Okay so we can perhaps start, I guess there will be other people joining me, but first of all, Excellencies, distinguished delegates, guests, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, very good morning, we hope you had a great weekend and that you somehow still remember your well-deserved summer break. I'm Dominique Bourgen, I'm the director of the FAO liaison office with the UN in Geneva and I would like to welcome you all to our FAO Geneva Agriculture Trade Talks session. Let me first of course thank you all for taking your time to attend our meeting today given of course the always very busy time here in Geneva in your busy agenda. Before we start, just I would like to give the usual couple of housekeeping rules, please feel free to drop any question you may have in the chat box or raise your hands, as always the presentation will be made available to you and will be shared so that you can keep it. As you know FAO in the context of our trade-related work support members, effective engagement in the formulation of trade agreements that are conducive to improved food security by strengthening evidence on the implications of change in trade policies providing capacity development in the use of this evidence and facilitating a neutral dialogue. In the spirit, this is in the spirit that my predecessors started back in 2018, a dialogue series entitled FAO Geneva Agricultural Trade Talks that are based on a sort of three-eye approach informal, meaning exchanging information ideas and views without any attribution and recording, interactive, providing a neutral platform for dialogue and engagement among stakeholders and then inspirational, sharing knowledge and ideas for use in policy and even negotiations if being useful. Today in our agricultural trade session we will focus on the latest development on the impact of COVID-19 on agriculture and trade and we are very happy to have with us Maximo Torreo, Maximo Torreo Cullen, the FAO chief economist who will be briefing. But before giving the floor to Maximo, I'd like to use this opportunity to also set the scene and say a few words about FAO's response to COVID crisis and there it is clear that of course the pandemic caught the world by surprise and put response system to a test even though we have been working on emergency preparedness for decades, one can still not fully anticipate how to react to their diversity and including such as the one we've been facing. The COVID-19 pandemic jeopardized as you know human health and disrupted the food systems that are of course the foundations of health. Critical measures initiated to control virus outbreaks that have been taken that needed to be taken by country at some unintended consequences on the global supply chains and of course this is what we have been keen to very much understand. It was clear also to us at the FAO from the very beginning that it was critical to take immediate action towards avoiding a global food emergency that could have long-term impacts on hundreds of millions of children and adults and in that context right from March 2020 FAO participated in the humanitarian response working to save the livelihoods of millions among those most food insecure and in the meantime developed a COVID-19 response and recovery program aimed at providing an agile and coordinated global response to ensure nutritious food for all both during and after the pandemic. FAO's program to address the COVID-19 pandemic is designed to address a social economic impact and mitigate the immediate effect of the pandemic while strengthening the long-term resilience of food systems and livelihoods. FAO has therefore been working as it's been conceiving and implementing a seven pillar program the first one working on the global humanitarian response plan in that context working of course with the OSHA and others who have been assisting about 24 million people and working on in terms of risk communication for another 11 million people. Second pillar has been very central and Maximo as well as all the other has played a critical role on that one is the data for decision-making of course this is always basically ensuring the availability of quality data analysis for effective policy support and decision-making. The third one has been on economic inclusion and social protection to reduce poverty basically to mitigate the negative impact of the pandemic and promote inclusive post-pandemic economic recovery. We've been working on strengthening the sustainable economic inclusion of small-scale producers strengthening rural women economic empowerment and protect rural employment. The fourth pillar has been on trade and food safety standards. The fourth and we will zoom in on that one today. The fifth one has been on boosting small-order resilience for recovery with a focus on essentially food crisis context. There has been a sixth pillar on preventing the next zoonotic where we have been looking at how to strengthen and extend the one health approach to avoid animal origin pandemics and then a seventh one on comprehensive food system transformation. But today as I was saying we essentially focus on pillar four which I would like to recall is on trade issues and it is clear that Maximo has a lot to share so I know that you came to basically listen to our chief economic Maximo Torreo and I would like therefore to without further any further delay give him the floor so that he can share the the understanding we have gained on the on the situation and share also the the most late the latest development in that context. So Maximo the floor is yours. And thank you very much Dominique if you can stop sharing the screen so I can share my screen perfect. Thank you very much colleagues and exalices for being here it's a pleasure for us to do an update on the work that we are doing in the case of the impact of COVID-19 on the pandemic of agriculture trade. So the presentation I am going to do today will focus on five areas. I will be covering COVID-19 containment measures and policy responses in the agriculture sector and that's central because the way countries are putting containment measures have a perfect correlate with the negative growth of GDP and that's perhaps been impacting also issues of of recession and of course consequences in terms of access to healthy foods and access to food and increasing the nourishment. The second part will be an impact on the agri-food markets and trade then I'm going to look into the divergent recovery paths and implications for food security FAO's role on markets and trade and the lessons learned what we can learn from this medium-term risk and policy implications for the future so that we can keep improving over time on how we act and react to these type of situations as Dominique was mentioned. So let me first start with this diagram which is basically trying to show the evolution of how to reduce and mitigate the speed of COVID-19 governments around the world about the viral containment measures including closures of business activities, confinements, curfews, quarantines, and travel restrictions within and across borders. The figure shows the stringent of COVID-19 containment measures since the beginning of the pandemic up to today so it's just to give you an idea of the dynamics and the first long ban was imposed following the COVID-19 outbreak in the city of Wuhan and other cities in China on the 23rd of January 2020 by the end of March beginning of April 2020 and most countries in the world are already implemented various forms of virus containment policies. Around May and June 2020 many governments started