Special Event on The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2026: Understanding and Addressing the High Costs of a Healthy Diet

Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Thank you all for being here. Welcome to this special event at the 2026 High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development being held under the auspices of ECOSOC, the United Nations Economic and Social Council. Welcome also to everyone joining us online from around the world. This event is being webcast live on UNTV. My name is Shakuntala Santhan. I'm honored to be moderating this event ahead of the launch of this year's State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World Report, SAFI 2026. This year's SAFI report will be launched in Rome, Italy, next Tuesday on July 21st, and the report will be available online on the FAO website from July 21st. Just in case you are new to the SAFI report, This is the world's most comprehensive report on global hunger, food insecurity, and malnutrition. It is co-authored by 5 different UN agencies: FAO, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations; IFAD, the International Fund for Agricultural Development; UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund; WFP, World Food Programme; and WHO, the World Health Organization. SoFi 2026 builds on the 2025 report on global food price inflation. This year's report examines the challenges that the high cost of healthy diets poses to efforts to end hunger, food insecurity, and all forms of malnutrition by 2030. People eating healthy food, having a healthy diet, is key to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, we all know the adage, we are what we eat. No healthy food, no health, no wealth, and so it goes. So what's driving up the cost of healthy food and what can we do about it? We shall find out. Before we begin, we do have simultaneous interpretation for you in all 6 official UN languages. If you're here in the room with us, please just use this earshell and you can select your language of choice using the screen in front of you. Please do help share the messages you hear today on social media using the hashtag #SOFI2026. That's S-O-F-I 2026. When we get to the interactive segment of our program, you're very welcome to make brief interventions, and we do encourage you to ask David here from the FAO questions about the SOFI report and not just make statements alone. Right, we are going to be joined shortly by Ambassador Tappa, the President of ECOSOC. He is running late, it is a busy day for him, but in the meantime, to get us started, we have with us Maximo Torero Cullen, Chief Economist of the FAO. Maximo.

Thank you, thank you very much, and colleagues and Excellencies and distinguished guests, thank you for coming to this meeting, which is a pleasure to launch the second part of the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World. SOFI normally has 2 parts. The first part refers to where we stand in terms of the numbers of hunger, malnutrition, overweight and obesity, and also indicators of the quantity of people that can afford a healthy diet. And the second part focuses on what we need to do and what are the topics that we need to focus on this year. The idea is to focus on the cost of healthy diets. Now, to be able to find the right solutions, we must first ask the right question. Too often we confuse the cost of a healthy diet with the affordability of a healthy diet and the consumption of a healthy diet. Those are 3 different areas of discussion. The SOFI of this year focuses on the cost of a healthy diet, which is more related to the agrifood systems, as David will explain, and to how we produce. The affordability is more related to income, how much income I have. Of course, if I have a lower cost, I can afford more, but it's more linked to income, how much money I have to buy those healthy diets. And the adoption or consumption depends on us, on our behavior. I can have the money to buy a healthy diet, but I decide not to buy a healthy diet. So that's a choice, that's more behavioral. So today, again, we are focusing on the cost of a healthy diet, because these 3 concepts are not the same. So affordability, as I said, depends on people's incomes. Consumption depends on preferences and habits. But cost depends on how our agrifood systems work. If healthy diets remain too expensive to produce, transport, and market, no amount of income growth or nutritional education will be enough. That is why understanding the cost of a healthy diet is one of the most powerful entry points for transforming agrifood systems. Today, a healthy diet costs $4.28 PPP per person per day, about 25% more than just 5 years ago. This is not simply the result of temporary inflation. It also reflects structural weaknesses in the way our agrifood systems produce, move, and deliver nutritious food. The first lesson from our analysis is simple: Calories are cheap, nutrition is expensive. Staple foods provide about half of the calories we need, but account for only a small share of the cost of a healthy diet. Fruits, vegetables, and animal-sourced foods provide most of the vitamins, minerals, nutrients, macro and micronutrients, and high-quality proteins essential to grow and to have good nutrition, yet they account for the largest share of the cost. In other words, the foods we need most for a healthy life are often the least affordable. But average is still only part of the story. Healthy diet costs differ enormously across countries, regions, and seasons. Our analysis showed that using foods that are locally available and culturally appropriate can reduce the cost of healthy diets sustainably. In Africa, for example, Local foods dramatically lower costs compared with using a standardized global basket. We also see that the highest cost of a healthy diet is in Latin America and the Caribbean, a surprise given it's one of the biggest exporter countries in the world in terms of food and high-value commodities. So that's something that David will explore in his presentation. Within countries, the differences are equally striking. In remote areas, fruits and vegetables can cost more than twice as much as the major cities because of poor roads, weak logistics, and high post-harvest losses. Remember, high-value commodities can perish earlier, so we need to have cold value chains, we have good transportation to minimize this problem. This tells us something important: the problem is not only what we produce, it is how food moves from farms to consumers. Our econometric analysis confirms this: better roads, better logistics, And lower energy costs consistently reduce the cost of a healthy diet. Surprisingly, economic growth alone has only a modest effect. And the reason is straightforward. Between 70 to 75% of the final cost of a food is generated after it leaves the farm. The biggest opportunity to reduce the cost of a healthy diet therefore lies in improving storage, processing, transport, and value chains. And David will detail the scenarios that he has been developing on this. This changes how we should think about investments. Our simulations show that investments are differentiated, and of course, they are— the intensity will differ region by region, but that's something that we need to focus and try not only to look at policies but also look at infrastructure. Policy choices matter also a lot. Our analysis shows that subsidizing staple foods alone can actually increase the relative cost of a healthy diet. Because it encourages production of calories rather than nutrients. By contrast, repurposing support towards fruits and vegetables and other nutrient-dense foods makes healthy diets more affordable and improves nutrition outcomes. But reforms must also be carefully sequenced. It stimulates demand before expanding supply. We saw what happened with the case of something that comes from my country, the quinoa. We pushed the demand enormously in the world. We started exporting quinoa— I am Peruvian— to the world, and it moved so fast that we didn't have the supply and the quality supply that we should be ready to. So sequencing matters because the region that was producing quinoa was a region that, despite being very poor, was nutritious. They didn't have anemia, for example. After the boom of quinoa, they became anemic because despite they got more income, from the exports of their products, they couldn't afford a healthy diet at that point, an equivalent to quinoa, and that affected them. We're looking today also at the same problem with Andean potatoes, which is also nutritious, the Andean ones. And therefore, the importance here and what we want to bring up is the importance of sequences. Supply must come first, but of course we need to have the demand, but we need to be ready if the demand is going to increase enormously, and also we need to assure that sustainability must remain at the center of the delivery decision. So reducing costs by degrading soils, depleting water resources, or undermining rural livelihoods is not a solution. It simply shifts today's costs into tomorrow's crisis. That's why our motto is good food for all, for today and tomorrow. We need to look at the tomorrow too. So what should we do? The evidence points to 3 priorities. First, reduce costs where they matter the most— across the value chain, especially after the farm gate. Second, repurpose policies and investments towards nutritious foods, in place of reinforcing incentives that favor calories over nutrition. And third, strengthen evidence based on better subnational price data and greater policy coherence across agricultural health trade and social protection. Excellencies, the cost of a healthy diet is much more than a static. It tells us whether agrifood systems are failing. It shows us where investments will have the greatest impact. And it provides a roadmap for making healthy diets affordable for everyone. If we can lower the cost of healthy diets, we'll not only improve nutrition, we will build agrifood systems that are more productive, more resilient, and more sustainable. And we will be tackling one of the major problems we have today, which is the increase of adult obesity. therefore, to reduce the non-communicable diseases. So, we have an opportunity before us. Let's keep pushing on it. Let's keep working hard. And all the evidence that today we will be presenting in detail will show the way forward and how we can move forward. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Maximo, for giving us that context, explaining the importance of the focus of this year's SAFI report, this really stood out for me: 70 to 75% of the cost of the food that we pay as consumers comes after food leaves the farms, right? So now, with more details and evidence on SOFI 2026 and what we can do about it, here is David Laborde. He is Director of the FAO's Agri-Food Economics and Policy Division. David leads the team that puts together the SOFI report. It is over to you.

