Dr. Lindsay Jaacks, Assistant Professor, Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health along with Dr. Ananya Awasthi, Assistant Director, India Research Center of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in an indepth conversation on the interaction between agriculture, nutrition and health.
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NewsTranscript
00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - Hello and welcome to this edition
00:07 of Outlook Portion special series
00:09 on nutrition and the pandemic.
00:10 Our special guests today are Dr. Lindsay Jax
00:15 and Dr. Anand Mehawasthi.
00:17 Dr. Jax has a dual appointment
00:19 at the Department of Global Health and Population
00:21 at the Harvard P.H. Chan School of Public Health
00:23 and the University of Edinburgh
00:25 as a Chancellor's Fellow
00:27 in the Global Academy of Agriculture and Food Security.
00:30 Our current research projects
00:32 broadly aim to advance understanding
00:34 of the nexus between agriculture and nutrition and health.
00:38 Our research also involves improving
00:39 the measurement of food environments
00:41 and liberating citizen science for public health.
00:43 Now, if that sounds like a mouthful,
00:46 I'm sure there's a lot more that I could add,
00:48 but I'll leave it at that.
00:50 Dr. Mehawasthi, who's been with us before,
00:53 thank you so much for joining us.
00:54 Dr. Mehawasthi is Assistant Director
00:56 at Harvard Global Research Support Center India
00:59 and the Harvard P.H. Chan School of Public Health
01:02 India Research Center.
01:04 She works at the intersection of government,
01:06 non-governmental organizations and academic institutions
01:08 to support the development of public health programming.
01:12 She's an experienced global health research,
01:14 management, consulting, and policy analysis
01:17 for public-led initiatives
01:19 in low and middle-income countries.
01:21 Thank you so much for joining us, the two of you.
01:24 I'm just here to sort of introduce the two of you.
01:26 Dr. Mehawasthi will now take over
01:28 and she will ask questions to Dr. Jacks.
01:31 I'll probably come back at the end.
01:33 Over to the two of you.
01:34 All the best, thank you.
01:35 - Thank you very much, Mr. Sen Gupta
01:39 and the Outlook Group
01:41 for putting together this important session
01:43 and a very warm welcome to Professor Lindsay Jacks,
01:46 my supervisor and mentor for the potion projects
01:49 at the Harvard India Research Center
01:51 and who's also a very dear friend.
01:54 So here goes my first question to you, Professor Jacks.
01:57 As you know, nutrition, health, and agriculture
02:00 are among the sectors which have taken a bad hit
02:03 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
02:05 As someone who works at the intersection
02:08 of these three subjects,
02:10 how serious is the problem globally
02:12 and what are the short and the long-term implications
02:15 on global food systems
02:17 and whether you would like to throw some light
02:19 on any specific implications for India?
02:22 - Yeah, such an important topic.
02:26 So I think there are really three things
02:28 that immediately come to mind
02:30 when I think about this in the context of COVID.
02:33 The first is that we know obesity
02:37 is the single most important risk factor
02:39 after age for getting COVID and dying from it.
02:43 And I think that that point is often overlooked
02:46 in the context of a lot of low and middle income countries,
02:49 even though we know that the obesity pandemic
02:51 has been a big issue in all countries around the world,
02:55 from the US and UK to India.
02:58 So just really all countries are impacted by this.
03:02 So I think it's important to keep that in mind.
03:05 And I think that this should really be a wake-up call
03:08 to governments all around the world
03:10 that they really need to get tough on industries
03:13 that are causing the obesity epidemic.
03:15 So I think that that link between obesity and COVID
03:18 is going to be a major driver of shifts
03:21 that we're gonna see in global food systems moving forward.
03:25 The second thing that comes to mind
03:27 is that the pandemic really highlighted the fact
03:30 that most food insecurity around the world,
03:33 including in India,
03:35 is not because of a shortage of food production.
03:38 India has been for many years now
03:41 actually producing enough food to feed its population
03:44 and there's even a surplus in production.
03:46 It's been a huge win for agricultural science in India
03:50 that this has occurred.
03:52 So it's not an issue of food production.