easing the restrictions and economic activity at least partially resumed. Since then the stringency of the measures has depend upon intensity of the success of the ways of infections which have different country and since beginning of 2021 also based on the extent of vaccinations and what I was trying to explain is that as we increase the containment measures in the bottom you will see a decline in GDP growth because of course you restrict economic activities. One of the major topics that we raised in this period of time was important of having the food value chains alive, the agri-food system alive because there is no health without food so it was important not only to do the containment measures but to assure that the agricultural sector was a priority sector and of course trade is behind this, it's essential to the part of the agricultural sector in the world. Now coming to policy responses in the agri-food system sector concerns over food security and food safety worldwide at the beginning of the pandemic let countries to implement policy measures to carb potentially adverse impacts on the agricultural markets and this includes trade restrictions measures to lower import barriers and domestic measures. Among the trade measures overall only a very limited number of countries imposed restrictions on exports of agricultural products and most of these were quickly repeated and if we can correct repealed and if we compare these to the 2007 to 2008 the number was significantly smaller but not only that the quantity of the commodity being exported affected was very small and that was able later on through better communication and information through the agricultural market information system and through joint the statements we were able to work with countries so that even that didn't happen which create a good situation for the delivery of food across the world. Import restrictions mainly included sanitary and fetus sanitary measures on the specific process as life animals was imposed at the beginning and this was because of some of the fears about the potential transmission through meat which later on were cleared and therefore that was stopped. On the contrary several countries lower import barriers and that's more by suspending import tariffs or raising tariffs rate quotas so that people could import cheaper food to the countries given the situation and some countries also relaxed technical barriers to trade to facilitate the imports of critical food items. Most of those measures were temporary and lasted at most until the end of 2020. At the same time countries adopted domestic measures and those are really important these included producer support measures to ensure the continuation of agricultural production. Some countries also provide logistics and marketing support to overcome supply chains bottlenecks. To ensure domestic food availability several countries increase domestic food procurement targets and are increasing ports to build national reserves and some countries implemented ceiling prices or expanded food distribution programs to improve access and affordability of food. Of course many of these policies could create some inefficiencies but as long as they are short term and in a transition process to move out once the situation stabilizes is useful because it helps to ameniorate the potential consequences in terms of costs that consumers would have as a result of this problem that we're facing COVID-19. Now the international community play an important role in limiting the use of trade restrictions measuring during the pandemic and that's what I was mentioning before. The policy commitments and coordination play a crucial role so during this crisis many countries in different settings from D-20 to the African Union from Asia and Plapik issued ministerial declarations and commitments and heads of international organizations including FAO issued joint statements that aim at keeping agricultural supply chains alive. We came with this enormous message since the beginning early at the beginning of the of the pandemic especially in early March about the importance of keeping the value chains alive together with resolving the problem of health. At the same time the improving market transparency again shows us how important this is and how good was the idea to create the armies as a result of the D-20 of Paris and the availability of up-to-date data and information was seen as a crucial particularly in the periods of crisis when pandemic restrictions could create reactions that aggravate trade disruptions. In this regard initiatives such as the agricultural market information system and as I mentioned before and FAO global information and early warning systems that use play a crucial role during the pandemic by providing timely and valuable data and information on global food markets. Finally trade facilitation measures were expedited during this pandemic. Many countries started to streamline in their trade related procedures for instance with respect to sanitary and phytosanitary measures. This included for example the acceptance of electronic certificates therefore the crisis this crisis could also be an opportunity to offer to further both digital solutions and supporting the digital transformation of agriculture. So what one core message here is the crucial role of information and transparency in the markets and we believe that we were ready for that. There were some limitations there was not too much detain information on logistical issues for example at the beginning of the pandemic there were several logistical issues because of closure of ports because of lack of immobility of vessels and later on because of incapacity of chaff chifling or changing the vessel crews after a six-month period in the sea which is the limit that they have. But now we are also ready for that we have learned about that and we have find a way in which we can have real-time information and that will also help to improve the capacity that enemies will have in terms of sharing information because once we know where the restrictions we can work with countries to release those restrictions and for example to reopen ports which was central. But as I mentioned at the end the importance of the digital technologies and the digital solutions like the if ito that was absorbed by Argentina and Chile in their custom procedures opens an opportunity from where we can learn to be able to expand these type of measures that we'll have to facilitate trade. And one important topic also that that give another opportunity was that the pandemic allows us to understand the importance also not only of global trade but also intra-regional trade and how it's important for certain regions like Africa the the seeds the Caribbean for example Latin America and Asia to increase and accelerate the process of intra-regional trade because that will diversify their capacity to supply the food that they need to be able to respond to these type of shocks so basically will increase the resilience in the way they can procure food especially for important countries. Next I am going to to discuss the impacts of COVID-19 related to shocks including government containment measures and policy responses on the agri food trade and markets from the beginning of the pandemic to the present. So let me let me first study that while curving the circulation of the virus and lowering the pressure on health systems globally containment measures also had disruptive effects on the entire food value chain and the effects were not only on the supply side but especially on the demand side on the