And yes, it's a team effort done by different divisions of FAO, but also in collaboration with 4 other UN agencies, and it's pretty unique in the system, so good to remember it. So yes, as Maximo has already said, you know, we wanted this year to tackle the cost of healthy diets, and you already had the big numbers. I will say, in the sense that, on average, in the world, in 2025, it costs every day for an adult $4.28 PPP to pay for it. So the first thing you have to keep in mind, it's already much more than the extreme poverty line of $3. So when we talk about the number of poor people, Actually, these poor people cannot even afford healthy diets. And it's closer from the poverty line for lower-middle-income countries. So what it means? It means that only 1 over 3 people are just priced out of this option. So it's not the fact that they can decide to buy them, they don't have the economic means to do it. And with the last few years, when we have seen a very strong inflation globally, this number has increased drastically by 25%. So a lot of people around the world feel this pain and basically have to make a choice. What should I eat?

Pardon me for jumping in, David. The President of ECOSOC has just joined us and he has to rush off, so pardon me for interrupting. Thank you very much for joining us. We have here with us His Excellency Lok Bahadur Thapa. He is a Permanent Representative of Nepal to the United Nations and the current President of the 2026 Session of ECOSOC, and he's going to give us some remarks as host of this special event. Ambassador Thapa.

Thank you. Sorry to disturb you. I'm in the middle, and because I was rushing from one meeting, and we have another meeting to chair. Excellencies, distinguished delegates, and dear colleagues, we often think The ability of a family to afford a healthy diet is a matter of individual choice, but in reality, it is one of the clearest measures of whether sustainable development is reaching people's everyday lives. When families cannot afford healthy food, the challenge is no longer only about nutrition. It is all about the inequality, it is about health, it is about the education, and it is about the opportunity. And it is also about whether the promise of the 2030 Agenda is being fulfilled. That is why today's discussions is about much more than food, I believe. A few challenges illustrate this reality more clearly than the growing inability of millions of people to access a healthy diet. This is not simply a question of food production. It is a question of access, affordability, and equity. Analysis in the 2026 SOFI report brings this reality into sharp focus. And it shows that a healthy diet, one that meets basic nutritional requirements for a dignified and productive life, remains economically out of reach for more than 31% of the global population. For millions of families, the primary barrier is not of knowledge about what constitutes a healthy diet, nor necessarily its availability. It is simply an unavoidable reality of price. The global average cost stands at $4.22 per person per day. This reality has been exacerbated by the strong food price inflation, and continues to be shaped by conflicts, climate shocks, and other global disruptions. The cost of food often pushes the most vulnerable towards diets that are cheaper, that are more energy-dense, and that are less nutritious, driving a silent but devastating crisis of malnutrition in all its forms. The consequences are far-reaching. Malnutrition undermines physical growth and cognitive development in early life, drives non-communicable diseases such as heart disease or diabetes, and places heavy burdens on public health systems. systems and impacts educational attainment and employment. This is why the affordability of healthy diets must be understood not as a narrow nutrition issue, but as a central development priority at the heart of achieving not only SDG 2, but also those on health, education, inequality and economic growth. Dear colleagues, the analysis contained in the 2026 SOFI Report also offers both a diagnosis and a path forward. First, it highlights the critical importance of addressing the structural drivers of food prices, including ensuring that nutrient-dense foods such as fruits and vegetables legumes, nuts, and seeds can benefit from more public subsidies. Second, the report underscores that production is not enough. Reducing food losses, strengthening infrastructure, and improving market efficiency must be central pillars of any strategy to make healthy diets more affordable. Third, the analysis reminds us that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Food costs differ significantly across regions. Affordability is not about prices; it is also about people. Policies must combine supply-side measures with demand-side interventions, social protection, nutrition education, and efforts to save healthier food environments. And as we strive to make healthy food more affordable, we must ensure that efforts to reduce costs do not come at the expense of environmental sustainability or decent livelihoods. Excellencies, colleagues, the message of this report is clear: making healthy diets affordable is both an urgent necessity and powerful opportunity to deliver tangible improvements for people across the world. ECOSOC has an important role to play in translating global commitments into measurable results, especially for those who remain furthest behind. Agri-food system transformations has been a priority of my presidency. In February this year, We convened a special meeting of the Council to advance this agenda. Today, we focus on one of the clearest measures of success: ensuring that everyone can afford a healthy diet. No one should be priced out of a healthy diet. Access to healthy food is fundamental to human dignity and to our shared commitment to leave no one behind. Let us seize this moment to move from analysis to actions and to ensure that every person everywhere has access not just to enough food but to the right food. I thank you.

Thank you, Ambassador Tappahia here. Let's move from analysis I understand you have to leave us soon. Will you be able to stay for a bit, or do you have to leave now? Thank you. We understand you have a very busy schedule. We appreciate taking time out of that schedule to be with us today.

Thank you.

Wish you all the best.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you so much.

Right.

Let's get back now to David and your presentation. Again, apologies for interrupting.