03:55 It's more of an issue of access.
03:58 And by access, I mean both physical and economic.
04:01 So can people physically get to markets to purchase food,
04:06 which we saw had major impact on that as a result of COVID,
04:10 and also can people economically afford to buy food
04:15 when they get to that market?
04:16 So I think that this pandemic has highlighted
04:20 that if we're gonna address food insecurity,
04:22 we can't just focus on agriculture.
04:25 We have to focus on the full food system,
04:28 not just increasing production,
04:30 'cause we're doing a really good job
04:31 with increasing production.
04:33 It's a matter of getting that food to people who need it.
04:36 And then the third and final thing
04:39 I think I wanna point out
04:40 is that the pandemic has shed a really bright light
04:43 on One Health.
04:45 Currently, most of the agriculture
04:47 and nutrition health sector is really focused on crops,
04:50 including my own work.
04:51 It's very much focused on crops and crop diversity
04:55 and the nutritional quality of crops.
04:57 But the livestock sector
04:58 is obviously going to be really important,
05:00 particularly dairy and poultry,
05:02 when we think about achieving nutritional goals
05:04 moving forward.
05:06 But you'd be surprised actually
05:07 by how little consideration is given
05:10 to transmission of infections from animals to humans
05:13 in programs that introduce livestock
05:16 in order to promote nutrition.
05:18 So I think that as we move forward
05:20 with more programming in the agriculture
05:23 and livestock sector to promote nutrition,
05:26 we really need to get veterinary medicine on board
05:29 because 70 to 75% of all new infections that are emerging,
05:33 COVID being among those, are coming from animals.
05:37 So as we start to promote more nutrient-dense dairy products,
05:42 for example, we need to keep in mind
05:45 this zoonotic spread of disease
05:48 and One Health approaches
05:50 to agriculture, nutrition and health.
05:52 - Thank you, Dr. Jacks.
05:55 Let me ask you a flip question.
05:57 Alternatively, do you think that COVID-19 pandemic
06:01 has probably forced the global food systems
06:05 increasingly rely more and more on local
06:08 and traditional food crops,
06:09 or is it probably shorter supply chain
06:12 in agri-food systems that are more resilient
06:15 to global supply shocks?
06:17 - Yeah, yeah.
06:18 I think there's a lot of evidence to support
06:20 that those shorter supply chains
06:22 are a lot more resilient to these global shocks like COVID,
06:26 but also other global shocks, for example,
06:29 political unrest and more that we've seen
06:32 in some places in Sub-Saharan Africa and Middle East.
06:36 So yeah, definitely shorter supply chains
06:38 are more resilient.
06:40 I think that the big issue there
06:42 is that there's also a lot of evidence
06:45 that those short supply chains
06:47 can't meet all consumer nutritional needs
06:49 in all parts of the world,
06:51 and let alone food preferences.
06:54 So if you think about certain parts of India, for example,
06:58 you're not gonna see a ton of food production.
07:01 There's a reason that Punjab is the breadbasket of India.
07:05 It's because it's a great place to grow food.
07:08 And if you think about a place like Mumbai,
07:11 which is home to almost 20 million people,
07:13 you're not gonna be able to feed 20 million people
07:15 within a hundred kilometer radius of Mumbai.
07:18 So I definitely think that these shorter supply chains
07:21 are critical.
07:23 I don't think that they necessarily need
07:25 to be immediately local.
07:28 I think we need to think about regional,
07:30 domestic food chains, national food chains as well,
07:35 less reliance potentially on imported foods, for example,
07:40 could be something to consider.
07:42 So I definitely think that local and shorter supply chains
07:45 are part of the solution.
07:46 I don't think they're the whole part,
07:48 and we need to kind of have a mixed bag solution
07:53 to improving resilience in food supply chains.
07:56 - That's very informative.
07:58 Moving from probably, back from global, back to local,
08:02 and then probably regional supply chain.
08:05 - Exactly.
08:06 - Right.
08:07 Coming to health and nutrition,
08:10 for the audience, would you like to share
08:12 some of the evidence-based interventions
08:15 that can be implemented in the South Asian context
08:18 to ensure that everybody receives the proper amount
08:21 of nourishment, portion, at both ends of the spectrum,
08:25 between not having enough, really having too much?
