Ms Cliona Sharkey:

Yes. To build a little on that point, we certainly recognise the relative efficiency of Irish agriculture. We do not work in Irish agriculture, as the committee knows quite well, but we have been working on global food security and hunger in some of the poorest countries in the world for a number of decades. In the context of climate change, we are very conscious that globally, the food system will have to transform. Agriculture in all countries will have to transform, no more so than in the countries where we work. We believe strongly that the policies for the agricultural sector in every country need to be just, ambitious and managed to support farmers and rural communities in order to deliver a resilient, low-carbon and profitable rural economy that can contribute to local economies and to the national economy. However, we also wish to be very clear, because there is often a lot of confusion around this discussion, that hunger is caused by poverty. Food insecurity is caused by poverty rather than inadequate food supply. We know that the world currently provides enough food in theory for the global population, but lack of access to resources or the ability to produce that food means that almost 800 million people between 2014 and 2016 were unable to access sufficient food. What we know, therefore, is that increasing food supply globally will not solve hunger, but increasing emissions will certainly exacerbate it.