supply side restrictions on movement of people and people failing ill led to charges as in labor in agriculture processing and distribution disruptions in logistics in supply chains and trade and measure of the world these effects also exacerbated already existing crisis in the local crisis in East Africa. Now why is this so important because as you well know the export market is highly concentrated especially on the staple commodities so we need to put emphasis on understanding those key exporting countries and those key importing countries how they were evolving in terms of the logistical issues at the beginning of the pandemic and that's where we have to focus with real-time information because it helps us to alert governments and to try to release those constraints so that there was no scarcity of food at the beginning of the pandemic and that's a lesson learned that we are growing and improving as I mentioned before but the the effect that is going to go longer and it's not only staying was not only at the beginning like the logistical issues is the demand side effects and the demand side effects like two changes in consumption but in its July 2021 world economic outlook update the international monetary fund estimated that the concept contraction of the global economy growth in 2020 is minus 3.2 percent and this is exactly the consequence I was mentioning you restrict mobility you restrict capacity to move goods then you have a negative effect over your GDP growth there is a lot that we can learn now especially we are moving to more other ways as what we are observing today how we can keep key sectors of the economy moving while keeping the health protocol so that the economy is not affected because the end of this is that this will increase unemployment and an overall reduction in income results in reduction of purchasing power which may cause a consumption in consumption and that's what we observe we had because of COVID-19 and an increase in up to 161 million people moving more into undernourishment in 2020 which is a huge shock compared also to 130 or more people million people moving into extreme poverty so consumption patterns also change due to the closure of restaurants more consumption at home and increasing commerce deliverables but also the cost of the diet change and as a result of that that will affect and people will be moving to lower quality diets and those are the issues that we need to look at at the demand side so the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures taken to contain it have therefore triggered questions about the resilience of the global food system to such supply and demand jobs and that's where the more we can learn the better we can increase this resilience in the future now examining the impact on trade it is just to distinguish between the early part of the pandemic when market uncertainty was highest to the current period and the long-term trajectory in the left figure we see that during the first wave of the pandemic world import values declined considerably in April and May of 2020 when the first lockdowns were imposed worldwide however by mid 2020 import volumes recovered very quickly and also the number of trade flows quickly recovered around the pre-pandemic levels if we look at the right figure agriculture trading various products groups was affected differently during this crisis for example imports of staples such as cereals but also products considered to be important for a healthy diet such as fruits and vegetables were relatively less affected imports of other pro groups however the client significantly trading life animals was affected in the area due to the import restrictions imposed by many countries especially on life animals coming from highly affected regions fish trade was mainly affected through changes in demand caused for instance by the worldwide closure of restaurants and with more social life coming to a halt all the trade in cut flowers declined significantly throughout the period of lockdowns and this brings also one major consequence which was increasing transportation costs in the case of flowers which is a stream that normally they travel through airplanes they share the cost with the passengers that travel for tourism and for business when those flights were cancelled or stopped that create a huge problem but when even they were reopened as of today the level of flow is a lot lower and therefore the costs are so high right now another consequence of post is still we are feeling in terms of the vessel's transportation and it's not only because of this mobility but today is because of the recovery of some developed countries which is demanding more containers for example which is putting pressure on the containers which is also increasing the cost of transportation together of course with a current increase in oil prices that we are observing because as economies try to recover the oil prices will have more pressure because of more consumption of energy and that will affect what we consume today now despite the short-term disruptions agri-food systems in fact proved to be more resilient than other sectors of the economy and this is central in the case of agriculture overall between 2019 and 2020 agriculture exports rose by 51.8 billion dollars with expansion in exports by developing countries contributing to 40 percent of the global increase while there was significant contraction in agriculture exports during the first half of 2020 as I mentioned before there was a rapidly recovery in the second half of the year agricultural imports also rose by 47.2 billion with developing countries accounting for 83 percent of this increase so for 2021 agricultural trade is expected to continue expanding and depending on the pace of the economy recovery the manifold commodities that are more income elastic example features and beverages is expected to rebound and that will be of course related on how the transportation costs also low importantly the COVID-19 joke has not resulted in any significant change to the long-run trajectory in agricultural imports which has already slowed since 2011 prior to 2011 including the periods from 2000 to 2011 and 2005 to 2011 growth in the value of agricultural trade had reached double-digit rates while volumes grew to a more moderate pace since 2011 there has been a near cessation of growth in the value of agricultural imports and while there was a growth in import volumes this was smaller than the previous period so is it really important to understand this and that we need to reactivate even more the work we are doing in terms of increasing and accelerating the rate of growth of agricultural trade especially focusing on inter-regional trade now turning to the market situation for the specific commodities lower markets for cereals remain well supplied in the first part of 2020 and despite some downward revisions in production and forecast in recent months market prospects continue to remain far out that's why we were always saying that food availability was there the problem was of food access but for instance agricultural utilization trade are always similar to have been higher in 2019 to 2020 than in the previous years cereal production is expected to grow by 0.7% in 2021 and while the stock to use ratio for cereals in 2021 to 2022 stands at 28.1% which is down from 39% in 2020 to 2021 this is still a relatively comfortable supply level from a historical perspective which means that we have enough stocks that we can stabilize any potential chop commodities other than cereals have been more affected by the pandemic oil