08:29 - Yeah.
08:31 So this is definitely an area of great interest,
08:36 both from a policy perspective, I think,
08:38 and also from a researcher perspective.
08:41 So much of the work so far, and many of the interventions
08:45 to date have been focusing on increasing the diversity
08:48 of crops that are grown, because there is some evidence,
08:51 including from programs in India,
08:53 that if you increase the diversity of foods
08:56 that a farmer grows, the food diversity will also go up,
09:00 diet diversity will also go up in those communities.
09:03 Because agriculture is such a big part of,
09:07 big employer in India, almost half of the population
09:10 is engaged in the agricultural sector,
09:13 I do think that these types of programs
09:16 are worth implementing and evaluating
09:19 to understand the impact of these things at scale.
09:22 A lot of the work that's been done so far
09:24 has been kind of small-scale projects,
09:27 so I'm really excited about some of the work
09:29 that's going on at the ministry in terms of trying
09:32 to implement this crop diversification
09:36 at a more regional level.
09:37 I'm kind of going back to that regional food system
09:40 as being key here.
09:41 So I think that the crop diversification
09:45 is definitely a key intervention
09:47 that we should continue to explore.
09:50 And I think it's important to keep in mind
09:53 this very interesting paradox that most of the people
09:56 who are undernourished in India are the people
09:59 who are growing food, they're rural farmers.
10:02 And so there's this question that I often ask myself,
10:06 why are people who are growing food
10:08 the least nourished people in India
10:11 and really all around the world?
10:13 And I think it really gets back to this question of access.
10:17 Again, with COVID, it wasn't about production,
10:20 it was about access to food.
10:23 And I think it's the same case here.
10:24 So I don't think that just diversifying crops
10:28 without creating, for example, market linkages
10:32 is going to work.
10:32 So these things have to go hand in hand,
10:35 not only diversifying the crops that are grown,
10:38 but also making sure that those farmers
10:40 are linked to local and regional markets
10:44 so that they can have more physical
10:46 and economic access to diverse diets.
10:50 So those I think are some of the key interventions.
10:54 On the other side, I think we absolutely as a priority
10:58 need to halt this shift towards processed foods in India
11:02 and really all around the world.
11:04 But those of us in the UK and US,
11:06 we've already shifted to a very processed diet.
11:10 So we've got a lot of backtracking to do.
11:13 India, if you could just be ahead of the curve here
11:17 and stop that shift to processed foods
11:19 and emphasize whole foods,
11:21 more traditional Indian foods instead,
11:23 I think that that would be a big win,
11:26 not only for undernourishment, but also for obesity,
11:30 which again is one of the biggest risk factors for COVID.
11:34 I think things like fruits and nuts,
11:36 they need to be staple foods,
11:37 not just the special occasion foods
11:40 that are prohibitively expensive for most people in India.
11:43 Fruits and nuts should be part of everyone's diet.
11:46 They're part of traditional Indian diets
11:48 and they could be promoted.
11:50 Same thing with millet, sorghum, brown rice.
11:53 These things should all be cheaper than polished white rice,
11:56 but I have a folder of all of these pictures
11:59 I've taken throughout all of India
12:01 that show that those products are much more expensive.
12:05 The white rice is way cheaper.
12:07 You see them on the shelf in any retail store in India.
12:11 And the brown rice and the millet and sorghum
12:13 are always more expensive.
12:15 So we've got to fix that.
12:18 We've got to make these nutrient-dense foods affordable
12:22 and available to everyone throughout India
12:24 and just part of the diet
12:27 instead of things like sugary drinks, cold drinks.
12:31 Those things are available everywhere.
12:33 You can get a cold drink anywhere,
12:34 but you can't get nuts anywhere.
12:36 So can we think about ways to flip that,
12:39 make nuts available everywhere,
12:41 make sugary drinks the sometimes food
12:43 that's only consumed on special occasions?
12:47 - Right.