As I was saying, you know, we have this $4.28 cost of healthy diets, so more than the poverty line, and it's actually pricing out one-third of the global population from having the opportunity to consume healthy diets. And we have seen this strong increase in the last 5 years due to inflation. And that's something that households all around the world are feeling and have to make choices about. So what we are going to do today together is to go through all the analysis we have done in SOFI this year on this topic. And basically, we want to understand why this healthy diet is so costly at the consumer. You know, when you want to fill your plate with a diverse diet, with a balanced diet, you have to understand what has happened before. And between the farm and the consumer, a lot of things happen. As our moderator, Saka, said, you know, already a maximum of 75% of the price that consumers pay in average around the world comes about what is in the middle. And so when we want to reduce this price, we will need to understand the different entry points. And why we care about this topic? He also, Shaka, said, you know, no health, no wealth. And 2 years ago, in the State of Food and Agriculture, another flagship publication of FAO, we put a price tag on this, and it's $8.2 trillion a year that the world is losing because we don't have healthy diets consumed by the world population. Beyond the economic cost, it's actually nearly 12% of the deaths every year that are linked to poor diets. Now, today we are going to discuss the economics of it, and actually one part of the economics. So we know that having people consuming healthy diets, it's a much bigger challenge than just changing the price tag at the grocery shop. But it's a necessary condition. If you cannot pay for it, you cannot consume it. And as we will see, we will need to do this agri-food system transformation that at FAO, we talk and we come with solutions to achieve it. It's not just going to be one thing. It's not just going to be one silver bullet that is going to reduce this cost. And of course, last year when I was here, we were discussing the topic of the last SOFI that was the impact of food inflation on food security. And in the context we are today, including with the new crisis that hit the system this year, from geopolitical tension to El Niño, unfortunately, this topic is not going to disappear from the agenda of the policymaker and from the grocery bill of consumer. So what the SOFI is, is really to talk about this economic part. We are not going to talk about the adoption. We are not going to talk about behavioral change. Actually, later this year, FAO will have another report fully dedicated to this question of healthy diets, what they really mean, what is the set of interventions needed to not only give the economic opportunity for people to consume it, giving the economic incentive of producers to produce it, but to see actual production consumption. Today also, we are not going to talk about affordability. In the sense that, of course, depending on your level of income, the same prices are not going to have the same impact. If food is expensive and you are poor, you sacrifice your consumption. If you are rich, you basically don't really care about the price of food. But this is going beyond what we can do with agricultural intervention. But the question of inequality and economic growth is also essential. That is another set of policies. And we will talk about, you know, how we can spend money to actually change the system to make the cost of elfidaia cheaper. But I will not talk about the benefits of it. But I already told you there is a cost of not consuming them. And in the next few minutes, we are going to try to understand these numbers, because the $4.28 dollars per day means something, but also it doesn't mean many things. And so we would just want to make sure you will use it and interpret it carefully. We will try to unlock why we have this high cost, so to understand the problem. And then we will identify the intervention in order also to think about how we design a reform. So let's try to understand the numbers together. When we talk about this cost of healthy diets, what we do is that we price a consumption basket that covers 6 different food groups ranging from starchy staples— so things about rice, wheat, bread, pasta— but also fruits and vegetables, oil and fat, leguminous, and of course animal source food. And then we look in each country, what are the exact items that will reduce this cost in order to get this amount of food for each food group? So for example, for fruits, in one country it can be apples, in another country banana, And that's where the local condition matters. So it's the same structure of diets that we are going to apply around the world that also is aligned with the principle of what a healthy diet is, but the exact specificities depend on each country. And we use the International Price Comparison Program to get the information needed. Now, what it is not. So it's not a nutrition guideline for individuals. Don't start to look at the structure of diet and say, I have to eat that. First, it's a benchmark for an average adult male consuming 2,330 calories. So it's not for any specific individual. It doesn't capture the needs of a kid or of a pregnant woman. Okay, so it's a benchmark to get the least cost. We also use prices that can be measured and monitored on the markets, a grocery shop, a food market. So it's not going to take into account your own production, you know, if you are a farmer. It's also not going to take into account what is not included in the price tag. And as you know, there is a lot of costs today that are not reflected in the market price of food. For instance, if around the world very few countries are pricing water, but water has a cost for the economy, and food prices doesn't reflect this cost. So we will need to keep this in mind when we are going to use it. Also, and for many households, the cost of preparing the food is not included. Okay? So that's why, you know, between buying sometimes processed food or the raw ingredients, the difference is the time it will take your family to prepare it, and basically it's a cost. But at least with this simple, transparent methodology, taking advantage of all the data we have, we can really build something that allows to compare countries and to monitor the situation. And one of the first findings, if you look at the global average, you will start to see what we can think as a paradox. So half of the calories we need could come from starchy staples. So cereals. But they are very cheap around the world. And so they just represent 16% of the average cost. When— if we think about animal-sourced food, they represent 13% of the energy intake that we use for the computation of this healthy diet, but They are much more expensive, and so they represent already more than one quarter of the cost. But one of the big issues is actually fruits and vegetables. So of course, they are not calorie dense, and in terms of calories, they just bring 12% of the calories needed. But they bring you fibers, they bring you vitamins. But today, they will represent 40% in average of the cost of healthy diets, and that's going to be an element that is going to drive my narrative today. And you will hear me talking about fruit and vegetables again and again. Now, beyond this $4.28, there is variation around the world. There is variation from one country to another. Actually, at the world level, we have between countries where it's going to be closer to $3 per day up to $6. But a lot of the variations are still by group of countries and regions. So we see some patterns emerging. And if you look at the screen, you will see that in Latin America, as Maximo has reminded us, and it can be a surprise, the initial computation is that the average price is $4.91. So you see it's already nearly 20% more than the average global prices. So on the screen, you will see the size of the circle represents the size of the cost. But the other thing that can surprise you is that actually in high-income countries, this cost is lower. So in the part of the world where people are richer, the cost is lower. And it already tells you something. Having an efficient agrifood system a one that is productive, a one where food loss— I mean, food losses have been minimized, is a way that can deliver food at a low cost to consumers. Now, on this graph also, you see the distribution of cost by food group across region. To keep the story simple, you can look at the last line. And what is also interesting is to see that what is driving the cost in different locations is different food groups. In Asia, that's more about the vegetables— sorry, the fruits. In Latin America, that's more about the vegetables. For instance, when you start to look at the numbers, you are going to see that for fruits and vegetables in high-income countries, they represent half of the cost of the healthy diets compared to 40% at the world average. But look for Africa. For Africa, it's animal-sourced food that is the most expensive. So compared to the rest of the world, milk, meat, eggs are quite expensive for Africa, when actually they are rich in micronutrients. Now, beyond this, even national number, we have to keep in mind also there is heterogeneity. It changes from one part of the country to another. And of course, bigger your country is, the more variation you are going to see. You will also see seasonality. The price of fruits depend on the season. Now, if you are in a system that is well integrated with world markets, where you have cold storage, you will see low variability around the year. At the opposite, if you are in a system that is not integrated to world markets, so you cannot arbitrate through trade on the price of fruits, but also that you don't have cold storage, the price of mango is very low when it is a period of harvesting the mango. And potentially you are going to waste some of that. And then 6 months after, prices are super high. So it means that when you want to develop solutions at the country level, you also need to get this additional level of information. We need more granular level of prices. And that's what also FAO is working on in-country. So now, I have already pointed to some of the drivers, and we have conducted analysis to better understand what is leading to that. So first, we have this relation with the level of income per capita, and what we have seen is, yes, the richer you are, actually, the lower the cost. It's not a strong effect, But it's an important effect, and sometimes it will say it's a surprising effect because we can think of as a pricing to markets. If the consumer are rich, we can ask them to pay a higher price. But that's not the effect that dominate, and actually normal in a market where you have competition. It's not the purchasing power of the consumer that drive the outcome; it's your production cost. And high-income countries have lower production costs because they are more efficient, except in a few cases like fruit and vegetables, because that's where labor costs are going to be important. And so we are going to see these differences among some food groups. But to summarize, what we have seen is transportation, domestic and international, the logistics matter a lot to reduce your cost of healthy diets, even more for some of the perishable products. Doesn't seem to be rocket science, but the number confirms what we think, and that's important because— so you have seen in few cases the numbers were surprising, and that's what we still need science to guide action. We also saw that agriculture R&D on the long term makes the system more efficient and reduces the cost. At the opposite, high energy prices, high labor costs, so high costs for farmers but also all the value chain, will translate into higher cost of healthy diets. And the energy shock we do today can actually increase the cost of healthy diets more than the average cost because some of these perishable value chains need actually more energy. So what we should do? A few things, but it's going to be contextual to the product and to the location. So we have seen that today the average price of cereals is pretty low. Of course, for very poor people, that's still a challenge, so we should not forget about them. But globally, including through subsidies all around the world, we have reduced basic goods that we build, and also to make sure we maintain competition. Because if we develop some value chain and they are highly concentrated, for instance, this may not be linked to reduction of price for consumers. And then the fruit and vegetables is an important topic here also, with different level of intensity around the world, but we need to increase storage capacity. We need also to bring efficient and sustainable irrigation because they can be pretty water-intensive crops. And we need to bring R&D to these particular crops because traditionally R&D was once again focusing on the basic cereals— wheat, rice, maize— both the national, the international one. If you look about the portfolio of the CGIAR during the last 30 years, it was more or less 80% linked to these basic crops to address the caloric hunger, but not the rest. And also, the private sectors have invested in this because they are the big markets. And so we need now to look at what has been neglected. And same thing with leguminous that are important both from the nutrition point of view but also for soil health. And the leguminous have been neglected more or less all around the world. So now that we have an idea about what to do and where, we— and we have looked at this based on the literature, based on the structure of the cost of healthy diets. We also have started to run more deeper analysis and to come with a strategy. And in order to push down the cost of healthy diets, we are going to work on 2 axes that are going to interact. On one hand, you can push the price down on the market by increasing supply. You produce more, more availability, put price down. But you also want to actually reduce the unit cost. So not just to put more things on the market, to oversupply the market, and to bring price down, but to make sure that even the quantity that we produce today are more cost efficient. And these 2 axes are going to interact a lot. And actually, when you increase yield— by a yield increase, you can produce more. But if you also increase your yield without consuming more inputs, so through better technology, for instance, you are going to reduce the cost. And that's what we want. We want to optimize the system. And in order to optimize it, it will require to do both an upgrade of the hardware, better roads, better irrigation system, better core technology, and also to update the software. And that's where the policy framework is going to be important, using our subsidies in a smarter way. Making sure that we facilitate trade to not get a truck of tomato waiting 2 weeks at the border, but also the competition policy to make sure that if along the value chain we reduce cost, it translates in a lower price for consumers. So this is the strategy we use, our economic model, to look at it because, as I've said, everything is very contextual from one value chain to another, from one region to another. So getting the number right, we cannot just talk about it. We need to make the computation. We need to use our economic model with mathematical structure to case by case look what to do and where. And the first wave of results, it confirmed that actually if we increase the efficiency, the productivity of our horticulture value chain by 10%, we will reduce the overall cost of a healthy diet by 9%. So this is a major entry point. The second sector globally that we need to focus on is animal-sourced food, but also because it's very important for Africa. Now, if you read the report, you will start to see many, many more details. So you will see actually metrics showing, okay, where I should do my intervention? Is it about reducing food loss and waste or about increasing the energy supply or making sure that workers are more productive, including with training? And you will get this nice matrix that will tell you what to do and where. And for instance, in Latin America right now, the problem is not really the connection with world markets because a number of exporters from Latin America are very well connected. But there is still opportunity in terms even of domestic connection and domestic markets. It can be easier to export an avocado from some Latin American countries to Europe than to distribute it within the country. So we don't want to miss some opportunities. And you will see also how in Africa, for instance, in the lower left corner of this graph, how reducing post-harvest losses also is critical. Based on existing estimates, it's 45% of the fruits and vegetables in Africa that are harvested that are lost. So that's another missed opportunity in terms of economic value, but also access for consumers around the world. When we look at the software and we look at the subsidies here, why we say we need to repurpose, it's because on one hand, we have traditionally subsidize staples. And if you just subsidize staples, you not only create more incentive for people to consume staples, but you are taking resources that can be used to do something else— actually fruits and vegetables— to produce staples. So if you subsidize staples, you are going to have more workers in staples, you are going to have more land put in staples, and indirectly it's going to create higher cost for the rest. So we need to shift these subsidies. What we see also in the report is how globally we can act together in order to improve the rate of return of the investment. And what we see is per dollar of subsidies is actually in Africa and in low and middle income countries that we get the higher benefit for the consumers, also because for in high-income countries, a smaller share of what is paid by the consumers is linked to what is coming from the farm. So to conclude, 3 things. First, let's think about how we design this reform, because if we have the direction, the how is going to be important. First, we need to make sure that we have a strategy and Of course, a number of measures that will boost demand are going to be important, but we need to create a supply. We also need to make sure that we tackle the political economy. The farmers producing vegetables by default are not the same that produce rice. In some locations, people can move from one to another. In other countries, that's not the same farmer, that's not the same land, that's not the same provinces. So we need to work on this transition. Then we need also to make sure that we don't sacrifice sustainability just to reduce the price tag in the markets. And last but not least, we need public and private partnership, because if the government can set the law, work on the software, at the end, the bulk of investment is going to come from the private sector, and the operation on the day-to-day come from the private sector. So, Maximo has already told you one of the risks of a bad sequencing. So if you create demand and you don't have the supply, prices are going to go up, and you are going to price out even more consumers from healthy food. And that's the kind of quinoa effect that we have seen. But also, if tomorrow, basically, all the income countries say, we are going to consume what we should consume in terms of fruits and vegetables, and we don't create the value chain, it will mean higher cost of fruits and vegetables for low- and middle-income countries. Finally, I started the presentation by talking about the hidden cost of not consuming healthy diets, but there is also hidden cost of producing them in the bad way. If you use too much pesticide and you destroy your biodiversity, if you start to say we are going to have very intensive chicken industrial farming and we use a lot of antibiotics, we are going to create extra cost. So for the consumer, it's important to reduce the price it sees at the markets, but the society has a broader perspective to keep in mind, and that's why true cost accounting is important. Similarly, we cannot sacrifice the right of the workers or the livelihood of a farmer just to bring the cost down in the markets. So to conclude, on one hand, to guide the action, there are 3 main pillars of action. Yes, we need to focus also on the midstream so farmers can produce, but due to the high share of the cost that come from midstream activity, we need to make this efficient. We need to update the software, in particular, to rethink how we use the subsidies, knowing that the subsidies is not the whole story. So don't think that, oh, we change a bit the subsidies, problem is solved. But we need to realign incentives. And we need to have the right sequencing when we deploy this solution. And we have also 3 principles. We need data in order to do this type of analysis, including at the subnational level. We need the policy coherence. I talk about transportation, I talk about farm, I talk about R&D, I talk about competition, I talk about trade. So it's not even just one ministry that is going to look at this. So it's not just the Ministry of Health or the Ministry of Food. And we need the public-private partnership. So if my presentation was of interest for you, I invite you to join the full launch of the report on the 21st of July in Rome. where Maximo will have the pleasure to give you the whole story, including the additional numbers in terms of the recent trend in food insecurity and malnutrition. And it's also something you can follow online. Thank you.