crops sugar meat dairy and fishery products have all been affected by declining or stagnating demand meat and fishery sectors were also affected by disruptions of production processes and restrictions on the movements of workers and fishing crews however rather the economic recovery is expected to improve demand for some sectors example fisheries and dairy products while meat trade is expected to stagnate and production of sugar is expected to decline for the third consecutive year reflecting this supply and demand dynamics food prices for several commodities have risen significantly relative to the pre-pandemic levels between January and May 2020 there was a drop in the food power food price index possibly related to the onset of the pandemic but between May 2020 and May 2021 that is since the end of the first wave of the pandemic and largely in parallel with a weakening of the US dollar the food price the power food price index registered consecutive increases for 12 months and remember here there are two effects the exchange rate effect but also the effect of bigger demand which has put some pressure in cereals and some reductions on supply because of climate issues in the last three months the food price index declined for two consecutive months in June and July 2021 but rebounded in agos led by a strong gains in sugar vegetable oils and cereal sub indices among the sub indices of the food of the FAO food price index the prices indices of the sugar and vegetable oils declined rapidly in the beginning of 2020 and recovered strongly in the second half of the year pricing for prices are among the medium run risks that can undermine the efforts to improve the food security situation in the context so it's important to understand what are the causes behind this and what we can do to be able to minimize those risks in the future and essentially what we observe is a result of this significant demand of big important countries but also a result that is still the supply side the trade surpluses that are being trade and the key exporting countries are still not as many as we would have wished and therefore we are not as resilient to chocks of weather in specific countries where our key producers and we need to find ways to keep increasing the supply side distribution across the world now let me turn to the forecast for economic recovery and implications of food security as a consequence of what we observe the latest edition of the state of food security and nutrition in the world the SOFI was launched in july this year and highlights some worrying trends that we need to look at with less than a decade to 2030 the world is not on track to ending world hunger and malnutrition and in the case of the world hunger we are moving in the wrong direction world hunger increased in 2020 under the shadow of the covid-19 pandemic and after remaining virtually unchanged for five years the prevalence of an announcement increased from 8.4 to 9.9 percent in just one year highlighting the challenge of achieving the zero hunger target by 2030 it is projected between 720 and 811 million and it's the first time we put a projection because there is still uncertainty people will be moving into phase hunger in 2020 considering the middle of the projection range 768 million and around 118 million more people were facing hunger in 2020 and 2019 if we go to the upper limit we're talking of 161 million people more that will go into undernourishment chronic undernourishment with respect to 2019 the economic slowdowns and downturns primarily impact food systems through the negative effects on people's access to food as i have been saying including the affordability of healthy diets as they lead to rises in employment and declines in wages and incomes as economic and other impacts of the covid-19 pandemic continue to unfold the trajectory over the next years is difficult to forecast however it is clear that the covid-19 pandemic has likely impacted the prevalence of multiple forms of nutrition and could have lasting effects beyond 2020 as we already are seeing 2021 the latest academic studies looking at the projections in all the different dimensions of nutrition show that we will be significantly deteriorating as a result of this so divergent recovery paths can create water income gaps across crumbies and here is where the program of inequities arrives lower incomes resulting reduction of potency power affecting access to food particularly affecting the affordability of healthy diets and this has significant repercussions of food insecurity in the world and what we have seen in covid-19 is that the recession and the shock and the incapacity of the poorest countries to be able to do the mechanisms and implementation to create a recovery like developed countries has exacerbated the differences and inequalities and this is even seen within countries and within regions the latest edition of the emf world economic outlook releasing July 2021 points to a growing divergency in economic recovery paths for developing versus developing countries the issue was mentioned in terms of inequities IMA forecasted the global economic growth in 2021 at 6% and changed from the April 2021 forecast and 4.9% in 2022 up 0.5% from the April 2021 although still uncertainty as all of you know depending on how things evolve on covid-19 and what we are observing with expansion of delta in the US and other regions being affected this forecast could be affected and revised later however underlying this forecast there is a widening gap between the advanced economies and many emerging markets and developing countries for instance while the IMF estimates the pandemic to have reduced per capita income in advanced economies by 2.8% per year between 2020 and 2022 relative to pre-pandemic years the per capita income loss for emerging markets and developing economies excluding China is 6.3% close to three times more among the main reasons for these divergent trends are differences in pandemic developments around the world close to 40% of the population in developed population in advanced economies has been fully vaccinated compared to 11% in emerging market economies and only 1.2% in developing countries another driver of the deepening divide is the divergences in policy support there are countries to be substantially fiscal support in advanced economies continues to be this and there is 4.6 trillion in unannounced support and our revisions for the global 2022 raw forecast reflect anticipated additional fiscal support in the US and EU on the other hand most measures in emerging markets and low-income developing countries expiring 2020 the G20 has done an effort through the consolidation and avoiding the repayment of the debts in 2020 but again there's the arts and alternatives that has been approved by the board of the IMF but still the magnitudes are completely different between what is happening in advanced economies and what is happening in developing economies and we also must understand that economies in the world are internal so what a developed economy does to reactivate their economy has a consequence and effects over developing countries like for example more pressure over the demand of food commodities more pressure over the demand of energy and that of course has had a correlate on prices which will affect more the important depending countries so crucially this economic slowdowns and downturns are into existing pressures and vulnerabilities in our food systems due to major drivers such as conflict climate but evident extremes these are major drivers are increasingly occurring simultaneously