Investment Days 2025 “Investing for more and better agrifood jobs” Opening Statement

Excellences,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Dear Partners and Colleagues, 

I want to start by speaking about smallholder farmers, because they are the real private sector. They are the ones who have to work without rain, without proper soil, without high quality seeds, without the proper agronomic measurements, without fertilizers, without effective disease control and many other inputs, yet they also have to save to ensure a basic liquidity to buy the inputs they need like seeds, insecticides or vaccines. 

It is important that you understand smallholder farmers and producers.

We need the proper financial services to support farmers, no matter whether they are big or small, because they are facing increased financial burdens year after year, especially due to the climate crisis.

I really want to encourage you to think deeply and come up with real solutions for Members and donors, to provide real service to the small producers.

So, welcome to the 13th edition of Investment Days, which has now become an annual and exciting event at FAO.

Even before I arrived at FAO, I had identified the Investment Centre as one of the key units at FAO, and that is why it was important to reform it.

Investment Days is an opportunity to bring visionary thinkers, leading entrepreneurs, investors, innovators, producers and public and private investors together to share experiences, ideas and cutting-edge knowledge and tools. Cutting edge is not only about knowledge, which only produces welfare, we also need cutting-edge tools to produce a better life and profits. Remember, no matter what products you produce, you have to take care of how you produce – you need to change how you produce.

We need interactive transformative thinking with deep knowledge. Wisdom is knowledge interacting with experience, together with deep thinking. You need all these criteria to be more competitive, especially for the younger colleagues.

So, we need to work together to transform global agrifood systems for a better future for people and the planet, for current and future generations. 

This year’s theme “Investing for more and better agrifood jobs” is timely.

Agrifood systems employ almost 40% of the global workforce - the world’s largest source of jobs – from on-farm work to food processing, to wholesale and more importantly e-commerce.

When we started promoting e-commerce 15 years ago in China, we got a lot of push-back from the traditional wholesale market because they were worried about losing tax income. But luckily, we had the support of the Minister of Finance because he understood. Now, China alone has created 60 million jobs from e-commerce. You can package your fresh foods in the villages and through third-service providers you can connect with the whole world.

Current trade and market instability, growing urbanization, rapid technological advances, labour migration – both migration away from agriculture and migration away from home countries – create big challenges.

People in these parts of the world are afraid of immigration, but if someone wants to immigrate to your country it means that you are more attractive. Of course, you need to regulate immigration through rules and an effective monitoring system, but you should also be open because it creates jobs and increases competitiveness.

I always say that challenges also present great opportunities!

In the next decade alone, an estimated 1.2 billion youth are expected to enter the job market - yet only around 400 million are suitable applicants.

So, this means that potentially, we could have 800 million unemployed youth – this is a cause of great instability for the world and a real responsibility for FAO.

We should design projects to create labour-intensive decent job opportunities. If you invest USD 1 billion in high-tech, it will create maybe 100 jobs, but if you invest USD 1 billion in food processes, logistics, e-commerce and value-chains you can have the opportunity of creating 1000 or even 2000 jobs.

Sometimes, we have to have a balance between technology and traditional sectors – that is the job of FAO. We are not just a research institution; we have to use cutting-edge technology to modernize traditional sectors through proper project design.

Otherwise, the alarming gap of youth unemployment will lead to global instability.

That is an alarming gap leading to global instability.

We have an aging agriculture workforce, together with a growing youth population in many developing countries.

On the one hand, we want to develop AI equipped facilities, but on the other hand we have to create labour-intensive job opportunities for young people so they can stay in the rural areas or in the supply chain.

It is not about cutting jobs, but transforming them. That is what I did when I came to FAO.

And I let the youth lead the change through the FAO Youth Committee, and also the FAO Women’s Committee that I established.

Digital technologies, including artificial intelligence, are advancing at an incredibly fast pace, integrating digital world with the emerging AI generation.

