stella Nordhagen

Yeah, sure, so I think, um, I was really happy that Steve brought up the point about stunting because that I think is 1 of our real success stories in not only within the field of nutrition, but really within the field of development overall is the great progress that we've made on stunting reduction. And when we simply define stunting as a child, who's too short for his age or her age. It doesn't sound that serious, but what's stunting indicates is the accumulation of deprivation of different kinds. So a lack of nutrients, not insufficient access to water and sanitation, repeated infections, poor quality of care over an extended period of life. So it's an indicator of deprivation that means that a child is just starting out life in a bad situation that holds them back from achieving their whole potential. And it has effects throughout the whole life course. So it results in negative health outcomes, reduced productivity, reduced success in school throughout all of life, which has huge implications for society and the economy in addition to that particular individual. So I just wanted to kind of emphasize why this is such an important marker to focus on. And the good news is that, as Steve said, we've really made a lot of progress on reducing it. At the global level, stunting prevalence fell by about a third from 2000 to 2022, and some countries managed to cut it by even more. Um, for example, Bangladesh took stunting rates from 71 percent to 28 percent in approximately that period. That's amazing progress. That's that's really excellent. And we can look at some of the examples, some of the exemplars that we see in how countries managed to cut stunting and see some similar themes emerging from that that I think can give some useful lessons for how we need to approach progress on SDG 2 in the future. So, to take 1 example, Ethiopia, cut stunting rates from 67 percent to 38 percent in the 25 years from 1992 to 2016. Well, it was still a very poor country and it did that in 4 main ways. The 1st was investing in agriculture. In Ethiopia, agricultural productivity more than doubled in less than 20 years, and that was largely driven by strong investment by the government. So the government really prioritising agriculture as a sector. We've heard both Luke and Valerie talk about kind of the power of political commitment and governance issues. Ethiopia chose to prioritise agriculture Put a lot of money into that sector and also put a focus on agricultural extension workers that could really reach farmers at the last mile and get them to adopt improved inputs, improve techniques. 2nd, they focus on education, enrollment in primary school quadrupled, literacy doubled and the gap between boys and girls closed a lot during that period. 3rd, they considerably expanded their maternal and child health care, particularly at the community level by providing basic care through community health for workers. And finally, they worked on water and sanitation. So open defecation declined by almost 3 quarters during that period. And that was largely driven by the community health workers outreach. If we look at another example, also within Africa. Senegal cut stunting by about half during this period, and we can see that they made some very similar improvements when it came to maternal and child health care, education and water and sanitation. But there were also 2 other really important things that Senegal did 1 of these was that there was a massive reduction in extreme poverty over that period. And the 2nd was that Senegal put in place a high level political commitment towards addressing malnutrition. So they put in place something called the'Sale de le lutte contre la malnutrition', which is a division within the prime minister's office, which has the sole mandate of trying to reduce malnutrition in the country. So that enabled cross sectoral coordination within the country as, as Luka was talking about the importance of that earlier, and it also really prioritised that issue, right? By saying the Prime Minister cares about this enough that he has put a dedicated committee within his cabinet and is giving it that kind of attention and that really galvanised resources, it galvanised attention, it galvanised different strategies to align around the reduction of malnutrition and as we can see that resulted in really positive improvements in stunting. So I think it helps to demonstrate 1st of all, how important political commitment can be. And then also, when we look across both of these examples, the importance of poverty reduction and investment in agriculture as a way to bring that about, because we know that many of the poor people who are living in countries that are heavily afflicted by hunger are smallholder farmers. So an investment in agriculture is not just an investment in an increase in the food supply, but it's an investment in the income of those who are most likely to experience hunger.

22:46 Sara Pantuliano

Thanks. It's really great to hear about this progress, but obviously we're still a long way from, meeting SDG 2 of zero hunger by 2030. What do you think should be the priorities to accelerate this progress that you've just described so well?