in countries with interactions that seriously undermine food security and nutrition in the world the pace of economic recovery also has implications of food imports changes in food imports this reflected the diverging responsiveness of import demand to changes in income and this differ across countries and commodities the provisional forecast for the world food import bill in 2021 points to a record level of US dollars 1.715 trillion that is an increase in 12 percent from 2020 higher import bills are the result of a strong upturn in the GDP growth as well as a higher unit cost reflecting both higher international prices and increasing freight rates as I mentioned before however it must be emphasized that these trends are not uniform across the regions and commodities developed regions are expected to import less food in 2020 compared to 2021 compared to 2020 but a greater cost higher prices and freight will be incorporated into that that's why the values are high by contrast developing countries are expected to purchase more food in all food categories this particularly driven by raising demand from cereals vegetable oils oil seeds and fruits and vegetable inputs with volumes accounted to for 60 percent for the predicted increase in their import bills however there is a high vulnerability in some countries where growing food import bills are dominated by increases in the unit cost of importing food example in these developed countries are expected to purchase similar volumes of food in 2021 compared to 2020 but at a higher cost in low income countries food deficit countries total volumes of imported food are predicted to register a significant deficit even though food import bills are expected to be high this also implies that in these countries the covid pandemic could be contributing to a shift in demand from high to low value products and likely to deterioration of the quality of diets and of course to the consequences of over nutrition and the non-communicable diseases that this brings as a consequence in many of these countries food import bills are barely covered by foreign exchange earnings from merchandise exports in normal times services exports such as tourism are able to compensate for low-produced proceeds from merchandise exports but this is not the case during the covid 19 living countries like Cabo Verde Maldives and South Omega principally particularly exposed seeds are one of the countries that has been the mostly exposed because the tourism goes down significantly remittances goes down and they are net food importing companies so they are really vulnerable to this and many African countries also has been exposed because of reduction tourism remittances but also because of the effect of international prices and the potential effects of the recession now let me talk about fallow's role and the work activities in the area of markets and trade and what we are trying to do in this process the covid 19 pandemic highlighted a key role played by fallow in markets and trade for instance fallow led advocacy efforts to help keep food supply chains alive as I initially mentioned and prevent our hook trade restrictions measures very early in the pandemic fallow led the effort to have a joint statement from the director general of the FAO WTO and WHO the fallow also made similar statements at the G20 agricultural ministers meeting as well as the world economic forum as well as in many other ministerial meetings often convened by the fallow with the african union with several ministers of course underlying this advocacy efforts is a solid market intelligence service and that's where Amis the agricultural market information system play a crucial role to reduce market uncertainty and promote policy coordination and views also the early warning system as I mentioned before help for this this was complemented by country and region-based consulate mechanisms we operationalize and activate all our regional offices we track all the policies being put in place we document this through a series of briefs that we put in our webpage to keep countries informed of the actions that countries were making and also to keep them informed of the availability of food that was there and also to keep them informed of the evolution of real-time prices there was a new tool that fallow launched to be able to give countries real-time information of what was going on in their own markets but at the same time we were able to launch the information on logistical issues especially on the mobility of the which was of crucial importance to bring information to countries and to work with them to help solve these problems finally a host of clinical notes and policy briefs were prepared which offered evidence-based policy advice and formed the basis of all our substantive dissemination efforts the immediate and ongoing response was complemented by a concerted effort through the COVID-19 response and recovery program that Dominique mentioned before this program consisted of seven thematic areas one of which is on trade and food safety standards compared to some other priority areas of the program such as the global humanitarian response plan the trade priority area has a medium-term objective of facilitating and accelerating food and agricultural trade during COVID-19 and beyond it aims for a sustained recovery path focusing on the following results first strengthen information systems and enhance market transparency second improve evidence-based decision-making and policy coordination at national and regional levels third to enhance regional cooperation to promote use of science based standards and mutual recognition and harmonization of food safety systems fourth to foster adoption of trade facilitation practices improving efficiency transparency in the application of SPS and administrative measures this is the same policy advice that we have been providing to countries as also mentioned in my last slide our objective through this program is to support countries in putting into action these policy priorities and how can play a crucial role in this look into the future FAO support on markets and trade will be informed by how it is discussed in the food system summit and its implementation will be guided by FAO strategic framework and we will play a crucial role in the follow-up after the summit on the food system summit it's important to mention that in the run up to the summit process and at the pre-summit the significance of trade for sustainable food systems was recognized and it was included within action track five on building resilience to vulnerabilities shocks and stress some of the proposed game-changing solutions focus on reducing disruptions to trade through greater transparency unlocking the potential of trade through trade facilitation and oriented policies of targeting production resilience and sustainability on our new strategic framework FAO has a new strategic framework which consists of four aspirations what we call the four betters better production better nutrition better environment and better life its accountability framework has been aligned to the 2030 agenda for sustainable development incorporating sg targets and indicators and guided particularly by sg1 for the reduction to hunger zero hunger and then reduction of inequality in this framework there is a dedicated program priority area what we call a ppa on transparent markets and trade which fits within the better nutrition aspiration because it's all our interlink and we want the ppa to focus on how we can increase access to healthy diets key thematic components of these trade