Technical people have been talking about AI for about five years now. That is why FAO was among the first to sign the Rome Call for AI Ethics in December 2019, together with the Holy See, Microsoft, IBM and others.

Now, is the AI generation – that is why I introduced the Digital FAO six years ago.

So, we know that investing in agrifood systems changes lives, and is key to ensuring the Four Betters – better production, better nutrition, a better environment and a better life – leaving no one behind.

Agrifood investment connects small-scale producers, not just small-scale farmers, rural entrepreneurs and agribusiness to much-needed financing and markets, builds resilience in vulnerable communities, and promotes sustainable development, not growth because growth just increases quantities, but development is comprehensive.

From day one in 2019, I have sought to make the FAO Investment Centre - which celebrated 60 years in 2024, together with the World Bank, even more fit for purpose.

I really appreciate what the World Bank’s ancestors did in the 1960s. They were so visionary, with long-term thinking, and professional. That is the real United Nations - we have to play a complementary role together, not overlapping.

That is also why we have upgraded our collaboration with the IAEA to the level of the Joint Center from a joint division, with big teams based on our respective comparative advantages and with a five-year strategic programme.  

I have supported the FAO Investment Centre’s transformation and growth by expanding its budget allocation and capacity to better serve our Members, because if we invest one dollar in the Centre, I know we will have a return of at least thirty times more.

You help Members design with one dollar, which could have a return of seven to eight dollars of impact on the ground.

FAO is not a bank, but we have the technical capacity and expertise to provide the efficient and effective proposals countries need.

Over the years, the Centre has evolved, together with its partners, to introduce innovative approaches, technologies and tools that help countries attract more public and private investment and achieve impact at scale.

And it continues to evolve, diversifying its investment and finance solutions and partnership base, and expanding its outreach to 120 countries. I am so proud of you!

Since last year, the Centre has helped design 65 public investment projects approved by its key partners such as the World Bank, IFAD, the African Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and especially the Green Climate Fund, in 46 countries worth about USD 9 billion in investment.

The Investment Center has also been working with the FAO Hand-in-Hand Initiative to accelerate investment in the most vulnerable countries.

A key pillar of the World Food Forum I established is the Hand-in-Hand Investment Forum, which has led the Investment Centre to think out of the box and at scale in addressing challenges.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We place greater emphasis on solutions that address shared challenges and increase impact across borders, through efficient, effective and coherent collaboration with national and regional development banks.

We are also intensifying our blended finance support to the European Union, expanding our work with development finance institutions like the Italian Development Bank CDP, impact funds and local financial institutions, as well as collaborating with a few partners like the European Investment Bank, and helping countries attract climate finance through our work with the Green Climate Fund.      

Last week I reported to the Ministerial Conference that we had had a 2% increase from donors by the end of June – that is really phenomenal! Every other agency has had a decrease in donor funding. Our increase came mostly from multilateral and international financial institutions, that is the strategic change.       

We are doubling efforts to support private investment, notably by partnering with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in its expansion into sub-Saharan Africa. Also, they want to use our expertise to amplify their financial impact on the ground, that is the most important thing.

Dear Colleagues,

Investment Days is a reminder that we need to think bigger, think deeper, and act in a deliverable way. And we need to design bigger because when you design you put together all the fragments systematically, comprehensively and logically.

We need to work together, learn together, grow together, collaborate together and contribute together.

Across sectors and generations, building on each other’s strengths to drive urgent change for more efficient, more inclusive, more resilient, more sustainable and more employment-rich agricultural value chains. 

Together, let us leverage the power of technology, innovation, enabling policies and investment to create meaningful and decent agrifood jobs.

If you really want to make the rural areas more attractive to young people, you need agricultural machines first. Second, you need to create a stable income, not necessarily big but stable. Third, it should be reasonably enjoyable. You need to invest in sport facilities or others. And fourth, you need cold chain storage to maintain quality and deliver through e-commerce.

Investing in agrifood systems means investing in a better future for all, leaving no one behind, for generations to come.

I wish you dynamic and productive Investment Days!

Thank you.