Reset The Table Center for Strategic and International Studies

Caroline Smith DeWaal, Deputy Director of EatSafe at the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), joins Caitlin Welsh to discuss the centrality of food safety to food and nutrition security, and how it is often overlooked in global food policy frameworks. Ms. DeWaal explains how EatSafe became a Feed the Future project addressing food safety in traditional food markets in Ethiopia and Nigeria. Ms. Welsh and Ms. DeWaal wrap up the final episode of Reset the Table’s second season discussing the relationship between climate change and food safety, and how this was addressed at the recent Codex Committee on Food Hygiene meeting in San Diego. 

Lauren Phillips, Deputy Director of the UN FAO Inclusive Rural Transformation and Gender Equality Division, and Anna Herforth, Senior Research Associate at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Principal Investigator of the Global Diet Quality Project, join Caitlin Welsh on this episode of Reset the Table. Dr. Phillips explains the growing gap between food insecurity among women and men, and how this gap was measured in the latest State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report and the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES). Dr. Herforth describes how the recent data released by the Global Diet Quality Project can be disaggregated to measure women’s dietary diversity around the world, and its relationship to food access and women’s roles in food systems.

Jo Puri, Vice President of the Strategy and Knowledge Department at the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) sits down with GFSP Director Caitlin Welsh to discuss IFAD’s priorities ahead of COP27. Ms. Puri explains how the UN agency measures its investments' impacts on indicators such as resilience, economic mobility, and nutrition in the rural communities it serves. Ms. Welsh and Ms. Puri wrap up the episode with a discussion on IFAD’s strategy to elevate the importance of biodiversity to global agriculture at COP27 in Egypt and at COP15, the Montreal Biodiversity Conference, in the coming months.  

Kimberly Flowers, GFSP Senior Associate (Non-resident), sits down with Ertharin Cousin, CEO of Food Systems for the Future, former Executive Director of the UN World Food Programme, and former U.S. Ambassador to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, to discuss the first White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health held in over 50 years. The White House Conference resulted in a National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health. Ms. Cousin, who sat on the advisory panel for the conference and national strategy, shared her perspectives on the conference’s outcomes and how we can ensure the strategy’s goals are monitored and met. Ms. Flowers and Ms. Cousin conclude the episode by discussing how public- and private-sector actors can engage with communities facing hunger and diet-related diseases. 

Zitouni Ould-Dada, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Deputy Director in the Office of Climate Change, Biodiversity and Environment, sits down with GFSP Director Caitlin Welsh to discuss the potential of agri-food systems to offer solutions to the climate change and biodiversity crises. Mr. Ould-Dada explains the FAO’s new Strategy on Climate Change 2022-2031 and offers insights on its implementation, parameters for success, and role in upcoming COP27 discussions. Ms. Welsh and Mr. Ould-Dada wrap up the episode by offering simple steps listeners can take to help make food systems part of the solution to climate change and food waste. 

Senior Research Fellows at the International Food Policy Research Institute, Joseph Glauber and David Laborde, join GFSP director Caitlin Welsh to discuss the Russia-Ukraine War’s impact on global agricultural markets, food prices, and food security. Mr. Glauber, also a Senior Adviser (Non-resident) with the CSIS Global Food Security Program, and Mr. Laborde kick off the episode by explaining how the war exacerbated pre-existing climatic pressures on food prices and debate applicability of the term “food shortage” to describe the current global food crisis. Our guests then consider the future of food prices and global grain supplies as Russia’s war in Ukraine continues to limit the export of agricultural commodities from the Black Sea.