Thank you, David, for that information-packed snapshot preview of some of SOFI 2026, some very stark figures there and region-specific action steps. We're going to take interventions from the floor now. Again, we do encourage you to ask David questions about the SOFI report versus just making statements alone. He is here to share his knowledge. If you'd like to speak, please press the microphone button in front of you to let us know. We're going to get to as many as we can. We have received some requests in advance, so we will start with those. First up, we have His Excellency Dara O'Brien, Minister for Climate, Energy, and the Environment, and Minister Minister of Transport of Ireland. Sir, you have the floor.

Thank you very much. Oh, it's working now. Okay, great. Thank you very much, Shax. Thank you, Chair, and indeed to Maximo and in particular to David for an excellent piece of work, an excellent presentation. Presentation. Very thought-provoking, very stark. It deals with a lot of the complexities and the differences across various parts of our globe, and I think one of the things that strikes you very much is those who can afford it most are paying least, and the importance of efficiencies within the system and ensuring as well, obviously, that we've— the smaller producers can be supported. So I agree with you completely. It's not just about subsidization, it's about actually looking at towards permanent fixes as best as possible. And look, we really welcome this report and look forward to its publication. And the high cost of healthy diets, it's not a technical footnote to the food security agenda. It's in many respects, it's the actual agenda itself. When you look at the report and the high-level part of it, the $2.6 billion people on our planet cannot afford a healthy diet, and the impact that that has with regard to 12% of early deaths, I think, that you'd mentioned as well. And also, the same report found that global food price inflation has degraded both the quantity, but also the quality of diets simultaneously, so that's a double burden, and that further adds to the complexity. Yes. You know, I believe that the choice before us is not between humanitarian responsibility and economic prudence. In this case, the two are actually inseparable. So from our perspective in Ireland, we bring our history. Our history has actually shaped our national conscience in relation to the issue of hunger, and that's in our DNA as a nation and as a people. with each country, what we produce, how we produce it. And then I was very taken by— and you might expand on that further— is those additional costs, the extra costs at the end. So it's not about just intensification of production, that we've got to try as best as possible, and those who can do it in particular, to produce our food in an ethical way. And that in some areas, when there's the acute imperative of dealing with hunger, can be a difficult thing to do and we've got to understand everyone's different perspectives. I think in certainly not speaking on behalf of Europe but from experience within Europe that, you know, we have efficient, in the main, efficient production methods within across all the different parts of our food chain and is done in the main in a sustainable way, not completely, but then there are other countries in other parts of the world where it's just literally the production is important to feed our people. So I think that is something that I'm actually very, very, very struck by. I think we engaged at Rome Nutrition Week as a country last May, and we contributed directly to the discussions, and happy to do that and to move that forward. So what can we do in practical sense? And whilst I spoke against subsidization— not against it, but subsidization has a role— I think each of our countries, where we can, that we made a financial commitment to the Nutrition for Growth Summit in Paris of €250 million annually between now and between '26 and 2029. And that is a commitment as a country that we will honor and we intend to honor that. So it's a practical piece. I think as David spoke to though as well, that can be in areas of R&D, it can be in areas of how we improve, strengthen supply chain, make the supply chain more efficient. So look, For me, I think we're not short of understanding.

It's clear.

I think the presentation and the work that's been done here shows that understanding is there. FAO and WHO have furnished our international community with a shared unified definition of a healthy diet. So we know what that is. We know what that looks like. The SOFI report has furnished the methodology to actually cost it. So when you look at the average cost, and I was struck by the figure of, I think it was $4.20 28 cents per day for a healthy diet, and then you look at the average income, you know, in many parts of our world, way below that. So the very basic of being able to— of people being able to feed themselves in a healthy way is out of reach of a massive part of our population on this globe. So, you know, we're not short of the understanding, but what remains outstanding— and I'll conclude with this— is the political will to translate that understanding into investment in agriculture value chains, equitable financing architecture, and that's why I spoke of our contribution as a state there, and every country can, you know, particularly in the developed world, every country can do more. The data systems which allow early action to precede catastrophes rather than to follow them, so to be proactive rather than reactive. And so with 4 years remaining, Madam Chairperson, Ireland does call on this forum and the international community more broadly, to move from measuring the cost, which has been done in such a very stark and clear and concise way here, that measuring the cost of a healthy diet to systematically reducing it. And I believe the work that's been done, and I really look forward to the publication of the full report in Rome on the 21st, I think you mentioned, of this month, is actually that each of our governments looking at this in a very clear way of what each of us can do, be it in our own country or through our own partners as well to make sure that we can, that we can start to bridge that gap and bridge that affordability gap for people. So just to thank you again for convening the meeting, to thank Maximo, to thank David in particular for the really excellent presentation and the super report that you've put forward here. Very thought-provoking and must drive us to do more.

Thank you, Minister O'Brien, for sharing some of what Ireland is doing. Yes, be proactive rather than reactive. Sir, I understand you have to leave us as well. You have to rush to another event. Thank you for taking time to be here with us today.

My pleasure.

Now, we have Her Excellency Eva Granados Galeano. She is Spain's State Secretary for International Cooperation at the Council of Ministers. You have the floor.