12:48 Since you already spoke about crop diversity
12:50 to dietary diversity and especially the paradox
12:53 about where we could probably look at market linkages
12:57 for farmers.
12:59 So I think my next question pretty much naturally
13:01 falls into this being that in a world over,
13:05 as you know, government are realizing the importance
13:08 of convergence between agriculture and nutrition.
13:12 In this light, could you tell us a bit more
13:15 about some of the strategies
13:17 that are already being deployed globally or even in India?
13:22 - Yeah, so this kind of takes us to the project
13:25 that we're working on, this Potion Atlas Project.
13:29 I think that this is,
13:31 it's certainly not the first project
13:33 to work on convergence.
13:36 MS Waminathan's group has been working on this
13:39 and I can talk a little bit about that project
13:42 that they've been doing shortly.
13:43 But I think the thing about Potion Atlas Project,
13:45 which is trying to create a data portal
13:49 that brings together all the agriculture data,
13:52 all of the diet and nutrition data together in one place,
13:56 is that that will show to everyone who accesses that portal
14:01 that these things go together.
14:04 Why would we talk about agriculture and agriculture policy
14:09 without also considering
14:11 the nutritional consequences of that?
14:14 And so I'm really excited about that project
14:15 because it's going to kind of make the default
14:19 to consider nutrition and agriculture,
14:22 in agriculture and nutrition policy.
14:25 So glad that that's moving forward.
14:27 But prior to that, as I mentioned,
14:31 there have been some programs
14:32 on farm systems for nutrition,
14:34 for example, by the MS Waminathan Association,
14:38 where they're really trying to mainstream,
14:40 including nutritional criteria,
14:42 in the selection of crops
14:44 that are farmed by farmers all across India.
14:48 And they have done a study
14:49 where they promoted cultivation of millets,
14:52 like I mentioned previously,
14:54 millets and pulses,
14:56 kitchen gardens where you're growing fruits and vegetables
14:59 that are adapted to local environments,
15:02 increasing access to poultry,
15:04 nutritional awareness.
15:06 So they kind of implemented
15:08 all of these different nutrition-sensitive interventions
15:12 in around a thousand households in India,
15:15 and they followed them up over three years.
15:18 And they found that those interventions
15:20 improved household consumption
15:22 so that most people were consuming
15:24 recommended allowance of all food groups,
15:26 and also had improvements in diet diversity.
15:29 So that really, projects like that,
15:31 I think really demonstrate
15:32 that if you focus on the production side,
15:36 you can actually see impacts on the consumption side too.
15:40 So those types of things I think are really promising
15:43 and are going to be taken up
15:46 at much larger scale moving forward.
15:48 So I actually think India,
15:49 you know, you asked about governments in other places
15:53 and how they're working on this.
15:56 India, I would say, is at the cutting edge of this.
15:58 They are the leader in this area.
16:01 There are other governments
16:03 talking about the links between agriculture and nutrition,
16:07 but none are doing anything
16:08 in a real meaningful sort of way.
16:11 You know, for example, the UK,
16:14 there's been a lot of talk
16:15 about a recent agriculture bill here related to Brexit,
16:20 and very, very little talk about nutrition.
16:24 In fact, in all of the coverage
16:26 that I read about this agriculture bill,
16:28 nutrition is not part of it.
16:30 Food safety is a big part of it,
16:32 and that is of great import,
16:34 but nutrition is not a major outcome
16:36 that people are interested about,
16:38 even though obviously what's produced here
16:41 and what's imported here has an impact on obesity rates,
16:44 which is our major nutritional concern here.
16:47 So I think India actually,
16:49 you know, we're all going to be looking to India,
16:53 for examples of agriculture nutrition policy convergence,
16:56 because that's just where most of the work right now
17:00 is being done.
17:01 - Right.
17:03 So coming to your work in India and animal farming,
17:07 what has been your experience working on initiatives
17:11 related to zero budget natural farming in India?
17:15 - Yeah, so not only are people going to look to India
17:20 for agriculture nutrition convergence,
17:22 but also for sustainable farming.
17:24 So India is really a hotspot
17:31 for adoption at scale of sustainable farming practices.
