Making every grain count: Dr. Agnes Kalibata, Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General for the 2021 Food Systems Summit

Taking us through her nostalgic journey from her refugee camp days to being appointed as the Minister of Agriculture in Rwanda, Dr. Agnes Kalibata - Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General for the 2021 Food Systems Summit is one of the global leaders changing the food system landscape. Join us in an invigorating conversation, where we dive deeper into her dynamic journey and discover how she undertook one of the major responsibilities to Go-Beyond the test of times and emerge as a global food security champion.

Transcript

Host: Welcome to the Sony Pictures Networks Go Beyond podcast where we go beyond the surface an uncovered the extraordinary. I'm your host, Akshay Kapoor, and today, we have a rather special guest joining us for conversation. Rwandan by birth, she grew up in a refugee camp in Uganda when her family escaped their home country. With her father's encouragement, she excelled at her education, enabling her to successfully land the scholarship for secondary schooling in Uganda. She then went on to earn a Bachelor’s Degree in Entomology and Biochemistry, followed by a Master’s Degree in Agriculture and subsequently her PhD in Entomology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.  

Former Minister of Agriculture of Rwanda, today she leads change on a variety of fronts. She is not only a board member of organisations such as the Global Agenda Council of the World Economic Forum, the food and Land use coalition and International Fertiliser Development Cooperation, but also the President of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), and most recently, the United Nations Special Envoy to the 2021 Food Systems Summit. It is an honour to welcome Special Envoy Dr. Agnes Kalibata. Dr. Kalibata, it is truly great to have you on the show. 

Dr. Kalibata: Thank you for having me. 

Host: Dr. Kalibata, today, the world views you as the UN Special Envoy. But if we may, if we go back to the genesis, would you say that your background as a refugee had a role to play in you taking up agricultural studies? 

Dr. Kalibata: Looking at the livelihoods of my parents and other people around us, and the fact that they used agriculture as the main source of income, you know, farming small plots as the way they bought us dresses or they sent us to school; that really had a huge sense of built, a sense of appreciation in me. But I would say that it's that and the fact that when I went to school, especially to higher education and realized that agriculture is a way of life, the texture is so many people are using as a livelihood that is powerful; that has business opportunities that, can help them earn so much more, especially if they have access to good seeds, good inputs and markets, then it really built in me the sense that I can bring these two worlds together — the world the rural livelihood that has minimal inputs in agricultural systems, minimal opportunities and the livelihoods that I see, on the other hand, from having seen it from my education that actually people can use these very same technologies to change their lives in agriculture. So that's what I'm trying to do today to bring the two worlds together. The world that uses agriculture to advance people's livelihoods and the world of local communities that is locked out of these opportunities.

Host: And that's fantastic. Speaking of your own experience, could you maybe walk us down memory lane a little bit and give us a peek into your life as a refugee?

Dr. Kalibata: Yeah, so there are three things that I remember, and again these are shaped by my earliest memories because my earliest memories I found when my parents were already living in a refugee camp. The fact that we lived in makeshift, you know, make do housing of course! (laughs) just like any other refugees, and later asking yourself, ‘so why did this become a huge feature of who we are’? Because we lived in those for quite some time. But I think two other things really were interesting. Again, in retrospect, the fact that we would get food, very good fish. I think looking backwards, it must have been salmon, but my parents would make us throw it away. So, going to that point where food is culture. But it was the greatest food anybody could have, but we threw it away. And then, the fact that going to some form of learning, we had to use tree shades as our first classrooms and we had to use arms as places you write because we didn't have exercise books or pens. Things like that, those are the earliest things. Most people must look at, might look at it as, it was very very difficult, but as a child, it was part of growing up in a refugee camp.

Host: I know that your father used to take the cows to graze, and he would pass by your class and he would encourage you to get up and read in front of the class, correct?

Dr. Kalibata: I'm not sure ‘encouraging’ here was the right word, is the right word.

