Reforming Agricultural Policies and Farm Support to Advance Sustainable Food System Transformation

In the recent COP28 Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems and Climate Action, world leaders affirmed that “agriculture and food systems must urgently adapt and transform in order to respond to the imperatives of climate change.” This declaration strengthens the growing global consensus that current food systems need urgent transformative change to end hunger and all forms of malnutrition and to make food production and delivery systems resilient and sustainable.

Evidence-based policies are critical to steer such a transformation, which requires urgent action from governments around the world—both in the global North and the global South—to better align, reform, or repurpose current policies and public support to deliver better value for people, planet, and prosperity. Public investments and other expenditures help to create incentives for producers and other food system actors as they choose what, how, and where to produce food, as well as for consumers in their choices of what foods to eat.

The seminar will highlight key IFPRI findings on the potential to repurpose existing agriculture policies and public support to accelerate the transformation of food systems to become more inclusive, resilient, sustainable, and healthy. Developing appropriate incentives to encourage producers to adopt technological innovations and sustainable practices, and consumers to make healthy and sustainable food choices, will help deliver desired food system outcomes, but doing so will require bold action through both international coordination and national-level policy reform.

The fourth seminar of the CGIAR Policy Seminar Series on Strengthening Food Systems will present available evidence on promising technological innovations from CGIAR and elsewhere, identify associated tradeoffs, and examine how policies can shape greater uptake of such innovations. It will highlight global initiatives seeking to advance agricultural policy reform and assess the evidence base behind these initiatives, as well as examining country-level attempts at reform and the obstacles these reforms can face in both the global North and global South.

Welcome and Opening Remarks

• Johan Swinnen, Managing Director, Systems Transformation, CGIAR; Director General, IFPRI
• Jan Brix, Senior Policy Officer, Division of Agriculture and Rural Development, German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)

Science for Sustainable and Resilient Food Systems

• Loraine Ronchi, CGIAR Senior Advisor for Policy Impact, IFPRI
• Will Martin, Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI

Panel 1: Global Initiatives for Agricultural Policy Reform

• Bruno Brasil, Director of Sustainable Production and Irrigation, Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock of Brazil
• Debbie Palmer, Director for Energy, Climate and Environment, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO)
• Sergiy Zorya, Lead Agriculture Economist and Global Lead for Policies and Public Expenditures, Agricultural and Food Global Practice, The World Bank

Panel 2: Regional and National Policy Reform Experiences

• Alan Mathews, Professor Emeritus, Dept. of Economics, Trinity College, Dublin
• Shenggen Fan, Chair Professor, College of Economics and Management at China Agricultural University, CGIAR System Board member
• Patrick Ofori, Deputy Director, Head of M&E Division at Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), Policy Planning Monitoring & Evaluation Directorate (PPMED) 

Moderator

• Charlotte Hebebrand, Director of Communications and Public Affairs, IFPRI