The Director of Emergencies and Resilience of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Rein Paulsen stressed to the UN General Assembly that it is imperative to innovate and invest more wisely and efficiently in the agricultural and food sector.

Mr. Paulsen claimed that the breakthroughs and data provide the tools to better understand and forecast crises and repercussions, so he urged to use these means in order to sound the alarms before calamities occur and thus take steps to avoid them.

According to FAO, population affected by food crisis has increased steadily over the past five years, reaching 155 million people in 55 countries in 2020. Currently, more than 41 million people are facing this scourge.

Humanitarian resources for food sector increased by about 30% from 2016 to 2019, but are still insufficient to help vulnerable rural communities to strengthen their resilience to disasters, Paulsen said.

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