Jose Graziano da Silva (Director General of FAO)

“Both public and private together need to cooperate for the regeneration of lifestyles, mindsets and consciousness which must be fed into a process that involves cultural innovation.”

The 10th of July 2019, marked the official beginning of the signed partnership between the Future Food Institute and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

The agreement includes a joint program aimed at promoting food innovation as a lever to generate and accelerate social, cultural, economic and environmental impact. The Joint Program begins by spreading knowledge and training specific skills necessary to mitigate the climate crisis starting from innovation applied to the agri-food sector. The international education programs are focused on the empowerment of two main targets, the citizens of tomorrow (i.e. children, young talents, generation Z) and today’s key industry players (i.e. farmers, cooks, and food industry professionals) who are called upon to make decisions and choices that impact both human and overall Planet health. The “FAO – FFI” Joint Program is based on the scientifically accurate and backed contents of the FAO e-learning platform. With an ambition to reach millions of users, the platform is regularly updated and enriched with advanced pedagogical methods. It continually endeavours to direct, facilitate and accelerate a collective effort towards achieving 17 objectives and goals (SDGs), the Global Agenda for Sustainable Development of the United Nations, by 2030

“This partnership aims to accelerate exponential positive change. We will achieve this by considering innovation in agribusiness as a key solution for the most urgent challenges we are facing”, says José Graziano da Silva (Director General of FAO). He continues, “Food is at the center of this equation. Farmers, food industry leaders, food experts, innovators and cooks represent the engine of change. Technology and digital platforms are the enablers.”

“We live in the era of the Imagination Economy, facing rapid cultural, social and environmental changes and crisis. The food industry is the first victim of this change but also one of the biggest responsible for this crisis.” says Sara Roversi (founder of the Future Food Institute) while talking about the partnership. She continues “With the FAO, the Future Food Institute is promoting a cultural framework that aims to foster a lifelong learning mindset. We will do this by continuing to develop tools that generate and maintain a positive attitude towards learning both for personal and professional development. Our focus is on a competency-based new vision that is able to accelerate action towards both global health and environmental issues. Ultimately, we aim to facilitate the transition toward the sustainable development framework. We believe that both the public and private sectors need to cooperate for the regeneration of lifestyles, mindsets and consciousness which should feed into a process that involves cultural innovation.”

“This partnership aims to accelerate exponential positive change. We will achieve this by considering innovation in agribusiness as a key solution for the most urgent challenges we are facing.

Food is at the center of this equation. Farmers, food industry leaders and experts, innovators and cooks represent the engine of change. Technology and digital platforms are the enablers. With FAO, the Future Food Institute is promoting a cultural framework that aims to foster a lifelong learning mindset by developing tools to generate and maintain a positive attitude to learning both for personal and professional development. Our focus is on a competence based new vision that is able to accelerate action on global health and environmental issues awareness and facilitate the transition toward the sustainable development framework.

We believe that both public and private together need to cooperate for the regeneration of lifestyles, mindsets and consciousness which must be fed in a process that involves cultural innovation.’’ says Jose Graziano da Silva (Director General of FAO).

The first FAO and Future Food Institute joint activity consists of capacity building and scaling up education. This begins by training Climate and Food Shapers all over the World with Future Food For Climate Change Summer Schools. The summer schools will bring together change-makers from around the world to co-design tangible strategies and innovations. These will be focused on accelerating positive action towards the climate and SDGs and facilitate the transition toward the sustainable development framework. The appointments are for:

– New York, (July 10th – 17th, 2019) with a  focus on Smart Cities

– Tokyo (August 1st – 7th, 2019) with a focus on Smart Farms,

– Iceland  (September 1st – 7th, 2019) with a focus on Smart Oceans

More info on the Summer Schools and all the joint activities of FAO and Future Food Institute are available on the official page:https://futurefood.network/summerschool/

Access Sara Roversi’s (Founder of Future Food Institute) full speech, which highlights the institute’s positions on “Research, Knowledge Gaps and Needs for Sustainable Food Systems and Healthy Diets”, at this link:

http://bit.ly/faosymposiumpanel

– First intervention at 1h 7m 0s

– Second intervention at 1h 42 m 50s

– Third Intervention at 2h 09m 55s

The official statement of José Graziano da Silva (FAO Director-General), on the valuable contributions represented by this Joint Program between FAO and Future Food Institute, can be found at 2h 26m 0s.