ppa include the establishing market intelligence and early warning systems at country regional levels to collect analyze and disseminate market and trade data and information assisting countries in developing human capital institutional capacities for formulating negotiating and implementing multilateral and regional trade agreements supporting innovative policy and technical approaches and novel business models promoting and facilitating the integration of small-scale actors farmers but also fishermen and forest into the markets and value chains strengthen a multi-spay holder regional networks to advance regulatory cooperation on trade facilitation measures including on sanitary and phytosonic tariff related issues and finally to promote the adoption of information and communication technologies icts and digital solutions to simplify trade processes facilitate market integration and increase the potential for consumers and the small-scale actors to reap benefits from trade we are leading the international platform for digital food and agriculture which will also bring with all of our partners and stakeholders and members the best practices from where we can learn to accelerate this process the role of markets and trade is therefore strongly recognized for food system transformation as well as achieving FAO on aspirations and this will imply strengthening support by FAO in this area looking and supporting member countries to create a transformation that is needed The last part of my presentation is about the lessons learned the risk and the policy implications the pandemic has already highlighted several lessons and also exposed many risks as highlighted on this slide among the lessons learned that you can observe in the left side in the blue color market fundamentals were different compared to previous prices for instance compared to 207 to 8 for crisis the global stocks to use ratio for most commodities was substantially higher which allowed us to be better prepared for this crisis and food production prospects were positive at the beginning of 2020 trade restrictions some countries impose export restrictions to ensure sufficient domestic supplies but these were soon transformed into export quotas and ultimately lifted import restrictions mainly targeted life animals and fish most trade restrictions measures tend to be shortly and again it show the role and importance of the information system that we got in place but also allow us to work and understand where we still have gaps like in the logistical part and how to improve on it three facilitation practices because of social distances quarantine and travel restrictions many countries decided to streamline the trade related procedures including increase of use of digital solutions example that said the acceptance of electronic SPA certificates as well as establishing green corridors for experience release of essential goods join ministerial declarations many countries in different settings from the g20 to the african union from asian to epic issue ministerial declarations and commitments aimed at maintaining agricultural supply chains alive heads of international organizations also issued your statements urging countries to avoid using export restrictions measures and to ensure that trading food and agricultural products continue to be flow smoothly market transfer in was central availability of up to date data and information is imperative and we need to keep investing on this it has a huge value particularly in periods of crisis when panic driven reactions can aggravate trade disruptions market information systems such as agriculture market information system the anise and interagency platform launched by the g20 in 2011 and house at fao were extensively used to enhance food market transparency and promote the coordination of policy actions in terms of market uncertainty this is a great best practice that we need to keep supporting and we need to keep improving over time social protection policies investments in social protection systems as well as power instruments for strengthening people's access to nutrition food including during kovid-19 pandemic importantly social protection is more than short-term response to acute situations of food insecurity and nutrition when creative along well targeted and this is central well targeted social protection can support households to engage in new economic activities and to capitalize on opportunities created by continued economic dynamism of the food systems that we're bringing about the long term improvements in access to healthy diets we saw that social protection helped enormously to reduce the potential effects of our extreme poverty although extreme poverty in many regions of the world increase enormously social protection even helped to minimize those so it will have been even worse but one lesson learned also here is the importance of information because this type of job was not the typical job and not necessarily affected the same people it affected also other people in peri urban areas for example so having real-time information like the fees the food insecurity experiences scale that fao is collecting helped enormously to identify quickly where these social protection projects truly policies should also be targeting so are the resources that we're using to minimize to minimize the effects of these chocks could be optimal and be extremely effective and not wasted especially in times of restricted resources among the medium-term risks however and this is on the right side countries are still having difficulty in controlling the spread of COVID-19 due to emerging variants both developed and developing countries and this could lead to negative impacts on economic recovery linked to possible reintroduction of restrictions prolongment of unemployment and food access issues so slow and diverging parts of economic recovery are adding to the food access and food availability issues linked to climate change so we need to be very careful food prices as measured by the fao food price index have been rising for a year as I mentioned before and while the index fell two consecutive months in June and July it increased again in agos and this is linked to supply problem because of weather moreover food stocks today are not as high as they were at the beginning of the pandemic and that's something that we need to look very carefully because it's essential to assure bigger resilience but as well we need to keep in mind that COVID-19 is just the tip of the iceberg in fact the pandemic has exposed the vulnerabilities in our food systems as a result of major drivers such as conflict climate variability and extremes and economic slowns and downturns these are increasingly occurring simultaneously in countries seriously undermining food security and nutrition and when they complement shocks like conflict with recession or climate shocks with recession the situation gets even worse and that's what we need to try to meet as we mentioned before with less than a decade to achieve the 2030 the world is not on track and not on path to ending world hunger and nutrition and in the case of all hunger again we are moving in the wrong direction what we understood during this crisis is that once more that during economic downturns it is critical to keep food supply chains operational while providing adequate support to the livelihoods of the most vulnerable people ensuring continued production and access to nutritious food just if we look at the map of the world and the number of group of commodities that countries need to be able to achieve access to