The SOW11 report, to be released next January, seeks to highlight innovations that can address the challenges faced around the world: reducing hunger and malnutrition, enhancing environmental and agricultural sustainability, improving the lives of women and girls and be both economically feasible and scalable for farmers and the investment community.  The project will also consider the institutional infrastructures and partnerships necessary to achieve success from these innovations.

The Issues Paper, released prior to the report, provides an overview of the issues and approaches facing the world, to provide a larger international discourse to the authors’ contributions. The report recognises two perspectives on food security :

• ‘Global Food Security’ which seeks to strengthen food supply chains to secure movement of products at low prices to vast populations of consumers.
• ‘Food Security for the Poor’ which focuses on strengthening the capacities of smallholder farmers to supply adequate and quality food supplies at a local level.

The paper focuses on three challenges to highlight when exploring possible innovations:

1. Innovations may be driven by or dependent on the policy discourse on food security within that area.        
2. The food security agenda needs to be integrated with the agendas for climate action and ecosystem restoration.
3. Innovations must empower farmers and communities to achieve bottom-up change.

The Worldwatch Institute intends to use the report to uncover the innovations that entrepreneurial farmers use, to promote their value to the global community and help advise foundations and international donors interested in supporting agricultural development. Additionally, by considering innovations and examples from many different perspectives, the SOW11 might help to improve understanding and communication among the different communities of discourse to help achieve food security together.

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Gerda Verburg, Chairperson of the Commission and the Netherlands’ Minister of Agriculture, Nature, and Food Quality, said of the outcome:

Nothing less is needed than a revolution in ideas and a revolution in technologies, supported by a revolution in trade policies and market access and the financial means to implement.

The final plan stressed the central importance of farmers – particularly women farmers and rural communities – to deliver such a paradigmatic shift in the agricultural sector.

According to the final press release issued on the CSD-17  final text, This could be done by

employing science-based approaches and local indigenous knowledge; expanding investment incentives, in particular for small farmers; and encouraging and supporting safge integrated pest management.

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Dr. Sibanda noted that food shortages in certain parts of the world were unavoidable. Noentheless, policy experts could still prevent these shortages from making affected regions more unstable politically and economically. She says:

Definitely, food insecurity is global in that it will unsettle the whole world’s peace agenda. The developed countries have to contribute to the plan but more importantly the African countries now have to make sure that the smallholder farmer is at the centre of the debate.

Dr. Sibanda is highlighting how interconnected the policies of the G8 countries are in shaping outcomes for smallholder farmers across the world.

Listen to an mp3 audio file of this BBC interview here:

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