It's not a coincidence at all. 2021, the post-Covid year of hope, is the international year of fruit and vegetables.
This was decided by the FAO, indicating some essential points to raise awareness of good and continuous nutrition in the world.
It is, first and foremost, about growing sustainable crops around the world. The start of a path that remedies social injustices equivalent to exploitation and lack of rights. Both at the table - which millions of poor people do not have - and in the fields.
The FAO synthesis lies in a kind of handbook that countries will hopefully help spread slowly.
Raise public awareness of the benefits associated with the consumption of fruit and vegetables; fight waste; promote healthy and balanced diets and lifestyles; help developing countries towards modern and successful cultivation techniques.
The strategy is linked to the UN strategy on sustainable development goals. But there is no doubt that it has a lot to do with agricultural policies practiced on a global scale. In addition to the attention for developing countries that risk making a double leap, from backward agricultural forms to super-technological models with the use of fertilizers, most of the indications are played out in industrialized countries.
When it is said that it is necessary to favor the integration of small farmers into local, regional and global production chains, sensitive aspects of the food policies of individual governments are touched upon. The USA and Great Britain, to name just two, have so far practiced policies that hinder sustainable and quality products. They have relaunched outdated market logics such as duties or the limitation on imports of everything that is sustainable.
We will soon have to see, then, the ability to accept the good indications of the UN organization. Evidently they are not the only Western countries that have to review the marketing and sale systems of quality products if complex negotiations are taking place all over the world to protect billionaire interests.
The FAO document - we read - derives from the need to raise awareness, direct political attention and share good practices on the benefits deriving from the consumption of fruit and vegetables. It is therefore politics that must push to reshape lifestyles and eating habits in a framework of environmental sustainability but also of the fight against waste. Fruits and vegetables are products of the earth grown all over the world, but they are the starting point of often unfair and distorted agri-food systems.
All the more reason during a pandemic a systemic approach can be sought, from controlled, organic, certified productions, to prices and education in families.
Fruits and vegetables provide the body with a wealth of nutrients, strengthen the immune system and help reduce the risk of contracting a number of diseases, it has been said, without hiding that world consumption is low. If there is the strength, the FAO's indications will give support to the complicated phase of protecting the planet. We will see.
In September there will be the world summit on food systems promoted by the UN. We will then understand how countries are managing the epochal transition towards a new way of producing and consuming, without protectionist whims and circumstantial rhetoric. Reminding us of Pope Francis when he says that "with hunger there is no democracy".