I'm going to speak Spanish. Good morning, everybody. I'm going to echo the words of the Irish Minister when he spoke about political will. When we talk about hunger and eradicating hunger around the world, we know that we face a political problem, which is not a technical problem. So I would like to thank David for the presentation because it is only with data and only with evidence that we can make the right decisions. And as a government, in this case as the Spanish government, we wait for the SOFI report every year. It's an important moment for us to be able to take the best possible decisions. So thank you very much, Maximo. It's a pleasure also for us to have had the president of ECOSOC with us at the opening of this meeting. I'd like to thank you for all of the information that you are putting on the table for us. I want to be very brief. I want to talk about governance and the importance of multilateralism as well to address this problem that has been put on the table, the importance of data and evidence. It's right that we have the correct diagnosis, but what we need to be able to do is to translate it to all of the territories in question so that we can know what's going on. And I think that in Spain, in every country, big or small, this happens. And we know that in Spain, life expectancy also varies. Your postcode determines your health determinants. And we also know that access to high-quality proteins or to fresh produce is something that is also going to depend on whether or not you are part of a vulnerable population group, whether you live in a rural area. This happens in countries of the North, in rich countries, and it happens to an even greater extent in countries of the Global South. So the importance of evidence, but also of going through all of our decisions and making sure that they are taken in an informed way. In Spain, watchdogs of the food chain have helped us provide fair prices for producers, for farmers as well, and we are also working in the same way with our partner countries. We know that if we don't have accessible and balanced diets, then we're not going to be able to achieve the aim of this meeting and the aim of the High-Level Political Forum on the Sustainable Development Goals. On the other hand, it is essential that we keep strengthening multilateralism. We understand that, and last year Spain increased by 37% its contributions to the FAO, because we need more and better cooperation and more and better multilateralism. We need the agencies of the UN system to have the capacities to be able to work with the countries that need it and to be able to work with those countries that want to contribute to that global solidarity. Spain's cooperation shows that the most effective solutions are the ones that simultaneously address various different determinants of malnutrition and accessible diets. We are working in 75 countries, but just to give you some examples: Guatemala, Honduras, Niger, Mozambique. There we have supported programs that combine sustainable agriculture, access to water and sanitation, health, the empowerment of women, but also the strengthening of institutions. I think that a lot of what David said, what he called software, is something that involves better legislation and greater institutional capacities to be able to implement those reforms. I recall a logistics operator that was operating in a country that allowed us to freeze fish and then distribute it across the country's territory. And there we're talking specifically about accessible, affordable diets and how international cooperation can help get the protein to the countries and communities that are very remote. Spain, for more than 15 years, has been supporting parliamentary fronts against hunger. And David also mentioned this in his presentation. We need legislatures and parliamentary groups of all shades to agree on prioritizing this agenda. Many of David's proposals to be able to achieve affordable diets involve regulations and budgetary commitments. And here I think that Spain's cooperation with its vision and working with the FAO with senates, congresses, the legislative bodies of various different Latin American and Caribbean countries. We're working with that in mind to put this agenda on the table and to make those institutional— those necessary institutional reforms possible. We are also very much awaiting the 3rd World Parliamentary Summit on Hunger and Malnutrition that will take place in November in Kenya, and I think that next week, when we see the entire SOFI report, that's going to be an important instrument for us being able to achieve outcomes and, above all, to be able to turn this data and to turn this political commitment into concrete, tangible policies and budgetary commitments. Thank you very much.

Thank you, State Secretary, for sharing some of what Spain is doing and for your call to strengthen multilateralism and for more cooperation. Let me give the floor now to His Excellency Togolani Edris Mavura, Permanent Representative of the United Republic of Tanzania to the United Nations.

Sir.

Thank you. Thank you so much, Madam Moderator, for giving me the floor, and I should I would like to start by where you started. We are what we eat. And the report today presented by David shows us it's not only— what matters is what we eat, not what we farm sometimes, and not necessarily what we harvest or what we stock. It's what actually ends up coming to the table at the end of the day. And that's what determines our health, our productivity, and our prosperity. It is shocking that 2.6 billion people today are priced out, as it was mentioned here, because of food inflation, limited access to diverse food, and structural constraints within agriculture value chains. We commend so much FAO with the team for coming up with this very evidence-based report, which interrogates the narrative that we accepted as a norm before. The picture is now clearer, the problem is so vivid. And the solutions are more defined. By changing the lenses and metrics, the world story has changed. It is now evident that celebrating food security is not enough. We should double our ambition towards food safety, food security, quality, and healthy food access. In Tanzania, we are working closely with FAO and IFAD and WFP to address gaps in food systems, but for us, the challenge is a little bit more different. Because the problem is actually not what we talk about, the price, that 70% of the price increase beyond the farm gate. For us, we are still struggling with food storage, with the food post-harvest loss, where 40% to 60% of the food is actually not even gate-priced, it's ending up there. So for us, the 2 axes that we are presenting makes a lot of sense of increasing supply at the same time, increasing productivity and supply, because that's what you want first, and then the reform next, because yes, we can agree with you, we see a lot of subsidies goes to cereals in such a way it's lopsided and you have a price for the things like vegetables and legumes very, very high. For us, what we need to do or what we are doing is trying to first increase productivity with a program that's promoting climate-resilient agriculture, because season is one of our problems. When you are only producing in season, it means you have a limited productivity in the first place. Attracting smart farming techniques, increasing irrigation— we have 70, 80 projects along the way. And also hardware for the blue economy, because we have the sea, we have the oceans, but we can't access protein, because that is perishable and that needs a lot of preservation. Therefore, for us, we see things like roads and electricity as actually farm inputs, beyond fertilizers and the rest. I'll say we commend this report. We think that What we need now is action to address high costs of healthy diets, and we ask for international cooperation in improving agriculture value chain, reduce input costs, democratize food markets, and mobilize investment for the last-mile infrastructure and logistics, including rural electrification, to ensure access and affordability of healthy foods for all, in every income band, in every postcode, and in every geography. Thank you.

Thank you, Ambassador Mavura, for sharing Tanzania's perspective and some of your challenges. Next up, we have Ms. Taniwan Pamaranon. She's Counselor at the Department of International Economic Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Thailand. You have the floor. Let's wait till it— there we go.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair, Good morning to everyone. I just want to, of course, first of all, thank the presenters and David and the FAO team for the very insightful presentations and findings and the evidence-based report, because, of course, before coming and participating in this event, I was also trying to coordinate within my own government on this issue as well. You'd be surprised that the Ministry of Agriculture Agriculture and Cooperatives, with the Ministry of Health. There's not a particular department or person talking about it. And as a lot of you know, like Thailand, we're the kitchen of the world. So, we have abundance of food. And at the same time, for a lot of people, healthy diet for Thai people, we don't really think it needs to be like the nutrition food. It doesn't always have to be expensive. But it's actually those people who can afford more that start eating a lot of high sugar and more like Western food is processed food. So it could also go the opposite way as well. Of course, I'm trying to understand from my country's perspective and how we could also use this report to how we could have the international cooperation with other countries and also contribute to the food security and the nutrition food of the other countries in the international cooperation as well. This is one thing that I think is something that Thailand could contribute. to this discussion. But of course, I know that we would need to, like, find perhaps, like, the mainline agency that would help us understand in terms of the technicality and the measurement as well. So, that's important. But let me also, you know, share some of the information that are from my country, like, you know, to address the challenge of the affordability of healthy diets, what we're doing to perhaps, you know, as the HLPF is also the forum to be sharing experiences and perhaps, like, good practices. So, let's— the first thing, and we heard this before as well, is strengthening the integrated governance. So, we have Thailand's National Food Committee, which provides the institutional backbone for implementing the Food Management Action Plan and to integrate food security, food safety, and nutrition policy across ministries and sectors. And this is complemented by our National Plan of Action on Nutrition 2023 to 2027. So, together, these mechanisms anchor our efforts on availability, accessibility, and affordability across the entire food chain. The second one, we ensuring adequate and nutritious food production through evidence-based planning. Thailand utilized provincial crop calendars, converting agricultural production data into essential nutrition values to ensure sufficient and nutritious food supply across all provinces. The third one, we empower consumers through food education and nutrition literacy. This is very important. We have food-based dietary guidelines, connect nutrition policy with the food system, aligning production, provision, and consumption of food, and supporting our people to access and make informed choices about healthy food at a reasonable and affordable price. And last but not least, we have creating healthier food environments. So, we have, through healthy canteen and healthy menu initiatives in schools and communities and workplaces, and in close partnership with industry to reformulate products to reduce sugar, fat, sodium, and sodium content. We try to continue to expand our healthy and affordable food choices that are within reach of our people. These are some of the information we would share, and of course, we would welcome how to strengthen multilateralism and international cooperation on this matter. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Paranan, for sharing some of what Thailand is doing as kitchen of the world, as you referred to your country. We all love Thai food. Let's hear now from Mr. Stoyan Tchukanov. He is President of the Agriculture, Rural Development, and the Environment Section of the European Economic and Social Committee. Sir, the floor is yours.

