Securing our Food, Forever:
The Food Forever Initiative
The United Nations SDG2 is commonly known as the goal for “zero hunger.” But there’s much more to it than feeding the world: It identifies a range of issues affecting our food systems, with specific targets to address them. Target 2.5 calls for the international community to safeguard and share the “genetic diversity” of both crops and livestock by 2020.
The Food Forever Initiative aims to raise awareness of the work going on around the world in support of this target. In 2018 it continued to rally politicians, farmers, chefs, business people and others to lend their voices and help drive positive changes in the way we conserve, grow, sell and consume crop and livestock diversity.
Mercedes Aráoz, Vice President of Peru, became the new Chair of Food Forever in June. She has a background in development economics and public policy, having served in Peru as Minister for Trade Tourism, Production, Economy and Finance, and latterly as Prime Minister. She has been Vice President and Congresswoman of Peru since 2016, and is strong advocate for biodiversity.
The Food Forever Experience
This is Food Forever’s flagship event series, created to give the public a glimpse of the future of food. By working with innovative chefs to cook up delicious dishes using lesser-known ingredients, the Food Forever Experience aims to plant the seed for important conversations about a more diverse, sustainable, and exciting food future.
The inaugural event – the Food Forever Experience NYC – was hosted by Google in New York City, USA, in September. It challenged ten chefs to work with fascinating foods currently on the margins of the country’s culinary mainstream. These included the African grain teff, Bambara groundnut, tepary bean, breadfruit, jackfruit and even crickets.
The event was organized in partnership with Google, Tender Greens co-founder and Food Forever Champion Erik Oberholtzer, and the Rediscovered Food Initiative. It was also an official event of the United Nations Global Day of Action on the SDGs. A number of Food Forever Experiences will take place in 2019, in cities around the world.
Immediately prior to the NYC event, Food Forever hosted its annual meeting in Wilmington, Delaware, USA. It brought together some of the initiative’s Champions and Partner Organizatons to learn more about the campaign, find ways to work together, and to pledge action in support of SDG 2.5.
Closer Ties
Food Forever strengthened its ties with key institutions connected to SDG Target 2.5. It now has a close relationship with FAO, the official custodian of SDG 2, and a strategy for engaging with the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the central legal framework for all biodiversity-related targets in the SDGs and the Aichi Biodiversity Targets.
In September, Food Forever held the first session of its Board of Overseers, a consulting body whose main objective is to approve the invitation to new Champions and Partner Organizations, and the yearly workplan. FAO was welcomed as an official member of the Food Forever secretariat, joining the Government of the Netherlands and the Crop Trust.
The following month, Food Forever participated in the Committee on Agriculture (COAG) and the Committee on Food Security (CFS) at FAO. Together with Bioversity International, the SDG2 Advocacy Hub, FAO and the Future Food Institute, it organized side-events on the importance of agrobiodiversity in relation to food and nutrition security and facing climate change. The same month, Vice President Aráoz represented Food Forever at the Borlaug Dialogue International Symposium of the World Food Prize in Des Moines, Iowa, USA. This included giving a keynote speech to 1,200 people, around half of whom were students.
At the 14th Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD-14) in Sharm-El-Sheikh, Egypt, in November, Food Forever presented to over 100 communications professionals from the biodiversity and sustainability sectors. It was part of a Communications Forum for Mainstreaming Biodiversity, organized by the World Wildlife Fund and the CBD. At the event, a task force was formed to kickstart a chef-engagement program, called 2020 for 2020. This aims to reach 2,020 chefs willing to advocate for greater food diversity by the year 2020.