17:36 And so people in the EU, UK, US,
17:40 we're all looking to India to see what the impact
17:43 of ZBNF will be,
17:47 and other large scale sustainable farming practices.
17:51 You know, ZBNF in Andhra Pradesh
17:54 is just one of a handful of big programs,
17:58 and several other states
17:59 are also considering adopting ZBNF.
18:02 So it's definitely a widespread shift in Indian agriculture
18:07 to these more sustainable approaches.
18:11 And I think the early results, you know,
18:14 it's still in the early stages of implementation,
18:19 but the early results of small scale kind of plot level,
18:24 just looking at, you know, specific farmer plots,
18:28 experiments comparing ZBNF to conventional farming
18:32 in Andhra Pradesh show a lot of promise.
18:35 So they're showing equal yields,
18:38 so not a big yield gap,
18:40 and also much higher farmer income,
18:43 which you would expect, of course,
18:44 if you don't see a drop in your yield,
18:46 and you're not paying for these chemical inputs,
18:49 you're going to see a big boost in farmer income,
18:52 which is a government priority.
18:54 So it's definitely very promising.
18:58 I think the one thing to keep in mind,
19:00 again, early stages,
19:02 there was one modeling study
19:04 that was published in Nature Sustainability,
19:06 which is one of the top academic journals
19:09 by a group of researchers actually here in Scotland
19:14 at the University of Aberdeen.
19:16 As I said, a lot of people are looking to India
19:19 as an example for this.
19:21 So what they did was a modeling study
19:24 to kind of model what the impacts
19:27 of this particular approach, ZBNF,
19:31 will be in terms of soil nitrogen content.
19:35 And what they found is that ZBNF for farmers
19:39 who are currently low input farmers,
19:42 so farmers who are not putting a lot of chemical inputs
19:45 into their farms right now,
19:48 ZBNF will probably actually improve their yield.
19:52 They'll have less soil degradation,
19:55 soil health will go up,
19:56 they'll get yield benefits.
19:59 However, if you're a high input system,
20:02 which is a lot of farming in places like Punjab,
20:05 for example, but also large farms in Andhra Pradesh,
20:09 if you're already putting in high inputs
20:12 in terms of chemical fertilizer,
20:14 you may actually see some yield penalties.
20:16 So it'll be a mixed bag.
20:18 And so we'll have to keep an eye on it
20:20 to see what the net effect of all farmers,
20:25 both low input and high input farmers,
20:27 is in Andhra Pradesh.
20:29 So I think we need to continue to keep an eye on this,
20:31 but overall, I think there's a lot of promise in that.
20:36 And in terms of our own work,
20:39 beyond yield and income,
20:41 which have really been the outcomes
20:42 that have been studied so far,
20:44 as you know, I'm a public health person.
20:46 So my primary interest is in health,
20:50 and for a lot of farmers also,
20:52 when you interview farmers who have adopted ZBNF
20:55 and ask them, why did you adopt it
20:57 and what have been the effects?
20:59 One of the things that comes up actually quite often
21:01 when you talk to farmers is health.
21:03 So I also think of health as a farmer-centric outcome.
21:08 Farmers don't just care about their bottom line,
21:11 they also care about their health
21:12 and the health of their families.
21:14 So we're setting up a study, a natural experiment,
21:18 to look at the both medium
21:22 and long-term health effects of ZBNF.
21:24 So we're particularly interested in things
21:28 like respiratory health function, metabolic function.
21:33 There's some evidence that pesticides are linked
21:35 to diabetes and chronic kidney disease.
21:38 And in kids, we're also interested
21:41 in looking at cognitive development.
21:43 Some of the pesticides,
21:44 particularly the organophosphates,
21:46 have been linked to impairments in cognitive development.
21:51 So we'll be looking at kind of a widespread
21:53 of these health impacts to see if the ZBNF program,
21:58 by reducing pesticide exposures,
22:00 can actually have important impacts
22:02 on public health outcomes.
22:05 So stay tuned for that.
22:06 It's going to take time to see health benefits
22:09 of something like this.
