International organizations team up to power new and smarter foods

Drs Kundhavi Kadiresan, Assistant Director General Asia Pacific, FAO, and Peter Carberry, Director General, ICRISAT at the signing in Bangkok.

How do we tackle some of the biggest and critical global nutritional health/environmental issues in unison? How could we achieve greater impact in sustainable agriculture at scale?

The Solution: Joining forces for the good of the consumers, planet and the farmers. A Memorandum of Intent for the establishment of a strategic partnership to make our foods smarter was signed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in Bangkok, in November 2018.

Smart Food, founded by ICRISAT, focuses on foods that fulfil all criteria of being good for you (healthy and nutritious), good for the planet (environmentally sustainable) and good for the farmer. A key focus is to diversify staples to be able to have a major impact. This complements Future Smart Food, led by FAO, which focuses on popularizing a broader range of neglected and underutilized species that are nutrition dense, climate resilient, economically viable and locally available/adaptable.

This partnership will deliver joint outcomes which will have significant impacts on changing the global food system. It brings together international organizations and will create a global movement.