7.2.2023
EN
Official Journal of the European Union
C 47/155 Wednesday 6 July 2022
AB. whereas inclusive, efficient, resilient and sustainable food systems are crucial to achieving the 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals; whereas the COVID-19 pandemic exposed weaknesses in global food systems, exacerbating inequalities and threatening the lives and livelihoods of the most vulnerable; whereas the UN Decade for Action calls for accelerating game changing solutions to address global challenges for people and the planet, from poverty and gender to climate change, inequality and closing the finance gap;
AC. whereas nutrition is an important issue underlying and driving the achievement of at least 12 of the 17 SDGs and is inextricably linked to other key sustainable development issues, either because it depends on them (i.e. water, sanitation and hygiene, and agriculture), because it enables them (i.e. health, employment), or because it does both (i.e. gender equality, and education);
AD. whereas the 1994 Marrakech Agreement and in particular the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Agriculture have contributed to the specialisation of agricultural regions; whereas this specialisation has led to regions with high levels of exports and others that are almost fully dependent on imports: whereas this situation is not resilient to crises, such as wars, and is one of the factors contributing to the current global food instability;
AE. whereas a high dependency on food imports highly exposes populations to global market volatilities, especially the persons who spend an important share of their income on daily food needs;
AF. whereas instability of international markets leads to food insecurity in countries that lack strong agricultural policies, as periods of low prices have a negative impact on production capacities and lead to a rise in imports, which makes urban populations vulnerable when global prices are surging;
AG. whereas agricultural policies are the primary macroeconomic policies and, due to a lack of protection against the extreme volatility of global prices, the damage caused by inflation is devastating for emerging economies;
AH. whereas food sovereignty is the right of people and countries to define their own agricultural and food policies; whereas this concept aims at enabling each country to feed its own population and to be self-sufficient and autonomous; whereas the Farm to Fork Strategy’s intention to reduce farmers’ dependency on external outputs is in line with this definition;
AI.
whereas the European Green Deal and the Farm to Fork Strategy adopt holistic approaches on agriculture not only to preventing a climatic and biodiversity crisis in Europe, but also to ensuring food security, improving nutrition and public health; whereas it shall serve as a template for investments in the remit of development finance, with the view to harness resilience and food self-sufficiency of developing countries;
AJ.
whereas the Farm to Fork Strategy aims to reduce the use of farm inputs and notably to decrease the overall use of chemical pesticides by 50 %, of the most hazardous pesticides by 50 %, and of fertilisers by at least 20 % by 2030;
AK. whereas nutrition is an important investment as good nutrition during the first thousand days of a child’s life is critical to achieving full physical, intellectual and human potential; whereas hunger and malnutrition negatively affect children’s abilities to learn and influence them to drop out of school, represent a lifelong burden for individuals and societies and have an adverse impact on human and national economic development; whereas good nutrition is therefore the cornerstone of prosperity for societies;
AL. whereas at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, school closures left 370 million children without access to a secured school meal, often their only warm dish a day, whereas school meals programmes are an important element to combat child hunger and multiple forms of malnutrition; whereas, on the other side, food insecurity disrupts societal