22:10 We currently have a four-year grant to look at,
22:13 you know, four-year health outcomes,
22:15 and hopefully we'll get a second tranche of funding
22:18 to look at 10-year outcomes down the road,
22:21 because these things will take some time to see,
22:24 as did, you know, the adverse health effects
22:27 of conventional farming and high inputs in pesticides.
22:31 It's taken years to kind of develop the chronic diseases
22:36 that have resulted from those systems.
22:38 And so, similarly, it will take some time
22:41 to see the health benefits of reducing exposure.
22:44 - Okay.
22:45 Since, Lindsay, you already spoke about
22:48 interviewing farmers,
22:50 we know that you conducted telephonic surveys
22:53 with thousands of farmers during the COVID-19 lockdown.
22:56 Would you like to share some of the key takeaways?
23:00 What were the challenges or even the opportunities
23:04 that your research really shows?
23:07 - Yeah, so as you said, we did this study
23:11 really out of concern early on in the pandemic.
23:15 Our first round of surveys was back in May,
23:17 so several months ago,
23:19 and we followed the farmers over time
23:22 so we can see longitudinal effects.
23:24 And it was really driven by early news coverage
23:27 that kind of was covering farmers, you know, dumping milk
23:31 'cause they couldn't get it to, you know, cities
23:34 and all this, you know, vegetables rotting in the field
23:37 and things like that.
23:38 So we were, in the early stages,
23:41 really concerned about agriculture production in India.
23:46 We were concerned that, for example,
23:48 for the monsoon season that just happened,
23:51 you know, farmers were not selling their crops
23:53 from the previous season.
23:55 They weren't gonna have the funds to put seeds in the ground
23:58 for this, you know, monsoon season,
24:00 and that would have long-term implications for food security.
24:04 So that was really the underlying, you know,
24:06 driving concern for doing this study.
24:09 And I will say that we sighed,
24:12 we had a sigh of relief, actually,
24:15 after doing the survey because we found that,
24:20 as I mentioned before,
24:21 there weren't really major disruptions
24:23 in putting seeds in the ground,
24:25 which would have been really bad for next year,
24:29 for the end of this year and for next year.
24:32 The biggest disruptions were really early on
24:35 when the lockdown first happened,
24:37 and there were major restrictions on transport,
24:41 so things couldn't get to the market.
24:43 People lost their wages,
24:44 and so demand bottomed out in cities.
24:47 And so, you know, it was really those kinds of disruptions
24:51 that caused the greatest impact early on.
24:54 And then for the subsequent season,
24:57 there weren't as many disruptions.
24:58 So, you know, everything proceeded as we might have expected
25:03 without major significant disruptions,
25:05 at least in our sample for the monsoon season.
25:09 So that was very, you know, good news.
25:12 I think another, you know,
25:15 just to share a little bit more good news,
25:18 which we're all a little desperate for these days,
25:21 another interesting finding of that study
25:23 was that when we looked at farmers in our study
25:27 who mostly lived in rural areas,
25:30 we found actually less evidence of major food insecurity,
25:34 you know, severe food insecurity,
25:36 which is skipping meals or going a whole day without eating,
25:40 so going to bed hungry.
25:42 We didn't find as high of a level of that
25:45 in this particular sample
25:47 as compared to studies that, at that time,
25:50 were reporting major food insecurity,
25:53 especially among migrant workers in cities.
25:56 So we found that these farmers in rural areas
25:58 were a bit more resilient,
26:00 and that goes back actually to the first point
26:02 that you made about these local food systems
26:05 being more resilient.
26:06 So part of the reason that these farmers
26:09 reported reduced food insecurity
26:11 is that they were consuming the harvest
26:13 that they couldn't get to the market,
26:15 and they were also sharing it with community members
26:18 so that community members
26:19 also didn't have as much food insecurity.
26:23 We also found that a lot of the farmers
26:26 reported receiving extra food rations from the government.
26:28 So PDS and additional measures to address food insecurity
26:33 were also working in these areas.
26:36 So overall, I would say that the results
26:39 were not as worrying as we would have expected.
26:44 We are seeing some impacts
26:47 in more vulnerable groups in our sample.
