The Transition Steps Needed to Transform Our Food Systems

Abstract

Contemporary food systems are unable to keep up with the food and nutritional demands of the world’s population and are unsustainable. The situation is set to worsen in the future due population growth and climate change, increasing competition for land, water, and other natural resources, and emerging diseases, conflict, and economic volatility. Government policymakers, donors, businesses, non-governmental organisations, and civil society should be encouraged to adopt a radical approach to transforming contemporary food systems. This chapter chalks out a practical plan for specific transition steps needed for the transformation of food systems. It lays out steps that can be taken at the international level, by national governments, civil societies, companies operating in the food system, and donors. It is emphasised that food systems need to move beyond addressing hunger to address all forms of malnutrition. Consumer demand needs to be harnessed as a significant driver of change. Food systems must become fully environmentally sustainable, thereby operating within planetary boundaries, and no one must be left behind during the transition. The transition needs to deliver transformed food systems capable of operating at two speeds, i.e., responding to immediate needs and short-term shocks, but also able to address the long-term restructuring of food systems needed to respond to climate change, population growth and urbanisation. The choices faced by these stakeholders may be confsidered by setting new priorities and principles to guide transition choices, placing poor and marginalised people at the heart of the transition, tackling trade-offs and compromises head on, ensuring that the transition process is appropriately resourced, and incentivising and supporting the actions.