18-22 July 2022, Rome – The 28th Session of the Committee on Agriculture (COAG) of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) took place at the FAO headquarters in Rome in hybrid format. On this occasion, PAM was represented by three leading experts from the University of Naples, Prof. Giulia Maisto and Dr. Lucia Santorufo in person, and Dr Giorgia Santini remotely from Spain.
COAG is FAO’s governing body in charge to provide overall policy and guidelines on issues relating to agriculture, livestock, food safety, nutrition, rural development, and natural resource management.
This year, the work of the Committee focused on issues that are of particular relevance considering the current international state of affairs, with a special focus on the “One-health approach”, food security, biodiversity loss and pollution of agroecosystems in a context of climate changes.
With regards to sustainable food and agriculture, the session was an opportunity to identify new trends and best practices to monitor the implementation of the FAO’s Strategic Framework 2022-31: “better nutrition”, “better production”, “better environment” and “better life”.
On the other hand, the discussions on climate change and natural resources analyzed the current state of world’s land and water resources for food safety, security and agriculture, and was an opportunity to take stock of the progress of the UN’s Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030.
In addition, the Committee highlighted that the global agri-food system is going to experience profound transformations in the near future due to several systemic drivers of anthropic origins, such as population dynamics, increasing urbanization, cross-country interdependencies, geopolitical instability and conflicts, such as the brutal Russian aggression against Ukraine, which is already having tremendous impacts on food production and distribution.
In this context, FAO committed – through targeted actions and policy recommendations – to the transformation of the current agri-food system into a more efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable production system, to improve the global nutrition level, while preserving the natural environment that can help “leave no one behind”.//