Food systems are at a crossroads. Profound transformation is needed to address Agenda 2030 and to achieve food security and nutrition (FSN) in its four dimensions of availability, access, utilization and stability, and to face multidimensional and complex challenges, including a growing world population, urbanization and climate change, which drive increased pressure on natural resources, impacting land, water and biodiversity. This need has been illustrated from various perspectives in previous HLPE reports and is now widely recognized.

Ensuring food security in developing countries is highly challenging due to low productivity of the agriculture sector, degradation of natural resources, high post farming losses, less or no value addition, and high population growth. Researchers are striving to adopt newer technologies to enhance supply to narrow the food demand gap. Nanotechnology is one of the promising technologies that could improve agricultural productivity via nano fertilizers, use of efficient herbicides and pesticides, soil feature regulation, wastewater management, and pathogen detection.

Agricultural innovations are seen as a key avenue to improve nutrition and health in smallholder farm households. But details of these agriculture-nutrition-health linkages are not yet well understood. While there is a broad literature on the adoption of agricultural technologies, most studies primarily focus on impacts in terms of productivity and income. Nutrition and health impacts have rarely been analyzed. In this article, we argue that future impact studies should include nutrition and health dimensions more explicitly.

Tool 9 provides general information and examples on the latest developments, uses and applications in the area of food biotechnology, and it focuses on genome (or gene) editing. It also provides examples that could help users of this toolkit to explain genome editing, the difference between genetic modification and genome editing and the potential benefits of these new technologies. In addition, it supports users to highlight possible research and development activities ongoing in their own country.

Policy brief No. 1. In recent years, food consumers have become in- creasingly aware of and concerned about the sa- fety of food products. As a response, public and private actors have introduced different standards to ensure that food safety reaches the degree de- manded by consumers. Developing countries often lack the institutional capacities and financial and non-financial resources to comply with standards.

Policy brief No. 3. Adequate nutrition is a crucial welfare dimension. Malnutrition at a young age can have severe con- sequences for a person’s development of human, social, and economic capital. Also in later phases of one’s life, malnutrition can severely affect health and restrict productivity as well as overall quality of life. Efforts to improve nutrition among rural populations, for example through more diversified diets, are therefore key components of many rural development agendas, especially in Africa where undernutrition is still a large public health prob- lem.

The globalisation of agrifood systems is a mega-trend with potentially profound nutritional implications. This paper describes various facets of this globalisation process and reviews studies on nutritional effects with a particular focus on developing countries. Results show that global trade and technological change in agriculture have substantially improved food security in recent decades, although intensified production systems have also contributed to environmental problems in some regions.

Fairtrade certification has recently gained in importance for various export crops produced in developing countries. One of Fairtrade's main objectives is to improve the social conditions of smallholder farmers. Previous research showed that Fairtrade has positive effects on farmers' sales prices and incomes in many situations. However, more detailed analysis of the effects on food security and other dimensions of household living standard is rare.