People and planet first: food systems under growing pressure to reform

1. Food for all

As much as one third of the food we produce goes uneaten¹. Despite this, more than 2 billion people face food insecurity each year – when it comes to hunger, the problem is not production, but distribution.

At a summit held jointly by Lombard Odier and the University of Oxford, Professor Sir Charles Godfray, Director of the Oxford Martin School, explained the importance of globalisation in building food systems that provide food for all.

“Climate change has many effects on food production,” he said. “Just in the last couple of years we’ve had fires in Australia, we had the heat dome last spring in India where temperatures got so great farmers could literally not get out into their fields, then we had enormous floods in Pakistan. We are beginning to see the direct effects of climate change on food production.”

“What this implies is that we need to have a global food system where one food basket can substitute for another. So that if we have, for example, some really bad harvests in South America, which produces a lot of grain and soya, and then if there are good harvests, for example, in North America and Australia, then one region substitutes for another. And that substitution only works if we have a globally connected food system which allows production in one area to replace another.”

Read also : Avoiding the storm: changing how we eat is the only way to tackle food instability

2. Strength in diversity

Another way to protect against failed harvests is to build resilient agriculture from the ground up. One solution, heralded by the EAT-Lancet Commission’s landmark Planetary Health Diet, is to diversify the crops we grow². Today, out of more than 50,000 possible edible plant species, we rely on just three – rice, corn and wheat – for two thirds of our food energy intake³. This narrow focus is bad for human health and makes our food system vulnerable – increasing crop diversity is argued to be the single most effective way to create resilient food production⁴.

Precision farming, where cutting edge technology is used to minimise farming inputs such as water, fertiliser, and pesticides, also has a role to play. In late 2021 and early 2022, global fertiliser prices spiked to historic highs – fears of widespread food shortages followed. In response, according to the UN food systems progress report, a number of governments are making efforts to reduce reliance on global fertiliser markets by encouraging efficient fertiliser use or even a switch to organic alternatives⁵.

3. Boosting nature-based solutions

Nearly one third of all man-made greenhouse gas emissions come from our food systems. Food production is also the primary driver of biodiversity loss⁶, the leading cause of deforestation, and is responsible for more freshwater withdrawals than any other industry.

Regenerative farming is a nature-first approach to agriculture that aims to restore soil health in order to improve absorption of carbon and water, cutting emissions and building resilience to drought. With regenerative farming, croplands can go from carbon source to carbon sink⁷, putting agricultural emissions into reverse.

Since the UN’s 2021 Food Systems Summit, interest in regenerative farming and agro-forestry – where crops are grown beside and between trees – has grown. A number of major food producers have made nature-first farming a central plank of their efforts to cut emissions – Nestlé is aiming to source 20% of its ingredients through regenerative agriculture by 2025, and in March of this year beer brand Carlsberg announced that it will immediately begin a shift to using only regeneratively farmed barley⁸. However, the UN progress report warns, by late 2021 less than 10% of the world’s biggest 350 food companies had set emissions reduction targets in line with the Paris Agreement.

Read also: Soil – food’s forgotten superhero

4. Empowering communities

The world’s food systems account for around 40% of global employment⁹ – this includes an estimated 500 million smallholders, many of whom live in poor communities¹⁰. With as much as a third of the world’s entire population fed by smallholders, for food systems change to be sustainable, these communities must not be left out in the cold.

However, according to the UN progress report, their inclusion is currently lagging: “Providing sufficient space for women, youth and indigenous peoples to participate and provide local food systems solutions largely remains a problem, leaving broad segments of the world’s population marginalised and insufficiently recognised.”

A number of movements and technological solutions have attempted to fill this gap. The Social Gastronomy movement, for example, raises the profile of small-scale and local actors in our food systems – such as smallholder farmers and local food retailers – in order to ensure they are put at the heart of ‘New Food Systems’. In Kenya, smartphone apps such as Hello Tractor let smallholders hire a tractor for short periods. While across Africa, a growing number of digital technologies – including four free apps from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation¹¹ – are providing farmers with weather reports, advice on livestock health and fertiliser use, and enabling direct connections to potential buyers.

In some parts of the world, however, poorer communities are excluded from this revolution. In sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, just 26% of farmers have internet access, with women 13% less likely to own smartphones¹².

Read also: How global food giant Nestlé is putting regenerative agriculture at the heart of sustainable food

Growing urgency

The UN food systems progress report paints a mixed picture. Since 2021, 122 countries have created roadmaps for moving to sustainable food production and consumption. Despite this, global hunger is again on the rise¹³, with many lower income countries lacking “infrastructure for storage, transport and processing, leading to post-harvest losses, limited access to markets, and increased food waste.”

According to the report, the cost of today’s unsustainable food systems – seen in environmental damage and diminished human health – “amounts to a staggering USD 12 trillion, undermining decades of collective development achievements.” However, the report continues, if we can get it right, “food systems transformation presents an extraordinary opportunity to achieve the world’s shared goals.”

This growing momentum is creating an annual profit pool that we estimate will be worth USD 1.5 trillion annually by 2030, as government subsidies begin to be redirected towards sustainable production, policy and regulations incentivise lower-emissions farming, and consumers, increasingly, vote with their plates. Investors can be a central part of this change, contributing to the scale-up of innovations in areas such as ‘green’ fertilisers, digital solutions for precision farming and food distribution, and in the fast-growing field of alternative proteins.

Time, however, is not on our side. A recent study in the scientific journal Nature warns that climate change is intensifying the risk of simultaneous harvest failures across multiple regions, and that governments are underestimating the severity of the threat¹⁴. According to the EAT-Lancet Commission, “food is the single strongest lever to optimise human health and environmental stability on Earth.” As we face the rising threat of a changing climate, it’s a lever we’d do well to pull now.

¹ 5 facts about food waste and hunger | World Food Programme (wfp.org)
² EAT-Lancet Commission Brief for Everyone - EAT (eatforum.org)
³ Dimensions of need - Staple foods: What do people eat? (fao.org)
⁴ Diversification for enhanced food systems resilience | Nature Food
⁵ unfss-sg-report_advanced-unedited-version.pdf (unfoodsystemshub.org)
⁶ Our global food system is the primary driver of biodiversity loss (unep.org)
⁷ How carbon-smart farming can feed us and fight climate change | World Economic Forum (weforum.org)
⁸ Carlsberg expands use of regenerative barley (beveragedaily.com)
⁹ unfss-sg-report_advanced-unedited-version.pdf (unfoodsystemshub.org)
¹⁰ A Year in the Lives of Smallholder Farmers (worldbank.org)
¹¹ FAO launches four new agricultural service apps in Africa | E-Agriculture
¹² How technology can help farmers in Africa | World Economic Forum (weforum.org)
¹³ 2.1 Food security indicators – latest updates and progress towards ending hunger and ensuring food security (fao.org)
¹⁴ Risks of synchronized low yields are underestimated in climate and crop model projections | Nature Communications

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