Yeah, well, thank you very much. And first of all, thank you very much for pronouncing my name. It's not the easiest one, but you managed very well. Thank you very much. And now let me join the Excellencies because I want to say a big thank you to FAO, Maximo and David specifically, because actually what we are doing, we are representing organized civil society in Europe. We are an official institution, so we are providing opinions. We are sitting in between the European Commission, European Parliament, and the Council on different topics. And the source of information that is coming from FAO, and specifically the SOFIA report, it's one of our main pillars of reliable information. Because in the time of so much misinformation and disinformation, it's very important on what we are building on. So we have a number of opinions related to the agrifood system, and we are focusing on different sections of the agrifood system. Of course, you know, this is a key issue in the European Union, but I'm going to just touch on some of the questions that actually David asked by the end. So how we designed the reform? This is a very important question for us, so we've been working on this process a lot. So let me first state that access to healthy food is not only a nutrition issue. It's a question of social justice, public health, and sustainable development. And here I want to elaborate a little bit more because we have the One Health approach.

Yes.

It's not only health for the human beings, but it's also health when you go through the welfare, animal welfare, but also to focus on the health of the soils. And that's why we have an opinion on the regenerative agriculture, because to a certain extent we went too far by destroying the microbiome. So now it's not enough to be sustainable, but we have to regenerate. the soils, because actually our health starts there. So, second point, because it was again provided by David, actually 75% of the price comes from what is in the middle. So, for us, it's very important to connect the healthy diets must be affordable for consumers while ensuring fair income for farmers and workers across the food chain. And that's why we are focusing also on the unfair trading practices. You know we have this legislation in Europe and it's been updated recently, but this is also a very important topic because 75% is huge, so we need to take into account this. I don't want to— and that's why I see—

Thank you, Mr. Tjikanov, for sharing that perspective from the European Union, including how you're designing reform, that approach, the One Health approach, right? One, the health of people, the health of animals, and the health of soil makes complete sense to me, and the call for transparency. there as well. So thank you. Over now to Ms. Belinda Chanda. She is Partnership Officer at the World Food Programme, which is one of the 5 agencies that co-authored the SOFI report. Ms. Chanda. He's got to locate your microphone. There you go.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

I would like to begin by thanking Thank you, David and Massimo, for paving the way to the launch of the SOFI report. As a partner, we're excited for it and also recognize that it is an evidence base that most partners rely on in order to design policy. I'd like to emphasize here that the diet cost and affordability metrics play an important role in helping us understand the extent to which the availability and affordability of nutritious foods constrain access to healthy diets. For those who can afford a healthy diet, the challenge is often less about cost and more about creating conditions that make healthy choices easier and more affordable. However, the estimated 2.6 billion people that have been priced out, as was said by our representative from Tanzania, who cannot afford even the lowest-cost healthy diet, including many of the people that WFP serves and helps governments reach, affordability remains the primary barrier. For those populations, diet cost and affordability metrics are particularly important. First, they help identify who is most affected by the unaffordability of healthy diets, both geographically and across the life cycle. This is particularly important for groups with higher nutritional needs, such as pregnant women and young children, who are at greater greater risk of poor nutrition and health outcomes when healthy diets are out of reach. Second, they help understand the depth of unaffordability. There's a significant difference between being able to afford, for example, 80% of the cost of a healthy diet versus only one-third of it. In the latter case, households may struggle to afford enough food to meet even their most basic needs, let alone consume a healthy diet. Understanding the size of that gap is critical for the designing of appropriate responses. Third, they help identify solutions to improve affordability and bring healthy diets within reach of vulnerable populations. This may include reducing the cost of nutritious foods through improved productivity and value chains, increasing the nutritional value of foods through fortification, or strengthening purchasing power through income-generating opportunities and cash assistance. They also provide a common evidence base that helps mobilize action across sectors and stakeholders. This is how WFP has been using diet cost and affordability metrics through our flagship Fielder Nutrient Gap Analysis since 2016 in more than 50 countries. We are also working with the Cadre Hamanoze, the regional framework used across West Africa and Central Africa, to analyze food and nutrition security, to monitor the cost and affordability of nutritious diets, helping identify a worsening food security and nutrition situation early and bring greater attention to diet quality within food security analysis and decision-making. Building on this experience, in 2025, WFP launched an open-access version of ENHANCE, a user-friendly online metric analysis platform developed in partnership with the Zero Hunger Lab to analyze the costs and affordability of healthy diets and assess the potential impact of different policy and investment options. Through a user-friendly platform, it supports evidence-based decision-making on affordability, nutrition, dietary diversity, and environmental sustainability. It's important to note here that, to date, this has been used in more than 25 countries and has attracted over 250 registered users, many from outside of WFP and including government and technical staff. Lastly, I would like to mention that these metrics help move the conversation from measuring the problem to identifying solutions, providing governments and partners with the evidence needed to make healthy diets more affordable and accessible for the most vulnerable. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Chanda, for sharing WFP's perspective and some of your experience, extensive experience on the ground. Now, I would like to give the floor to the representative from ReSoil, which is a part of the Global Soil Partnership. You are sitting at microphone 2910, I believe. We've got to activate that microphone. There we go. You have the floor.

Thank you. Thank you so much for this wonderful opportunity of sharing my project and some questions about the things we covered today. My name is Jay Yuan and I'm from Singapore, and I founded a soil regeneration initiative called ReSoil because I share views with the representative from the European Union about soil, where It really plays an important role in connecting healthy diets and sustainable development. As we have heard from Dr. Laborde, we know that still a large proportion of people cannot afford healthy diets. And we know that food price inflation peaked at 30%, that 10% rise in food prices can also increase child wasting by up to 4.3%. With these in mind, ReSoil transforms organic vegetation waste into nutrient-rich soil using community composting systems and AI-powered soil monitoring, tying together the infrastructure and software, forming a technical positive loop. With this in mind, Singapore still generates about 2 million kilograms of waste daily. Yet initiatives like Project Black Gold and Bokashi in collaboration with AIM of ReSoil Resources composting stations in HDB estates demonstrate that the waste can be transformed into reproductive growing medium. And depending on— and Singapore also depending on imports for over 90% of our food, I believe that rebuilding soil isn't just an environmental goal, as it's for food security imperative and directly aligned with Singapore's 30 by 30 strategy. Therefore, my question would be, What role does FAO see for youth-led, technology-enabled waste-to-soil programs in national strategies to reduce the cost of healthy diets, particularly in small island developing states and land-scarce urban nations, in collaboration with implementation of modern vertical farms? And what role would this process be in tackling the problem of unaffordable diets if put into practice in other parts of the world. Thank you so much.

Thank you for sharing ReSoil's perspective, and bravo for your soil regeneration initiative. David, would you like to take that question?

Yes, with pleasure. Thanks first for all the comments, and I think also all the testimonies we get from countries that show the different reality, the different priorities that we also have tried to Yes. —capture in the report. But I think there is this common understanding about how important it is and then how you need to contextualize. So now, in order to get where we want to go, yes, innovation is going to be important in order to grow better crops, in order to tackle things that we have not really solved yet, like soil health, to also make sure that we are protecting the food on the farm and after the farm. And that's why, you know, bringing this innovation, but also understanding, you know, I would say the local context, the traditional knowledge, in order to combine the past and the future, is going to be important. Now, I think also the youth play a particular role because they are the new generation of consumers, and that will be important in this, also about their priorities, but also the new generation of producers. It's going to be also very important, I think, when we look at these different generations of farmers, and that, yes, maybe your father was growing rice, but your future may not be in rice. It can be in pulses. It can be in integrating rice and fish. And so that's what we want to do. And we know that we want to facilitate this. We need also to make sure we can facilitate this transition and for the next generation to have access to investment, to have access to finance, because some of the innovation also costs money to deploy. And we know that for young farmers, access to finance can be an issue because they don't have capital, they don't have collateral. So And that's where the policy space is going to be important, because the innovation without the enabling environment will just remain an innovation. So that will be my answer for now. And of course, Maximo may want to—

One specific issue, because you asked about SIDS, Small Island Developing States specifically, and SIDS are mostly import-dependent countries. They import most of the food that they consume. And when we look at the analysis of where trade, for example, could create some issues concerning quality of diets, seeds always pop up as the types of countries that normally have overweight and obesity as a consequence of their huge import dependency on foods. So here, what you are mentioning in terms of vertical farming and also horizontal farming in the case of seeds is something— is a possibility, but the issue is a little bit more complex. Because you need to find sources of energy that will make it cost-effective. Right now, in many of the sites, they are using the electric grid to work in vertical farming, and that's not cost-effective at all. So again, here is where solar technology is another diversification to help to minimize those costs so that you can become efficient in the way you produce. But you need to start looking, and one of the works of FAO is to try to find ways in which we can diversify and reduce as much as possible the import dependency of seeds, which includes, of course, the diversification of diets. And then the second element, which is important in the case of seeds, is because of the tourism and the way you operate with tourism, there is a significant amount of waste, and that's something that also can be worked intensively to minimize those. Thank you.

