Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Charlie McConalogue has reiterated Ireland’s commitment to fighting global hunger on World Food Day, which is celebrated every year on October 16.
Commenting on the theme of World Food Day 2021, the minister said: “Our actions are our future – better production, better nutrition, a better environment, and a better life.
“Food insecurity continues to rise with the impact of Covid-19 taking hunger and malnutrition to unprecedented levels across the world.
“Ireland, by supporting the work of the UN World Food Programme [WFP] and the Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO], has taken a lead in advocating for global food-systems transformation, to make food systems more environmentally sustainable, providing decent livelihoods for farmers and food producers, and delivering sustainable, healthy diets for all.”
Achieving the ambitions of World Food Day
In recent months, Minister McConalogue presented Ireland’s “pioneering” food strategy Food Vision 2030 at the UN Food Pre-Summit in Rome and has also met the UN FAO director general Qu Dongyu to discuss how Ireland will continue to play a leadership role in tackling food poverty.
“Our new Food Vision 2030 strategy was developed by Irish agri-food stakeholders, including our farmers, fishers and food businesses, using a food-system approach,” McConalogue said.
“This aligns with Ireland’s strong engagement with the recent UN Food Systems Summit.
“Ireland produces the highest-quality food and drink and our farmers, fishers and food businesses contribute at local, national and international level in achieving the ambitions of World Food Day for better production, better nutrition, a better environment and a better life for all, and in contributing to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.”
‘Our actions are our future’
According to the FAO, even before Covid-19, “hundreds of millions of people worldwide were afflicted by hunger and that number has increased in the last year to 811 million”.
That’s despite the world producing sufficient food to feed everyone, Qu Dongyu said. 14% of food is lost, and 17% is wasted.
The theme of this year’s World Food Day, ‘our actions are our future’, calls on everyone to be “a food hero contributing to the transformation of agri-food systems”, and leaving no behind.