What's New

Over the past century, enormous progress has been made in improving human welfare worldwide, thanks to quantum leaps in technology, rapid urbanization, and innovations in production systems. Yet immense challenges remain. Billions of people still face pervasive poverty, gross inequalities, joblessness, disease, and deprivation. In addition, the impacts of this progress on the environment, specifically those of climate change, are already being felt and will continue to intensify.

Last week, global leaders met in Davos, Switzerland for the 2019 World Economic Forum Annual Meeting . The conversation centered on globalization, climate change, and technology use, all of which play a role in food systems across the world. Technology in particular holds significant potential to transform global food systems into drivers of inclusive, sustainable development, according to the WEF’s new report, Innovation with a Purpose: Improving Traceability in Food Value Chains through Technology .

Global food prices in December 2018 declined from the levels seen in December of the previous year, according to the first FAO Food Price Index of the new year. For 2018 as a whole, the Index fell by about 3.5 percent from 2017 and by almost 27 from the all-time highs seen in 2011 during the global food price crisis. However, the price of all major cereal crops covered by the Index rose in 2018.

2018 marked the 10th anniversary of the first G20 Summit , held in Washington in 2008 at the height of the global financial crisis. At the 2018 G20 Summit , held Nov. 30-Dec. 1 in Buenos Aires under the auspices of the Argentina Presidency, world leaders faced a different set of challenges, from persistent hunger to the eruption of trade wars. They worked to build consensus on a range of topics including the future of work, infrastructure for development, the need for gender mainstreaming in global agendas, and a sustainable food future.

The world’s agricultural monitoring systems provide up-to-date information on food production to decision makers that is crucial to global and national food security. When prices become dangerously volatile—as they did during the food price crisis of 2007-2011—these systems spread critical information quickly that can reduce the risks of market and supply upheavals.