Thanks, Maximo. Thanks, David. Let's hear now from the representative from Switzerland. We have to again locate your microphone, and there you go.

Yes, thank you very much to the FAO for this very important report and for today's discussion. The report gives us valuable evidence and helps us better understand one of the biggest challenges in today's world. I would like to share one reflection from the perspective of Switzerland, also from my work as Director of Domestic Programs of Caritas I work for in Switzerland. We often say that healthy diets are expensive, but I think we should also remember that unhealthy diets are even more expensive. The SOFA report 2024 shows that unhealthy diets lead to productive losses of around 8% of the global GDP. This means that making healthy diets affordable is not only a social issue, it's also a smart economic investment. In Switzerland, we believe that this challenge needs an integrated approach. Agriculture, health, social protection, protection, and food policy all need to work together. Through our international cooperation, Switzerland supports sustainable food systems. Better nutrition and stronger local agriculture. We also support better data and measurement so that more informed policy decisions can be made. From my work at Caritas, I also would like to add one practical example. Even in a rich country like Switzerland, around 8 to 15% of our people live below the national poverty line and face difficulties to afford a healthy diet. Through markets that we have, people with very low incomes can buy healthy foods and everyday products at much lower prices. This is possible because we work together with supermarkets, producers, and many other parties, and I think it shows that partnerships between government, civil society, and private sector can make a real difference. But our Our experience also shows that affordable food alone is not enough. People also need a decent income and strong social protection. Otherwise, healthy food will remain out of reach for many families. My question, or also maybe it's a rhetorical question, is how can we better show ministers of finance, of economics, and investors that making healthy diets affordable is not a cost, but one of the best long-term investments in health, economic growth, and sustainable development? And how can we strengthen partnerships that help make healthy diets affordable for everyone? I really hope we can continue the work on that, and I want to thank you all for the important work and the discussion for today. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you for sharing the perspective of Switzerland and some of your work with Caritas. As you said, unhealthy diets cost more than healthy food. As David said earlier, $8.2 trillion a year is lost economically because of the lack of healthy diets. David, did you want to answer that question?

Yes, I think— To say this is not a problem. This is a problem. We know the size of the problem, so it's already a big problem, and there is a real economic value behind it. Now, what we face is an intertemporal challenge. The cost of food today is something that you see. The cost of unhealthy diet is something you are going to see over the years.

Thank you.

Both as an individual, you know, and you start when you are students at your university. Okay, you don't have so much money. Are you going to eat cheap food, maybe unhealthy? Yes, even if you are going to be sick in 30 years. Okay, so that's what we need to address, you know, how we make a system where with better information, people are better informed, but also we can deal with this issue. And you were saying, you know, income is important. Safety net is important, especially if at some period of your life you may not have the income that allows you to make the better choice tomorrow. But of course, working with prices, it's important. Now, you were raising the question of Ministry of Finance. So as I've said, bringing the numbers is a key step. We can make the economic argument over the long run, but I think that's where Financial markets will have a role to play, and all the finance, both public and private, because what is the link between today and tomorrow? If you are a minister of finance, is the cost of your debt, is your interest rate. And the big challenge we face is today, if a country invests in healthier diets, better nutrition for kids, better information. More sustainable agrifood system, fighting poverty for farmers that will continue to operate in 20 years, the financial system today is myopic. They will say, I don't take this into account in the notation I put on your debt. I don't reduce your cost of borrowing if you do the right thing for tomorrow. I just look at your debt today. And that's where, you know, working with the financial sector, including the international financial institutions, but also the private market, making this— that this is a cost for the economy tomorrow. This is where maybe tomorrow we'll not be able to pay back the debt if we don't invest in the proper things today. That will be the stronger argument. So today, as FAO, we bring the evidence. We bring also the solution, just to say that it's not like if we can do nothing. No, we can do. But for the last miles, I mean, the last price tag is going to be on the cost of public money, on public debt. And I think that's where, you know, collectively pricing the future is a big challenge.

Thanks, David. And now let me give the floor to the representative from Israel. There we go.

Yes, thank you.

Thanks to the FAO and the speakers that we have today. I wasn't planning on making a statement, but looking at the screen and the relative costs of the various food groups, and then listening to some other interventions on models that have been run, various scenarios, and perhaps food production cultures changing. It got me to thinking or wondering whether there have been models run or experiments with trying with a deliberate shift among populations to— from what was termed high-quality proteins to being vegetable-sourced high-quality proteins to see whether that could improve both the affordability of the food, say, with various mixes of legumes and rice, affordability and security-wise, because of course these can be dried and stored, and so perhaps wouldn't be subject to the same losses that meats might. So I was just wondering what that could do regarding the availability of high-quality proteins, the affordability, and security? Thank you.

Thank you for that question. David, would you like to take that?

Yes. So I think when we look at this, obviously beyond the proteins, we are interested in what are the micronutrients that are associated with them. I mean, when we eat meat, we just don't eat proteins. Actually, we In the world, for most people that eat enough calories, we also eat enough proteins. And for many people in high-income countries that are eating too many calories, they're also eating too many proteins. So what we want is to make sure that we have this good food bringing all of that. So first, we have also the issue that leguminous, for instance, that were a traditional source of protein and actually other elements, have been neglected over the last, I would say, 30, 50, 60 years since the Green Revolution. When in most countries, if you look in most healthy diets around the Mediterranean area, actually, for instance, leguminous were part of most of these diets, traditional diets. They were culturally appropriate. And then we have forgotten. But we have not just forgotten because People have thought about something else. It's because we didn't invest in R&D. We didn't make them convenient to consume. Now, if you have to spend 2 hours cooking your chickpeas, you may go for a piece of bread. Okay? So we have to take this into account. So that's why we say we have the traditional solutions that are going to be part of it. And actually, leguminous are also good for the soil. So to address some issues. There is benefit to go for what we already know. And then when we talk about innovation, yes, we are building new products. We can have crop-based products or mixed products also between animal-sourced food and crops that can answer these needs. Now, I think it's where the context is important and where the cost also is important because these new technologies are still not price competitive with a more traditional product. So policymakers can aim to make them more competitive, but they will still not be competitive today. So it's more long-term. They are also not replacing the micronutrients that you can get from animal-sourced food naturally. So you need to process them. So you need to fortify them. So, you know, to get B12, to get calcium, That's not all the crops that are going to have them. So are you doing biofortification? So basically editing even their genetics to increase their micronutrient contents. But here also different countries, different societies have different cultural opinion on them, I would say. And then when you process them, you want to make sure that also you are not creating the same problems with this new product that you have with the old one. So you don't start to put more sugar and salt to get them more tasty. Okay, that's always what the food processing. So definitely these food innovations are part of it, but I think we also need to think about the traditional one and what we know from this crop-based solution. Yes, they can reduce the amount of water or the amount of emission associated with them. But they are not option-ready for all countries. Last but not least, some of these solutions also, just in terms of processing, need more energy. And there, the cost of energy is going to be important. So we just have to be pragmatic to think what works in which context. Obviously, you have some countries that have a lot of water, have no problem to grow things in the field. You have some countries that have less water and need to find options. And this is true for the actual cost and the hidden cost of what we consume.