healthy diets the continents like sub-Saharan Africa South Asia are the ones that face the biggest challenge they have the lower number of food groups than they need to achieve this so trade today is essential and we need to use trade and we need to minimize barriers of trade we need to facilitate trade and we need to optimize internal trade there is no way with the photograph we have today that we will be able to achieve the 2030 your goal if we don't accelerate this process in the case of COVID-19 as the full economic and social impacts of the pandemic are still unfolding and as the disease is still spreading there could still be severe implications for access to food and longer-term chiefs in global demand and supply of food and agricultural community it is therefore of room as importance that the countries and international community as a whole continue supporting vulnerable groups in promoting access to food ensuring open markets and under interrupted trade flows and avoiding actions that can jeopardize the food security situation particularly developing countries depending on food imports now how can this be done different policies and actions can be considered countries can continue supporting the functioning of markets by further enhancing transparency and coordination particularly as we may face tightening pressures on commodity markets and rising prices it is imperative to refrain from ad hoc trade restriction measures they can address policy barriers for instance related to food safety including through widespread adoption of digital solutions in the application of SPS measures and on trade procedures regional markets offer a significant and top potential in this area we can accelerate in the regional trade and for that SPS is central and we need to use the state of their technologies for this in many countries boosting trade and accessing new markets also requires that significant investments are made in tracking the structural barriers to trade countries can therefore work to fix the physical constraints such as and develop marketing and trade infrastructure we need to come back to look at the value chain infrastructure and link them and link producers to dynamic markets we need institutional innovations to link small holders to markets including the standards that are needed to be able to move commodities finally countries need to keep providing support to promote access to nutritious foods including through safety net and enhanced social protection programs as mentioned before but well targeted programs where information is used to improve the targeting because the dynamics of the jobs are not always the same thank you very much and it was a pleasure to be with you today. Maximo thank you so much for such a comprehensive presentation I would say presenting us the the full picture on the impact of COVID-19 on on on trade as well as on the the various responses that have been developed and including the role of FAO in there so we have already I think somebody who has been asking for for the floor Peter Lunenbach so while we grade him to panace then give him the opportunity to talk I would like of course to remind everybody now that the the floor is open and and that we will basically take a couple of questions that you Maximo will be aiming to respond I believe some we may go back to the I mean if we have no time of if they are too technical we may also have the possibility to go back to some of the of the of the people for their I mean to provide them with additional information there are also a number of of comments that have been made in the in the in the chat in the Q&A actually which which are quite interesting and for example Maximo one from Martin Foller referring to the the fact that of course the the countries themselves have been doing their own data collection analysis and where he refers to the the FAO policy briefs and you and your team Maximo have been very active in producing so many of these briefs and it's I think good to see that they are that they are appreciated and that they are used by the by the countries so I would like now to give the floor to Peter and then we'll see how to how to come back to to your Maximo Peter Runenbark here at the floor sir thank you so much for giving me the floor and I would like to thank FAO and Mr Maximo for his for his PPT it is very useful and a rich presentation I'm Peter Runenbark I'm a senior program officer in the trade for development program here in Geneva at the south center so I just have a few mainly technical questions regarding the numbers that have been presented so so the first question is what is generally the correlation between the FAO food price index and the price of agricultural imports I mean if there is a one to one correlation or if it's time lags so so so can we see a correlation between the food price index and the price of agricultural imports staying within that there was a very interesting indicator presented with this food imports as a percentage of total magnetized exports as indicator and what is interesting is there any research which indicate at which level can a country be considered to be vulnerable I mean it's a 20 percent this is 50 percent if it's more than 100 percent or are we talking more about increase in this indicator so is it about the absolute number of that indicator or it's more about the increase in that indicator then the third question is about ending stocks what I found interesting is that the ending stocks have been at a flat level just below 850 million tons during the last few years is there any estimates or estimates of the share between private and public health stocks as you know public stock holding has been you know very contested issue here in Geneva but it's very interesting to know whether there is a estimate or estimate how much of this 80 850 is actually public and how much is private and lastly could you tell more about FAO research on the provision of agricultural subsidies during or on account of COVID-19 I mean there is a whole process in WTO to increase an ad hoc process to increase transparency on this kind of subsidies and it appears that several members actually have increased significantly their subsidies on account or during this this pandemic time so these are four questions so thank you for for giving me the floor and for this discussion thank you so much okay thank you very much Peter I don't see any other and raised but of course the the question of Peter Maximo covers a number of aspects including I think the two issues that have been raised also in the in the Q&A on on the domestic stock and also on domestic support program so Maximo do you want to come yes sure no no problem let me let me go can you hear me yes please Maximo go ahead okay so let me go first through the questions in the chat and then I can go to the questions of Peter okay so first a Martin follower completely agree there has been enormous amounts of efforts or many countries to improve the data that they collect we try to accelerate the process as soon as the pandemic started so that we can bring technical evidence and also because we have offices in 190 countries which allow us to collect local information and see what policies were put in place so but at the same time we did technical work to try to show what were the potential impacts so we thought that combination will be important but one of the topics as I mentioned in my presentation that was central and where many that we couldn't find that level of information at the beginning was the logistical part which in the case of this chalk was central the mobility of