Meeting the Urgency With Faster Food Security Action

So, Evan, I always like to start with you.

You and I have been on this stage many, many times before talking about the poly crisis, and I think it's good for you to set the stage and let everyone sort of understand what we are facing and what kind of information and data we need to address these challenges.

Yeah, thanks Danny, and it's so nice to be here.

It was actually almost exactly two years ago today that you and I sat here, and the phrase cascading crisis has sort of rolled off of our lips.

And it's felt academic in that moment.

It felt like an abstract concept or something you might write in a, you know, read in a Philip K. Dick novel or something like that.

And we're living in the cascading crisis, we're living in it.

I'm just gonna rehearse the things we all know because I think it's easy to get numb to these issues.

Mega El Nino event building right now.

Successive heat waves in Europe and a drought in the US, meaning wheat farming has been terrible in Europe and North America, the worst harvests in decades, like in my lifetime.

Of course, the cessation of trade through key choke points, Panama canals got a drought in it, the Hormuz, et cetera, Black Sea.

And I think the underlying assumptions of the global food trading system are being eroded.

I mean, we have to have, to function, cheap, stable energy prices.

We have to have seamless, easy trade.

And we have to have a productive environment.

And those are the assumptions on which our food system depends.

And those are the assumptions that are being eroded.

I think 2026 will go down as the year when we just had to lose those.

We need data.

We need the data to anticipate where the problems are going to land so that the policymakers can proactively anticipate where crises are emerging and get in there faster.

And that's, for me, the starting point of the conversation that Simon and Inbol and I have been having for a while and what we're doing here today.

Yeah, proactively is the key to all of this, being able to make those decisions before they become out of hand.

And, Bill, if I can turn to you next.

Food crises, as I was talking about a little bit earlier, can unfold really, really quickly.

Where are the biggest gaps in information right now, and how does RAPID help close those gaps?