On 5-6 May 2022, the Danish Minister for Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, Mr. Rasmus Prehn, will host the sixth annual World Food Summit. With a focus on combatting climate change, this year’s World Food Summit will address how the global food systems affect climate change and conversely how climate change affects the global food systems.

The global food system interconnects all people, as well as past and future generations. It is both a contributor and subject to climate change. It is therefore imperative to address important global issues, identify environmentally sound solutions, and take action to build more sustainable, accountable, and equitable global food systems. The climate crisis is a global phenomenon, and efforts made to change the current trajectory by any single nation—or even continent—will be in vain if these efforts are not inclusive, enabled and matched worldwide.

The World Food Summit is an annual accelerator of actions necessary to transform food systems to become more sustainable and accountable. It raises global awareness and advances global commitments and actions that transform food systems for the benefit of consumers, producers, and the planet.

The Summit establish a global platform for key policymakers, academia, business leaders, civil society, and the next generation of sustainability leaders to identify key actions that will contribute to the green transition of global food systems.

World Food Summit 2022

This year, the World Food Summit and associated events will take place on May 5-6 2022 and focus on “Transforming the Global Food Systems to Combat Climate Change”. The Summit will follow-up on commitments made at the UN Food System Summit 2021 and provide critical inputs for world leaders to incorporate into and act on at COP27 in November 2022.

As a stark reminder of the importance of ensuring stable global food systems, this year’s World Food Summit is set in the midst of Russia’s attack on Ukraine, which has led to a growing food crisis by disrupting current supply chains, seriously impacting the cost of production and distribution of food around the globe and pressuring commodity markets that had already hit multiyear highs.

Specifically, the World Food Summit will focus on deforestation-free value chains, food loss and food waste, healthy and sustainable diets, and the green transition of the global agricultural production.

The Summit gathers more than 250 international stakeholders from around the world who will work together to identify and define actions necessary to transform the food systems. Collectively, the stakeholders will address current as well as new and innovative pathways for actions in order to contribute to the global roadmap towards combatting climate change. Bold steps are necessary.

Thematic Focus

With the backdrop of climate change, World Food Summit 2022 focuses on defining actions in the areas of:

Healthy and Sustainable Diets

• Food Loss and Food Waste

• Green Transition of the Global Agricultural Production

• Deforestation-Free Value Chains

Dialogue Sessions

Underpinned by an inclusive engagement process, the dialogue sessions on the second day of the Summit comprise diverse range of global stakeholders. These stakeholders will discuss, formulate and present the most robust and responsible solutions for the transformation of the global food systems necessary to combat climate change.

Four dialogue sessions will be held on 6 May.

Dialogue Session on Healthy and Sustainable Diets

Our global food system is a major influence on both human health, climate change and the environment. According to estimates, changes in dietary habits can reduce food production emissions significantly.  This makes the green transition towards more healthy and sustainable diets crucial in the efforts to ensure healthy, sustainable and climate-smart food production for the growing global population, while at the same time restoring and safeguarding our environment.

Food Based Dietary Guidelines (FBDGs) as well as Public Private Partnerships are key Danish strongholds. Food-based dietary guidelines (FBDGs) can be powerful drivers for healthy and sustainable food consumption, production, and policymaking. However, the implementation of FBDGs is not straightforward. Public-private partnerships have the potential to support the implementation of FBDGs by ensuring cross sector stakeholder engagement and facilitating concrete actions and solutions to meet the recommendations provided in the FBDGs.

The purpose of the dialogue session is to explore and discuss the vast potential of FBDGs and public-private partnerships as solutions that can enable the transition to healthy and sustainable diets from sustainable food systems by focusing on “local solutions to global challenges”. A range of international speakers representing business, academia, and government will address the urgency of changing our dietary habits to change the global food system - and how the FBDGs and public-private partnerships can be drivers for just that. The speakers will be followed by an interactive dialogue session, which serves as an opportunity for stakeholders from across the food system. The discussions will focus on what we can do to unleash the potentials of the FBDGs and how working in public-private partnerships can enable peer-to-peer learning that can facilitate local solutions to global challenges.

The dialogue session on Healthy and Sustainable Diets will build on the commitments made at the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit and COP26. The outcome of the dialogue session will serve to lever the future actions of the Healthy Diets Coalition and provide critical pathways that will feed into COP27 in November 2022.

Dialogue Session Food Loss and Food Waste

By 2030, we need to transform our food systems to become more sustainable and greener in order to combat climate change and be able to produce sufficient food for the still growing global population.

A reduction of food loss and food waste will play a significant role in reducing the environmental footprint. In developing countries, 40 pct. of losses occur at post-harvest and processing levels (PHL). A recent study from Kenya confirms the significant losses in food production and lists a number of options where known technologies can be adapted to meet the need.

