What are the imperatives for food systems transformation?
The many reverberating impacts of climate emergency and the COVID-19 pandemic, and their intersections with other deep, structural injustices in our societies, confirm that “business as usual” is simply no longer an option. We urgently need food systems transformation. But, to make this happen we need diverse actors to connect — to build critical mass around shared visions, values, and calls to action. We need to be bold.
This week we published what we consider to be the critical pathways for food systems transformation. These emergent “calls to action” were drawn from the Global Alliance’s collaborative work with members, partners, allies, and others over the last eight years. We drew on the outcomes of international dialogues we’ve held, big and small, and on the following wealth of materials we’ve created since 2012: Synthesis of Global Reports, Beacons of Hope, Seeds of Resilience, Climate Change and Food Systems Report, Food-Health Nexus Report, TEEBAgriFood, and others.
These seven calls to action touch on all priority aspects of food systems change from healthy diets to resilient production practices to the governance and economics that heavily impact the entire value chain. They have been identified based on the most common and repeated recommendations for imperatives for food systems transformation across all of our work informed by the myriad system actors we have collaborated with from private sector representatives to policy-makers to civil society actors.
Crucially, each demand is underpinned by the following cross-cutting imperatives:
- Food systems thinking as a prerequisite for holistic action: Food systems thinking is both a means (a way of bringing the different problems and their connections to light) and an end (a basis for acting on the risks we face). We must systematically bring to light the multiple connections between different health impacts, between human health, animal health, and ecosystem health, between food, health, poverty, and climate change, and between social and environmental sustainability. Only when these issues and risks are viewed in their entirety, across the food system and on a global scale, can we adequately assess the trade-offs, priorities, and potential pathways for food systems transformations.
- Rights and equity as central to creating fair, sustainable, just, and resilient food systems: Equity and racial justice are fundamental to food systems transformation. Equity is about social justice, fairness, and inclusiveness and can be defined in multiple dimensions. Future food systems must include, benefit, and meet the needs of the world’s most vulnerable people. The fundamental aspects of equitable food systems include ethical principles such as: land tenure rights; the right to food and food sovereignty; the right to healthy environments and other human rights; gender equity; environmental justice; ethical considerations of animal welfare, food waste, and emerging technologies. Political influence, land, and profits are increasingly concentrated amongst a few major global players. These power dynamics must be addressed and overcome in every pathway for food systems transformation in order to achieve equitable outcomes.
- Networks converging around shared visions and values as the basis for genuine food systems transformation: Genuine food systems transformation takes place when diverse actions, networks, and individuals intersect across sectors and issue silos, the global and local, the macro and the micro. These intersections facilitate convergence around shared visions and values and, ultimately, build critical mass and momentum behind tipping points that lead to healthy, equitable, interconnected, renewable, resilient, culturally diverse, and inclusive food systems that dynamically endure over time. This is our theory of transformation.
It is in the spirit of our theory of transformation that we put forward the seven recommendations for global food systems transformation. The complexity of transforming food systems is real and challenging, but it should not be an excuse for inaction. We hope the calls to action will resonate with the many other efforts working towards a better future of food. As a spring-board for conversation or an entry point for intervention, they can be used individually or collectively.
To find out more, go to: www.futureoffood.org