Thank you, David. And now let's hear— this will be our last intervention from the floor, I believe, from the NGO Plant-Based Treaty. You are sitting at microphone 2012. We'll just get your microphone activated. Hang on a minute, it needs to turn red. There you go, please.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I really appreciate the last question. I have a very similar question. I was wondering, you know, like the IPCC land use report did, it looked at different diets like vegan, vegetarian, you know, flexitarian, Mediterranean, low on red meat and things. And then looked at the greenhouse gas savings, and the vegan diet by far was the best at 8 gigatons carbon equivalent savings per year. I was wondering if the FAO in their report could also do different scenarios, as the previous speaker from Israel mentioned. I think it's very important to look at different scenarios because your initial assumptions will determine your outcomes and conclusions and your recommendations. So So, for example, with respect to health, I'm from Canada. We have science-based dietary guidelines, and the glass of milk was replaced by a glass of water. And to say that there are regions of the world that are not consuming enough milk and meat, I think, is not— it's an economist assumption that I don't think is based on science. And, you know, there's economists that have said that there are areas of the world that are under-polluted and that we need to move our toxic waste to under-polluted areas. So I think it comes in that tradition. And I think there are a lot of Western corporations which are trying to develop markets where people are eating fairly healthy plant-based diets. There's a famous study called the China Study by Dr. Campbell which showed that China had much healthier diets a few decades ago, and now they started— now there's a growing problem of non-communicable diseases. So my question for you is, can we please, you know, look at other scenarios like the IPCC does and what the implications are for cost, as the previous speaker mentioned? As you know, the Danish government came up with the first-ever Danish action plan for plant-based food. in 2023. And they also have a grants program, and they're developing a value chain for lentils, which they haven't grown previously. We're in New York City. The previous mayor, Eric Adams, had a campaign, a public education campaign called Eat a Whole Lot More Plants, because he reversed his type 2 diabetes by eating a whole foods plant-based diet. And it's covered in his book Healthy at Last. The current mayor, Mondale, is also promoting, you know, plant-based professionals in his office. And they— there are also cost savings. They did in the 11 public hospitals in New York City, they introduced plant-based by default, and there was over 90% satisfaction, 50% uptake, and half a million in savings in one year. So there are also cost savings with whole food plant-based. And so I would strongly recommend that the report from the FAO look at different scenarios. I don't think it's fair to have like a male, one male eating so much meat, grains, fruits and vegetables as your starting point, because that determines the recommendations. Thank you.

Thank you for your perspective. perspective and for your question. David?

Yes, first, I don't think that any economist has said, put your waste in another country, that will be a good idea regarding health, okay? So I just think that as economists, we try to see what is cost-efficient to achieve the objective that the society has. We are not writing the food-based dietary guidelines. In the Structure of the diet, you see, it's actually the average of more than 30 dietary guidelines from around the world, all based on science. So we can agree or disagree. I can tell you that I spent enough time with nutritionists to— the story of the glass of milk has very different opinion, including in the medical profession beyond the nutritionists. So I'm not going to question it. Now, our point is to say, And I started with that. This is not nutrition guidelines, okay? This is based on what the world calls a healthy diet today, based on what countries are defining in average as a healthy diet today, not FAO, countries. This is how much it costs. And so we have a story about cost. And our point is to say— This is already very costly. And obviously, even leguminous today are super costly. That's a fact. If they were super cheap, people were consuming it. There is no, you know, hatred of people for chickpeas or beans, anything like this. It's just they have been made not so convenient and they are still expensive because they have been neglected. And that's what we say. So starting to ask people to even go for more expensive product will increase the cost even more. And this is here a story about cost. We need to bring it down, and we need to bring it down about what also is locally appropriated. And if I think about a lot of— I mean, our colleague from Tanzania has left, but I mean, if you go to rural area in many low-income countries, finding the type of food we can have access to in New York to do the substitution is just not feasible. We are very lucky here. We go in the street, we buy cereals. All the cereals are actually supplementation in calcium or B12 if you want. And yes, getting this is an option that we have and can be good for the environment, not too expensive, and so on. You go to South Kivu, you go to Malawi, we are in very different elements. And what the farmers are producing are in many cases what they will consume, and they will not get access to that. So having a few chickens with eggs is actually something that is good for their kids, because stunting and wasting is still a reality. Micronutrient deficiency is a reality. They all— the poor people have actually a crop-based diet. I can bring you to communities where they will not see even an egg before 7 years old. Wow. And this egg will be given to the boy, not to the daughter. And so we need to make sure that we can level the playing field with solutions that will change the life of people today based on their reality. So that way, I think, you know, getting these different situations and from New York or Canada to Bamako or to Tonga Islands, we need to be flexible here. The report is about saying how we can reduce the cost. Leguminous, I think, is really something we all agree on that today has been neglected. Today has a higher cost. That's something that everyone can consume. And that's already, you know, a low-hanging fruit we need to fix. And after, we need to get flexibility because there is different type of diet, there is different cultural norm. The consumer of tomorrow is not the consumer of today. And this has to evolve.

Thank you, David. Let's get closing thoughts now, first from Maximo.

No, very briefly, thank you all for being here. So let me put some headings to topics that we have been talking. First, there is no universal solution, and therefore we need to look at the composition of those healthy diets in each of the different regions and countries. I think that the graphs and the figures shown by David across different regions of the world is something that shows us the importance of looking at this in the specific context. Second, we must connect at some point— we are always, but we must connect the cost also with affordability. And that's a different dimension that we are looking at this publication that we will be launching on healthy diets that will be launched by the end of this year, which focuses on both Cost, affordability, and also consumption. So, I think the 3 elements are central in the process. In this report, as we said, we are focusing on the cost of healthy diets based on the definition of healthy diets, which the core behind the definition is diversity. Third, we need to diversify where nutrition comes from. So, fruits and vegetables remain essential, but they are also not the only solution. Legumes and other nutrient-rich foods can provide affordable, sustainable sources of protein and micronutrients while improving soil health through biological nitrogen fixation. But, of course, for some parts of the world, we also need to bring proteins through terrestrial animals, and there has been a lot of scientific work that we have been doing in FAO as part of the subcommittee on livestock. Fourth, there is no single global diet appropriate for all countries, and this is where many of other reports have In the sense that they fix the diet, and that's a mistake. The diets and the elements of the healthy diet will vary country by country, and that's a little bit what we are trying to emphasize here. A vegan diet is healthy diet as long as it is well planned, and that's not easy, as you well know. So we need to look at it very carefully, and we need to see what are the requirements for it to become a healthy diet. That's not a default. The same applied for other diets around. So the scientific consensus from the World Health Organization, FAO, and the Nutrition— the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, and other national nutrition bodies, is that well-planned vegan diets can be healthy and nutritionally adequate for most people. However, it is not automatic. It will not be healthy by itself. It requires a lot of work to be able to plan it carefully. And in many cases, it's not affordable to many people because of the lack of the inputs that are necessary for that. Finally, I think one of the issues that became so important here is that every decision we make today sharpen the affordability of healthy diets for tomorrow, and also every decision has this intertemporal importance, and that's the question of the Ministry of Finance. If you want to talk to a Minister of Finance, normally they will think in the current moment, they don't think in the tomorrow, and that's what we need to change. There have been very successful stories where working with Ministers of Finance to understand the evidence on how the tomorrow matters for the cost on their own budgets, have made them make very good decisions, and that's the history behind everything related to budgets by incentives. So again, I think the evidence that this report is bringing and the importance of this diversity of diets and looking at the cost and how the agrifood system changes can help to show how we can minimize those externalities linked to the health issues, the non-communicable diseases, but also how it can create income to farmers and can assure that we can have also the affordability will be essential. It will keep people at the centre. It's important, and we recognise the diversity of countries. We need to invest where the evidence tells us, and here is where we need to bring not only public sector but also the private sector, the AFIs, to try to create this as an attractive investment, because the goal will have substantial returns both in today but also in the tomorrow. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Maximo. Thank you, David. You've given us a lot to think about and some concrete action steps today. It is clear, unfortunately, there is no silver bullet, no one-size-fits-all, no universal solution, but with your will, your commitment, and properly synchronized targeted action, it It is possible for many more people around the world to eat healthy, life-saving, life-giving food. Let's keep working together to do better. Many thanks once again to all our speakers and to you, our audience, for being here, for being part of this crucial conversation. Thanks also to our online audience, and again, do stay tuned for the SAFI 2026 report, which will be available on the FAO website from next Tuesday, July 21st. That brings us to the end of this special event. You are welcome to come back to this conference room at 1:15 PM for the next event that the FAO is hosting. It is on agri-food systems in the current global context, opportunities, risks, and solutions. Again, thank you all very much indeed.

Thank you.