Revolutionizing the Global Food System to Address the World’s Most Pressing Challenges

This week, the global food system is under international scrutiny. It’s about what we eat, how we produce it, how we distribute and sell it in a world grappling with population increase, climate change, and urbanization.

A high-ranking official of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations has warned that population growth, urbanization, shifts in consumption patterns, and climate change are making it increasingly challenging to feed the world.

Corinna Hawkes, Director of the Food Systems and Food Safety Division at FAO, asserts that a comprehensive and sustainable approach is necessary. This approach should consider economic, social, and environmental factors, and bring people together to ensure nutritious food and sustainable livelihoods for all.

On the eve of the UN’s Food Systems Summit+2, which will scrutinize global food systems, our FAO colleagues interviewed Hawkes to gather her insights on the current situation.

She explains that the agri-food system is all about food and agriculture, including what we eat, how food is sold, distributed, and processed. It also involves how food is grown or harvested on land, sea, and other non-food products, like fuel and fiber.

The agri-food system is also a platform for solutions to climate change, biodiversity loss, malnutrition, chronic diseases, unsafe food, poverty, and to counter the lack of urban sustainability. But right now, it lacks the power to provide these solutions. The system is sick, worn out, and lacking resilience.

One of the significant challenges is that the way food is grown and produced contributes to climate change, which in turn weakens the agri-food system.

Hawkes identifies a lack of diversity in the system as a crucial problem. Over the past decades, there has been a focus on producing certain staple crops, which reduces the system’s resilience, affects biodiversity and the environment, and also impacts nutrition for consumers.

To overcome these challenges, many methods exist to transform the agri-food system, but it is essential to unite people in this endeavor.

She highlights several subnational, urban, and municipal initiatives that are currently showing promise. These initiatives are improving market infrastructure to increase food access, ensure food safety, and reduce losses and waste.

Looking forward to the upcoming Food Systems Summit +2, she expresses the hope that governments and stakeholders will gather to honestly discuss challenges and share their successes and obstacles in making changes. The ideal outcome of the summit is that the momentum created will continue and commitments to change will translate into actions on the ground to truly achieve the transformation.