Host: (laughs)

Dr. Kalibata: But he would make me, he would make me stand up and read at the class and I understand what he was doing. Back then, it was embarrassing, it was very annoying. It was like, ‘he's coming! I wish I could disappear under a desk’ except we didn't have desks then.

Host: (laughs)

Dr. Kalibata: But, later, looking back I realized it was part of really building some strength in me. The ability to stand up and be able to, to stand and do stuff even when I felt weak inside. I feel like that part was part of building a strong character in me as a person. So, yeah...

Host: You went on to become the Minister of Agriculture for Rwanda. As a young girl, did you ever dream that you would achieve that? What was the motivation behind this and what sort of hurdles did you have to work through to actually achieve this?

Dr. Kalibata: I don't think I would ever, ever have dreamed that I would be a Minister of Agriculture in Rwanda. No.  First of all, I didn't know that we would return to Rwanda, so when it happened and we came it was, it was something uh, that we, we as a community really worked hard for and, really glad that, that it happened. So, being a Minister of Agriculture happened because I had the capabilities. Rwanda has a policy around employing people based on, or hiring people based on their technical capabilities. In fact, ministers are brought in basically based on technical capabilities, and I had good background in agricultural sector, and I had worked for the ministry in a number of other areas and they probably appreciated what I brought onboard. So, I wouldn't say that this is something I would never have seen myself be or this was completely something that was out of my depth. 

Host: You know overcoming struggles seems to be an integral dynamic of your journey. From then to now, how have these struggles changed and how have you had to adapt to you know, overcome them?

Dr. Kalibata: Back then my struggle would have been, you know, growing up making it through school, go to a good secondary school, get good grades. So, of course, like any other child, my life was defined by getting good grades. Once that is done, and you go into adult life, for me, the biggest part became how I can help communities that I see every day that live in circumstances that I feel below what they should be living, how we can help improve their livelihoods and so that in a way shapes my life. The fact that again, I know that agriculture is an opportunity that we can use to change people’s lives and I have seen it even in Africa. I have seen it begin to change people’s lives, especially in Rwanda, where we, we had to use, I had to work with everybody in government to use every opportunity that was available to us and really think about the best way to change people’s lives. And we did! And today, being in the food system summit for me, it's about how we can stop the impact that climate change is having on farmers lives because I see it every day. You see, I've been, I've been working in this sector trying to use it as an opportunity to improve people's lives for far too long to see that being undermined because of climate change is something that really completely throws me off off balance. And so, when this opportunity, to be part of the food system summit, came up, I took it — one, as an opportunity to highlight what is broken in our food systems, especially from a perspective of trying to achieve an end to hunger and malnutrition, and how farmers that are trying to do this are doing it against climate change against, their knowledge base being eroded. Most farmers know what to do when, but with climate change they don't know, and they don't even know how it's happening. So, for me, I saw it as an opportunity to raise awareness for the rest of the world that farmers and communities that have nothing to do with climate change are being significantly and heavily impacted and Africa's opportunity to end poverty may never happen unless we address the challenge of climate change.

Host: There are so many factors that go into making that food grow that it's way more complex than we, we often understand it to be. Are there any, you know common misconceptions that you've observed that we humans have developed over time about our relationship to food and the environment that you think it's important to dispel for us to improve our relationship and improve the the overall food systems that we utilize?

Dr. Kalibata: So, there are a number of things that, that we need to think through as we get into our food systems approach. So, first of all, from where I sit or from a developing country perspective, and I'm sure you can relate to that. The fact that today, we look at nutrition from a health perspective really bothers me. Nutrition is something that starts on the farm by being very deliberate around what we grow, because that's the food, that's what it defines what comes in the food and then what we take to the table. That's nutrition, right? It's not treating the impact of nutrition, so that's number one.

