The Guardian reports on the 40th session of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), meeting in Rome this week. “Once a relatively mechanistic, high-level event, today the CFS stands alone among big U.N. meetings for bringing everyone to the table and is often hailed the most inclusive global governance forum,” the newspaper writes, noting representatives from civil society, government, philanthropy, and the private sector all have “space at the CFS table.” The Guardian writes, “This week, negotiators hope to find a consensus on the particularly prickly debate about how to balance biofuels and food security concerns. Other issues on the table include how to deal with food insecurity in protracted crises, and what principles for responsible investment in agriculture should look like” (Provost, 10/10).

In a separate article, The Guardian writes about a new report (.pdf) on hunger and nutrition from civil society, titled “Alternatives and Resistance to Policies That Generate Hunger,” which “argues that particular attention must be paid to the social and political structures that constrain women’s choices and limit their ability to participate in decision-making.” According to the newspaper, “The report also warns that the growing number of public-private partnerships around food, nutrition and agriculture — including the G8’s new alliance for food security and nutrition and the Scaling Up Nutrition initiative — must be coherent with international human rights obligations and that it must be made clearer how they will manage conflicts of interest” (Provost, 10/9). Devex features a video interview with Benoît Miribel, director-general at Fondation Merieux and honorary president at Action Against Hunger, who “call[s] for better organization, more cooperation to ‘break the wall’ between health and agriculture ministries, and a move beyond announcements toward concrete progress on an international framework for food security and nutrition” (Jones, 10/10).