23:02 Stella Nordhagen

Yeah, a great question. We are we are indeed a long way away, but I think when we look at the what we've achieved to date, we can be hopeful that it's possible to to accelerate progress. And I think when we think about hunger, acute food insecurity, undernourishment, it's a lot about doubling down on the root causes that we already know about. And one that we've talked kind of around the edges of a lot on this conversation, but I think maybe haven't mentioned as explicitly as we need to is the role of conflict. So, more than 85 percent of people worldwide who are experiencing hunger, acute hunger, live in conflict affected countries. And what we've seen in the past few years, I think, is not only the importance of local conflict, and Valerie's talked about not only how that causes food insecurity crises and hunger, but also how that makes it much more difficult to access and to provide the services to recover from those crises. But we've also seen definitely in the past few years. The way that foreign crises, crises and conflict that are happening in another part of the world, that seems far distal from the communities that we're looking at can ripple through those global food supply chains and have serious impacts in in far distant places. So. Focusing on, first of all, ideally conflict prevention, but in cases when conflict arises, finding ways to ensure that global food supply chains continue to function, continue to flow smoothly and provide food where it's needed without majorly exacerbating food prices or agricultural input prices, such as fertiliser, which has been a big challenge in recent years. That should be a real priority. And then 2 other things that I just wanted to highlight, um, when we talk about SDG 2, we need to remember that it's not just about hunger, but the ambition there is really to end malnutrition in all its forms. Right? So malnutrition, we've already talked some about stunting. We've already talked some about hunger and under nutrition, but I also did want to mention briefly 2 other forms of malnutrition. 1 of those is micronutrient deficiency. So this is often referred to as hidden hunger and its deficiencies and key micronutrients that can prevent you from being an optimal health. Well being achieve ideal cognitive development and productivity throughout the life course. And this is still a huge problem. It's 1 that it's estimated that there's over 2, 000, 000, 000 people worldwide that have a micronutrient deficiency. And 1 thing that's quite interesting about this is that it's not just a problem in low and middle income countries. Micronutrient deficiency is a huge problem. Also, in high income countries, nearly half of women and children in high income countries are estimated to have at least 1 micronutrient deficiency. So this truly is a hidden hunger. And it's 1 that really, we haven't addressed to date. We haven't made that much progress. But I do and then the final thing that we can't forget when we think of the whole picture of malnutrition is the flip side of the malnutrition coin, which is, is having too much. So overweight, obesity, diet related, noncommunicable diseases. On this issue, the trends worldwide are generally in the wrong directions towards increased prevalence of overweight, obesity and related diseases, such as diabetes. This is not just a problem that affects high income countries. It's 1 that cuts across the entire income spectrum. For example, the International Diabetes Foundation, estimates that about a 3rd of adults in Pakistan and 20 percent of adults in Sudan and Egypt have type 2 diabetes, which is largely caused by diet and lifestyle factors. So, when we think about reducing hunger, it's very important to not lose sight of this bigger picture of the whole of SDG 2 and work to ensure that all of the interventions programs and policies that we're promoting to address 1 form of malnutrition aren't actually undermining progress on one of the others. 

26:48 Valerie Guarnieri

I just wanted to jump in. I mean, I, I really support Stella's call for, uh, for full movement and functioning of food systems, including in crisis, um, and, um, and also, uh, the importance to ensure that food systems really work. For those furthest behind. Um, I also just wanted to highlight that even though global food prices have come down, what we're seeing in, uh, in countries around the world is that locally prices remain very high with more than 50 countries facing food inflation of 10 percent or higher, and some facing food inflation of more than 100%. Um, and this, you know, the, the bottom line for this is that, food is not affordable, uh, for poor people, uh, also that nutritious food is not accessible and affordable, uh, for populations that are furthest behind. So, despite progress that has been made and, and is most welcome in addressing stunting, until sufficient nutritious food is affordable and accessible, to all people, uh, we will continue to face these issues of hunger, of malnutrition and even of obesity. And this is something that we need to ensure really the political will and the investments that ensure that food systems work for all people at all times.

28:18 Sara Pantuliano

Absolutely. And you both highlighted the challenges with food system and we often read that the food system is broken. Stephen, is that fair as an assessment?

