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Food security and COVID-19

COVID-19 and food security
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Food security and COVID-19 response

The impact of COVID-19 is growing and increasingly visible. As it affects food systems worldwide, public and private actors are identifying the short and long term consequences of this crisis for SDG2 to see what can be done to mitigate its impacts, and how food systems can be strengthened in their response. Together with the Netherlands Food Partnership (NFP), the Food Security team at the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs is supporting partners to reorient existing bilaterally-funded programmes to be meaningful at local scales with existing committed funds, capacities and networks. To realise this, three Communities of Practice (CoPs) have been established:

Impact of COVID-19 on SDG2

The impact of COVID-19 is growing and increasingly visible. As it affects food systems worldwide, public and private actors are identifying the short and long term consequences of this crisis for SDG2 to see what can be done to mitigate its impacts, and if food systems can be strengthened in their response.

Initiative of Ministry of Foreign Affairs and NFP to form CoPs

The Food Security team at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Netherlands is following two lines in the strategy on how to respond to the COVID-19 crisis for Southern target groups and partners in developing countries. One is supportive of the global coordinated responses. The other one is supporting partners to reorient existing bilaterally-funded programmes to be meaningful at local scales with existing committed funds, capacities and networks. For example to facilitate input supply to farmers for the upcoming season, or to support the continued functioning of local food supply chains or nutrition programmes.

Activities

In this process NFP functions as a coordinating and supporting partner. The NFP keeps an overview of the different processes and activities, organising and making accessible the information that is produced in the different workstreams, and supporting CoP work if needed.

In the process of identifying the short and long term consequences of the COVID-19 crisis for SDG2, governments, research and aid organisations, as well as businesses are all creating and sharing a great variety of information. On this Theme page you can find an article with an overview of key resources related to the COVID-19 impacts on Food and Nutrition Security. Furthermore, the F&BKP publishes blogs related to COVID-19 and the relation to other themes like Food Systems Approach and Food security and stability. Furthermore we refer to the “Food Security & COVID-19” page on the AgriProFocus online platform, accumulating all posts about COVID-19 from the AgriProFocus country networks.

 

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