International Year of Plant Health

The official logo of the UN's International Year of Plant Health — 'IYPH 2020'. The leaves arranged as a globe symbolise healthy plants as the source of the air we breathe, the food we eat and all life on Earth. The occasion appears in English above; to the left, the mint master's mark of Ingrid van Herzele; to the right, the mark of the Dutch mint in Utrecht. The country code 'BE' and the year '2020' are placed along the lower edge.

Plants form the basis of almost all food chains on Earth: they produce the oxygen we breathe and provide around 80 percent of human food. It was precisely this fundamental role that the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), together with the UN General Assembly, put at the centre when it declared 2020 the International Year of Plant Health. The background was the growing worldwide threat to crop and wild plants from introduced pests, invasive pathogens and climate change — factors that not only destabilise ecosystems but also endanger global food security. According to FAO estimates, between 20 and 40 percent of global crop yields are lost to plant diseases and pest infestation every year.

Belgium took up this topic and issued its own commemorative coin in 2020 to raise awareness of the international campaign. The Kingdom is no random issuer here: Belgium, home to the headquarters of the European Commission and numerous UN-affiliated institutions in Brussels, hosts one of the densest concentrations of international organisations in the world and traditionally sees itself as a mediator of multilateral initiatives. Plant health also directly affects Belgian agriculture — from the intensively farmed coastal plain to the fruit-growing regions of Wallonia — which depends on functioning plant protection systems. The International Year of Plant Health formally ended in 2021, having been extended by a year due to the pandemic, but the measures initiated by the FAO to strengthen national plant protection systems continue to have an effect.