vessels the blockages of ports the blockages of roads especially in key exporting countries so that's something that we learned and we keep improving regarding the question of an anonymous attendee on the perceive of public stop holding and this is linked to one of the questions of Peter so what we know today is the absolute level of stocks and stocks to use ratio it's very complex as you will know Peter today compose what is private and what is public because it's still I mean have not been able to separate and to identify the level of private stocks now what we know on the other hand which is something to to open eyes is that the biggest increase in the stocks has been because of China that means that one country explains a significant amount of the increase in the stocks in the last years and that's also opens concern on vulnerability you know so although stocks have been rising and although now there is there is that they are stabilized the biggest share of the increase was because of one country and that's something that we need to explore now in countries like China it's impossible to know what is private and what is public because of the way they store and the mechanisms they have in place the similar applies to other countries but we're still doing efforts to try to link with the private sector and try to understand that of course you can understand through analysis what should be the level of stocks for a level of prices that you're observing and for a level of mobility of goods but that's not enough no we need to have more information on that and that's what we are what we are working then there was a question for Facundo Cabo could you elaborate further on the consequences of domestic support programs opted during the COVID-19 and I think that was also linked to your subsidies questions to agriculture that you did so we are tracking this we are tracking the changes we just finished a report on on subsidies to agriculture and repurposing of subsidies together with other UN agencies the problem here is which are these which are subsidies and and support mechanisms which are distorted to markets it's important to understand which are creating distortions and how we can face them out because those are the problems those are good that goes against the market flowing goes against rate and that's the whole role and what we have seen is that there is a significant area or a space to repurpose those subsidies now the complexity is how you repurpose them not how you move subsidies which are distorted and face them out by showing and bringing evidence that they are distorted and repurposed into activities which could be more creating better benefits like research and development agriculture why is problematic because of the time dimension as I mentioned before some of the policies put by countries was to support the local consumers and if they are temporal that should be okay because they are solving a bigger problem which is local consumption but if they remain over time that's when the distortion becomes problematic and that's why we need to find ways and bring evidence to show that that shouldn't be the case and what we can do to improve over that in terms of the real correlation between the fall food price index it's important to understand the composition of the fall food price index and we can show you the details on that it's in the web page it's open but it's important to understand because not necessarily you will expect a correlation one to one because you're not capturing one commodity you're capturing baskets of commodities and build indexes based on that but for sure there is a correlation between it which explains why some cases the import bills has increased because of an increase in the prices of those commodities but we don't only track the fall food price index we also try individual commodity price indices which help us to understand better what is going on and we are also tracking very closely volatility and excessive volatility which also helps enormously because it's not an only an issue of prices going up the issue is also when you have excessive volatility means extreme values of volatility like low probability of occurrence five percent of probability in those cases this really affect the market because it's not just an issue of liquidity it's an issue that makes a loss doesn't allow farmers to make optimal decisions because they don't know where the price will go they have a very low probability of certain and that's what we also need to track very close in terms of the food imports uh index that you refer to these are absolute values okay and what we and they are not done to measure a threshold of when we are more vulnerable not what we're doing for that is we have developed as a result of the sofa that will be published in October the state of food and agriculture we have developed a resilience index for indicators of resilience to try to capture how and what are the thresholds where your resilience is going the two indicators one of them is looking at capacity to be able to improve or import or have the availability of production that you need to satisfy the needs of your population and that includes of course capacity to produce locally and capacity to export and the other one is looking at the capacity to be able to have access to what is needed for healthy diets which also includes imports exports of course and production those indices are telling us and and we can we will share it so how vulnerable you are and what level of resilience you have and that's where the policies were needed to improve we also have another index that looked at transportation and a transportation network to try to understand the logistical part which now we come to know how important it is and the last index the fourth part is looking at what will happen if there is an economic shock and a recession and how much buffer that economy has to be able to react to that and that is linked to the social cash transfer programs that I was mentioned before because again tell us how much you are ready to be able to cope with that with that with that risk so I stop there don't mix okay thank you very much Maximo I don't see any other person participant asking for the floor so I think perhaps we can leave it there therefore for for today and we will make sure indeed that everybody gets the the material we'll share with all registered participants the the PowerPoint presentation the the the the PowerPoint is also the the meeting itself is of course also being recorded so you will have the opportunity to to to see it but before concluding I would like to say that of course we are committed to have these FAO Geneva agricultural trade talks continuing and we'd like therefore to invite you to to send us here in our office in Geneva all suggestions you may have in an interest you may have in terms of of future discussions I think that a lot of them will will revolve around the the policy briefs there are more policy briefs that are being prepared including a number of them in relation to the forthcoming MC 12 they are and and I think these can trigger very useful information there is also a huge volume of information that is gathered by Maximo and his team in that quarter and that will indeed feed into these these conversations so with that I would like again to thank first of all Maximo and his team for participating in in today conversation and and you all participants for for attending and making this as a as a rich event so with that I would like to conclude thank you very much and have a great rest of the day thank you thank you bye