28:29 Steve Wiggins

It's fair in in more than one respect above all in the environmental impact of the kinds of food systems that we see in high income and emerging economies, where there is a heavy load on the environment in terms of use of water, in terms of reduction of biodiversity, in terms of high emissions of greenhouse gases. The food systems are also broken in a second respect, in that, as Stella has pointed out, they are delivering ever higher levels of overweight and obesity, leaving people ever more susceptible to the four horsemen of cancers, stroke, heart attacks, and diabetes. Um, in those respects, the food system is broken and it needs to be reformed. But we also need to remember that the food system is not broken in two other rather important respects. And those respects are number one, the price of basic food has been falling pretty much year in year out for the last 70 years in real terms. It's remarkable what the cost of food is to most people in the world today compared to what it was 70 years ago, and that is a tribute to all of the farmers, processors, traders, supermarkets and everybody else in the food system. And the second respect in which the food systems are not necessarily broken, is that when stress tested against all the Jerry Myers. Above all, during the pandemic, people said our food systems will collapse under the effect of the pandemic. They did not collapse. Hardly anything. There were a few days that you saw reduced supplies on supermarket shelves and then it all clicked back into action. It was a remarkable resilience that needs to be respected. So the vision that one one needs to take of food systems, yes, there are very important deficits on the environment, very important deficits on the kind of food which is being produced ever more cheaply. The processed food above all else. There are serious challenges there, but some of it works rather well. And therefore, the agenda for the food systems that I see is one of reforming the parts that are bad, rather than those people who talk about the system being broken and need needs to be replaced by something completely different.

31:05 Sara Pantuliano

What do you think would be a useful outcome from the Global Food Security Summit? Um, Stella.

31:12 Stella Nordhagen

Thanks, Sara. I think what the conversation today has really made clear is that hunger is a solvable problem as long as the political commitment and the prioritisation are there. So, what I would like to see is a renewed global commitment to this issue, and in particular to see countries and other powerful stakeholders speaking with 1 voice on the importance of protecting food access amid conflict and stabilizing food prices in the wake of the effects of conflict.

31:40 Sara Pantuliano

Thanks. Stella, Valerie.

31:41 Valerie Guarnieri

Valerie. I think it'll be important coming out of the summit that there's renewed commitment to sustained investment in policies and actions to address hunger and malnutrition that truly put people at the center.

31:59 Steve Wiggins

Given what we've heard from Stella about progress on nutrition, I would like to see that the summit reemphasises the importance of so many of those public health measures at local levels and the field heroes, the nurses, doctors, community workers who made that work for the last 30 years, and that we should drive forward towards reducing those stunting levels to single figures, if not zero, in time inside of the next 10 years.

32:30 Sara Pantuliano

Thanks Steve, Luka.

 32:32 Luka Biong Deng Kuol

I think it is very important to highlight the fact that we have a well defined objective of how to end hunger, SDG 2. We have also a very good mechanism being being being identified, especially at the UN high level task force on prevention and that's 1 equally important issue of the monitoring the food security and important, I want to highlight the issue of the United Nations Security Council resolution number 2, 4, 17 is a very powerful what is missing what I expect from this summit, a commitment of a need to have A framework, a global framework for famine prevention and response. These will provide us a common language and a shared understanding of how best we can act collectively to end hunger.

33:23 Sara Pantuliano

Thank you, Stella, Luka, Valerie and Steve for such a comprehensive picture of the challenges we are facing around the food crisis globally. We've heard about the impact that poor politics, the governance deficit, as Luka called it, unfair trading systems and conflict in particular have on creating hunger, um, and which countries are suffering the worst effects, particularly in the Horn of Africa. But we've also heard of the struggle for the humanitarian system to respond, because of the misalignment of the finances, um, and, you know, the lack of anticipatory action in particular and support for long term, um, investment. So we've also heard about the progress that countries have made on stunting, on malnutrition, with the right investment, with the right political action and commitment. And so I really hope that the Global Food Security Summit can help advance this positive political action so that we can make further progress towards meeting SDG2. Um, thanks to all our listeners. If you enjoyed the episode, please do like, subscribe and rate it, it really helps us a lot and do keep an eye out for the next one. Until then, goodbye.