26:49 So for example, landless farmers
26:51 were 10 times more likely to skip a meal
26:53 compared to medium and large farmers.
26:56 So the vulnerable groups
26:58 definitely continue to be vulnerable,
27:01 and we need to continue to reach those people
27:04 with emergency food rations and other support measures.
27:09 But overall in our sample,
27:11 not as bad of an impact as we had expected,
27:15 and it was definitely the migrant workers in cities
27:18 who seemed to have the biggest impact
27:21 in terms of food insecurity
27:23 immediately following the pandemic response measures.
27:27 - Right.
27:28 So as you said,
27:29 we're all looking for some good news these days.
27:32 And it's no surprise that the agriculture sector,
27:35 in fact, sort of outperformed the expectations
27:40 that people had.
27:42 And that says a lot about how important agriculture is
27:47 as a sector, not just for the economy,
27:49 but for livelihoods and public health and nutrition.
27:52 Coming to the Nobel Prize,
27:55 which has of course been awarded to the World Food Program,
27:59 what do you think it says about the global policy focus
28:03 on food and nutrition security?
28:05 What are your thoughts?
28:07 - Yeah.
28:07 Well, I'll say that I was, well, very relieved
28:12 and also so excited that the award went to WFP.
28:17 I think it really suggests that there's a global shift
28:20 going on in terms of pandemic response.
28:23 So with any pandemic, the immediate response is,
28:27 we've got to get this, the infectious disease
28:31 and the spread of this disease under control.
28:33 And then at some point you've got to shift
28:35 to all the other stuff that happens as a result,
28:39 the economic and social consequences especially.
28:42 And so I think it demonstrates that we as a global community
28:46 are shifting in that direction.
28:48 We're realizing that there are going to be major impacts,
28:53 particularly of the economic crisis
28:55 that's resulted from the pandemic on food security.
29:00 So World Food Program published a report earlier this year
29:04 that was actually their annual report for last year.
29:09 And in 2019, last year,
29:11 before any of us had even heard of COVID,
29:14 actually food insecurity was already starting
29:16 to have an uptick.
29:18 And most of that was because of political unrest
29:22 in Middle East and in Sub-Saharan Africa,
29:25 but it was already starting to take upwards.
29:27 And some of that was also related to climate change.
29:30 But they predicted that as a result of the economic crisis
29:34 and supply chain disruptions associated with COVID,
29:37 that number was gonna double.
29:39 So a quarter of a billion people are estimated
29:42 to be food insecure by the end of this year,
29:44 according to WFP.
29:46 And so I think that this Nobel Prize
29:49 was really recognizing that we've got our work cut out
29:54 for us over the next couple of years to build back
29:58 and World Food Program will have to be a big part of that.
30:01 I mean, they're currently only serving
30:04 just under a hundred million people.
30:06 And so if they're gonna have to triple the number of people
30:10 that they are serving, I really hope the Nobel Prize
30:13 will get more financial backing for World Food Program,
30:18 but also other UN agencies who are going to have to work on
30:21 addressing the social and economic effects of this crisis.
30:26 So really big win, I think, super exciting.
30:29 And I hope it does lead to more resources for them
30:33 to do the work that we're gonna have to do
30:37 to feed more people moving forward.
30:41 - On that note, thanks for sharing these deep insights.
30:44 And I would say, very easy to understand language.
30:48 I mean, public health and knowledge translation
30:51 is a big part of what public health practitioners do.
30:55 So thank you so much and over to you Ram.
30:58 - Thank you.
30:59 In fact, I'll have to take lessons from you Dr. Ravasthi
31:02 on how to conduct an interview within that stipulated time.
31:05 We really need to do that.
31:07 And thank you so very much Dr. Jacks for joining us today.
31:10 That was Dr. Ramya Ravasthi and Dr. Lindsay Jacks
31:14 on the station today on the impact of pandemic food security.
31:19 I look forward to having you again some days soon,
31:22 both individually and separately.
31:25 Thank you so much.
31:26 Have a great day.
31:28 - Thank you, you too.
31:29 (upbeat music)
31:31 (upbeat music)