Number two, the biggest users of our environment today is the agricultural sector and is causing 80% biodiversity loss, but every time we are talking about environmental issues, it's very rare that you see countries, governments recognizing the place of the agricultural sector. There are very few that do that. Recognizing that these two ministries probably need to, to sit in one room and all the time be talking about the thread of the decisions that need to be taken. So that is something extremely important. Another misperception is when people look at how agriculture works, especially subsistence agriculture works. People actually get the impression that farmers and maybe indigenous communities and indigenous people that are using land as their primary source of income, they don't care, you know about how land is used and the fact that land is being degraded. These people actually care a lot. There are two things that lead to the degradation. One, the fact that they need to get safe enough and sometimes the land can't provide enough so they end up using more, number one. Number two, they know every plant besides what they use for food, they know every plant that lives on that land and they care about every plant. So, the decisions to use more land, they know, comes at the expense of plants, and they know that they are sacrificing something else. They're sacrificing medicine. They're sacrificing a culture of value that is associated with the plant, but they have to live! So, I think, for me, it's really recognizing that given the opportunity, this would be the best stewards of our environment and the opportunity has to come in form of supporting them to do the right thing. Part of it is better access to land including land rights so that they feel a responsibility to this land. Because we've seen this work. Part of it has to be meeting them halfway in their ability to look for livelihoods for their families in some cases that livelihood doesn't have to come at the sacrifice of the environment. People can be paid to support and to promote the environment, but also part of it has to come from better farming and better opportunities in farming, including access to inputs. It's a combination of things that if we pay attention to what is happening at that interface between people and land, actually there's so much that can be done. The last misconception is that from a consumer perspective, I see the last misconception being the fact that we feel that food is not good enough, for example, and here I'm talking about say fruits and vegetables, it has to be a perfect shape, a perfect size, a perfect everything perfect! perfect color to be, to be food, and yet the food is the nutrients you're looking for from that fruit, or that that vegetable, right? The color, the shape, takes so much from the environment, that if people understood what they're demanding of the environment by looking for perfection in shape and color of food, we really would do things differently. Reduce waste, but also reduce their demands on the environment. So, I think there are a number of things in our food culture, our food use, our food access that really can, if changed, could constitute a better food system.

Host: And speaking of the future and the opportunity to change the direction of things, like we've already talked about, we talked about the global climate crisis or water crisis, and one, like you're saying, can logically infer that a global food crisis would be closely linked to both. Do you think that food shortage is an imminent crisis or is it a crisis that can yet be averted? And how so?

Dr. Kalibata: So, food shortage varies from place to place and is caused by so many different things. In many places of the world, people are producing more food than they need. Food shortage might exist in terms of whether you can afford the right, afford the right nutrition on your table. Right now, good nutrition on a table costs five times more than ordinary food that is affordable. So, that becomes shortage from a nutrition perspective, and that is probably one of the most widely spread mechanisms of shortage right now actually is triggered by COVID-19 as well. The other form of food shortage has nothing to do with the affordability, it has everything to do with where food is produced and whether that food can be produced in that place in ways that are acceptable to the environment and even produced at all. Today, in Africa, we are having, like I said earlier, a climate crisis that forces people to produce less than they would otherwise be able to produce, so that becomes a problem. It causes food shortage that causes malnutrition and might even cause famines in some of the cases. So, I would say that from those two extremes, there are all sorts of other things that happen in between. But those two extremes are really the major forms of food shortage, where in one case you can't produce enough because of environmental issues. You don't get enough rain. You have drought, you have locust invasion. You don't produce enough because of all these disasters that might happen. And on the other hand, you don't have enough because you can't afford it on your table because it's out of reach based on the means that you have. So, in between, again there are so many ways that people can have access to some optimal diets and food on their table.

Host: On a lighter note, of course, the two branches of science driven solutions for food shortage. On a lighter note, what is your take on food pills or food meal replacement pills as a very dystopian sci-fi way of solving this problem?