The UN estimates that global food production needs to increase by 70 pct. by 2050. This calls for a significant global demand for improved agrobusiness in order to meet the demands from a growing world population of 8.5 billion people in 2030 and 9.8 billion in 2050. Developing inclusive, sustainable, and efficient food systems plays a key role in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 2, 3 and 12.

However, as in so many other cases, it paradoxically does not happen even though classical economic theory dictates: If there is a demand then the private sector will chip in.

The dialogue is organised in corporation with the Danish Think Tank on Prevention of Food Loss and Food Waste, ONE\THIRD, and Access2Innovation. The series of debates set out to bring different perspectives and to discuss the underlying root cause to explore ways ahead on how to resolve the apparent needs.

The dialogue session on Food Loss and Waste will build on the commitments made at the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit and COP26. The takeaways from the dialogue will serve to lay out tracks regarding Food Loss and Waste for the future work of the Food is never Waste Coalition and COP27 I November 2022 and should inspire participants for new ideas and commitments in their efforts to combat the climate change at local, regional or global level.

Dialogue Session on the link between deforestation and climate change

The world has lost 420 million hectares of forest since 1990. An area equivalent to the size of the European Union. Not only is deforestation a significant contributor to climate change and biodiversity loss, it also entails major negative consequences for the directly affected communities. The main driver for deforestation is the rapid expansion of land use for agriculture, for example for soy, cattle and palm oil production.

Decisive action is necessary to reverse this development, contribute to the sustainable transformation of global food systems, and fulfil the commitments set out in the Paris Agreement.

Luckily, there has been growing awareness about the implications of deforestation in recent years. At COP26, the Glasgow Leaders' Declaration on Forests and Land Use (GLD) was signed by a large number of countries. The declaration now has no more than 143 signatories, covering around 90 pct. of the global forests, committed to halting and reversing forest loss and land degradation by 2030 while delivering sustainable development and promoting an inclusive rural transformation. Furthermore, COP26 resulted in a Global Forest Finance Pledge from public and private funds of almost £14 billion to end deforestation in 2030.

Despite the recent progress, several unanswered questions remain.

This dialogue session will explore and discuss how to deliver on the COP 26 nature outcomes and help ensure that the nexus between deforestation and climate change will be increasingly recognized at COP27.

Key speakers will present their take on how to accelerate the transition toward sustainable land-use practices. The discussion will explore the direct links between the practice of deforestation and climate change and include the perspective of communities directly affected by deforestation and climate change.The dialogue session is an opportunity for representatives from civil society, academia, business, youth from both consumer- and producer countries to identify issues and solutions regarding deforestation that world leaders can discuss at COP27.

International experts will present their views on these topics, followed by an interactive panel discussion as well as Q&A from participants.

Dialogue Session on Green Transition of the Global Agricultural Production

The Russian invasion of Ukraine threatens global food security, as Ukraine, Russia, and the Black Sea region are one of the world’s most important areas for agricultural production and exports. The crisis has created a humanitarian catastrophe and disrupted global energy supplies and agricultural markets.

The impact of the invasion is especially hard on developing countries, notably in North Africa and the Middle East. Poor countries in these regions are already grappling with high food price inflation, supply chain interruptions and other challenges following two years with a global pandemic.

At the same time, it is urgent to continue the green transition of the global agricultural production to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and combat climate change. Over the past years, the transformation of food systems and shifts towards more healthy and sustainable farming practices have received much attention by many countries. Not least because of the close links to the Paris Agreement and UN Sustainable Development Goals.

In the light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the dialogue session will explore and discuss how to continue the green transition of the global agricultural production while ensuring global food security.

The discussion will focus on the need for concrete actions and solutions to ensure short and long-term food security as well as sustainable and resilient global food systems.

The discussion will touch upon dilemmas such as land used for food versus feed or biomass for energy, sustainable production systems in relation to low-input or high-input cultivation systems, and nutrient recycling and return of available nutrients to the fields. It will also discuss the growing global demand for meat and dairy and the impact it has on the footprint of food production both locally and globally.

International experts will present their views on these topics, followed by an interactive panel discussion as well as Q/A from participants.

Side Events

Through a number of engaginginformalside events, the World Food Summit 2022will bring together policy makers, industry pioneers, civil society spearheads, and next generation of sustainability leaders to find solutions that drive the sustainable transformation of the global food systemsto combat climate change. Requests for inclusion in the list of side events related to the World Food Summit are to be forwarded to the secretariat, with an indication of the date, venue, title and sponsors or organizers.

Contact information

If you want to hear more about World Food Summit please contact: 
WFS@FVST.DK