Overview of Food Systems: Conceptual Framework and Global

Trends/Practices

Mr. Haroon LATIF, Strategy Director at U.S. and Dubai-based Strategy and Investment Advisory

Firm DINARSTANDARD, made a presentation summarizing the global trends and best practices

that underpin Food Systems.

Mr. LATIF started by presenting the structure of the study and how it seeks to find a path for OIC

countries to realize their full economic potential, and highlighted how the study employed a

rigorous methodology spanning 150 survey responses across OIC food industry stakeholders,

over 15 interviews, and over 50 sources, supplemented by extensive in-house expertise from

advising investment firms and government authorities on investment opportunities across the

OIC.

Mr. LATIF established the link between sustainable food systems and economic prosperity,

explaining how a food system includes all participants and the interconnected, value-adding

activities involved in producing, aggregating, processing, distributing, consuming, and disposing

of food products.

Mr. LATIF then introduced the core framework that was used throughout the study to assess the

relative strength of OIC countries. He explained how establishing food system stability requires

governments to undertake three broad steps: 1) developing a clear understanding of the current

state of food system stability; 2) establishing processes to manage immediate and potential

upcoming risks to stability; and 3) implementing initiatives that underpin long-term stability.

With each, he elaborated upon the supporting seven steps, spanning building awareness, which

involved understanding the four pillars of security, understanding the underlying drivers, and

establishing a hollistic ecosystem, and further discussed four other steps spanning monitoring,

adaptation & mitigation, resilience and cooperation, explaining how the latter two steps were

longer-term actions needed to raise resilience over time.

Mr LATIF then provided global context for how developing sustainable food systems has become

a top priority for many countries, with significant emphasis among regional and multilateral

cooperation bodies, and talked about the coninuum of food systems, spanning food security,

whereby the system needs ongoing vigilance against potential diseases and unintentional damage

to quality, as well as food defence, where action is needed to defend fragile food systems against

intentional harm.

Presenting the current picture, Mr LATIF highlighted how much of the world is currently behind

on food security, showing that the number of people suffering from hunger globally increased

from 804 million in 2016 to 821 million in 2017, highighting economic drivers, social and

environmental factors, with notable examples. He also highlighted the risk factors that underpin

significant crises in the future, pointing to population growth and climate change as substantial

threats to global food system stability. He mentioning specifically that with the world population

expected to increase from 7.6 billion in 2017 to 9.8 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100, the

demand for food and feed is expected to increase significantly, with OIC countries face

disproportionate risks for future food crises, with member states predominantly affected by

instability and drought.

Mr LATIF also presented best practices, highlighting the top ranked countries for food security,

according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, specifically mentioning the top four countries,

Singapore, Ireland, U.S., and UK, with a loose link to income per capita. He also elaborated on the

specific actions by Ireland and the U.S. across the medium and long-term measure of food