The World Food Forum runs from October 13 to 17, 2025, bringing together global leaders, policymakers, and innovators to tackle the global food system’s biggest challenges, and I am excited to be one of this year’s World Food Forum Youth Representatives. The World Food Forum Youth Representatives Programme facilitates inclusive and meaningful representation of youth in global agrifood governance and establishes structures that enable youth participation in policy decision-making spaces in the agrifood sector.
So far, I have attended an onboarding call in which we discussed the roadmaps for each of the thematic areas that contribute to transforming agrifood systems that the Youth Representatives will tackle throughout their term. These thematic areas are biodiversity, bioeconomy, climate change, desertification, forestry, livestock, nutrition, fisheries and aquaculture, young women’s empowerment, and water management. I also participated in an educational Youth Assembly session on agrifood systems within National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) that showed the programme’s emphasis on informed participation. This week, I am joining the World Food Forum, which is also commemorating 80 years since the Food and Agriculture Organization was established, virtually. The theme “Hand in Hand for Better Foods and a Better Future” further reflects the Youth Representatives Programme’s commitment to encouraging influential global youth participation in sustainable, equitable, resilient, and nourishing models for all.
I have been in enough rooms this year to know that youth participation has become more than a numbers game. Counting the number of young people at the table is no longer enough of an indicator of representation. Initiatives like the World Food Forum are answering the truly difficult questions about what the youth are asking for and how those requests can be transformed into policies and programmes that serve the next generation’s needs.
I will end this post with a quote from the World Food Forum 2025 Grand Opening -“And this brings me to the most important part: our youth. Today’s young people are not like before. They are the most powerful generation in human history. They are connected. They are creative. They have technology in their hands that was unthinkable a few years back. Let’s not tell them to wait for jobs. Let’s empower them to create jobs. Let’s tell them you are not job seekers, you are job creators. Let’s give them access to capital by creating investment funds, social business funds. Let’s help create innovation hubs. Let’s help create agri-technology, circular food systems, climate-smart enterprises. [They] all can be led by the youth. If we invest in the youth, we will not only feed the world, we will change the world.” – Professor Muhammad Yunus, Chief Adviser of Bangladesh, World Food Forum 2025.