Dr. Kalibata: So, I live in an environment where accessing food is one of the easiest things to do. I can grow food, I can grow food in my backyard. So, it has never occurred to me that food pills is something we need to be doing. I honestly, hope that if we worked towards a living income for people everywhere — that means people that are working out from land and that means that people that are farming — we should not have the need to work on pills. It depends on what they're trying to achieve, but I think there's still always every benefit to try to get to work, to ensure that people have access to nutrition and nutritious food that is produced in an environmental-friendly way and there are all sorts of ways that we can do that these days.

Host: On a more personal note, Dr. Kalibata. What are some of the various roles that Dr. Agnes Kalibata plays in her life? Could you illustrate them for us?

Dr. Kalibata: Besides working with the Food System Summit? (laughs)

Host: Yes, all of them. (laughs)

Dr. Kalibata: (laughs) So the most straightforward, of course, is that I work in the food system summit and then I manage an organization and from that perspective I see my biggest role as supporting the team of very young entrepreneurial, hardworking Africans to really continue to worry about how we might change the narrative of Africa’s food systems, of Africa's agricultural systems, of influencing how we might reduce poverty using agriculture as one of the sectors that touches people lives. So, really supporting the teams to continue thinking about that shaping our narrative, shaping how we go about business, ensure that we are a state-of-the-art institution is part of my every day. Probably, I spend 60% of my time doing that. I also have young children, so I spend part of my time doing homework, ensuring that they're staying on top of their classes, and then of course, I also have a household to run, so ensuring my husband is fine, that a household is running. So, everything that you do, that I need to do as a mother, as a wife, I still get to do in addition to running the Food System Summit. And running one of the biggest agricultural institutions on the continent.

Host: What advice would Dr. Agnes Kalibata today, give the young Agnes Kalibata of yesteryear?

Dr. Kalibata: (laughs) I am running an institution here. I'm lucky to be a president of an organization in Africa that is working to influence how agriculture becomes part of reducing poverty for for communities that live in agriculture. I'm managing the Food System Summit and I'm managing young children. I probably would have done if I had, what I would tell younger Agnes is ‘have your children early’, you know. (laughs)

Host: (laughs)

Dr. Kalibata: (Laughs) You know, so no, honestly sometimes. We believe that, that we, being a woman, there's a lot of juggling that one has to do. But if I had known how much was waiting for me in the future, I probably would not have had my children late. I would have had my children early so that they're out of the way and I can focus on these things, but now I have 101 pieces to juggle. And part of that is raising young kids who need me as much as, as all the other pieces of work I'm doing. So, again, I enjoy this, but it's something that I tell, I actually tell young women that being able to plan our lives is something we need to do because you know, if the prime of your career comes at a time you want to make sure that the prime of your career comes at a time when you've done some of the other things, including having children.

Host: Lastly, Dr. Kalibata, as a bit of a takeaway. How can each of us, in our own individual way, be a food ambassador ourselves?

Dr. Kalibata: So that's really a great question. We need to be a food ambassador. We need to look at food the way we look at water and electricity in our houses. And why do I say that? We take a huge precaution in reducing water waste. We take huge precaution reducing food waste. We take huge precaution in reducing electricity waste. I know the incentives are right if you waste water, you pay more. If you waste electricity, you pay more, but we need to look at it from an environmental perspective. Wasting food is also a cost to us in other forms. So, it's really important that we all start building this in our lives, ensuring that the decisions we make, whether it is being selective about food and putting more pressure on the environment to give us, more you know more appealing fruits and all those types of things, that they have a cost.

Being able to understand that we can influence how much biodiversity is out there, how much land is wasted or not wasted, being able to know that the power we have. We need to understand that we actually have a lot of power in how our environment shapes up. So, that should be a good incentive for us to be good food ambassadors. And for us to be able to do the right things ourselves, but also help other people understand that our world is what it is today because we are shaping it. So, let's shape it right!

Host: Right! absolutely! With that Dr. Kalibata, I think we've come to the end of our time, but I must say it's been an illuminating conversation and a fascinating conversation. So, thank you so much for joining us on the Go-Beyond podcast today and it's been a true pleasure.

Dr. Kalibata: Thank you for having me.