United Nations

Dr. Agnes Kalibata, UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy to the 2021 Food Systems Summit

I had the opportunity to interview this year’s UN Food Systems Summit leader for Today News Africa, and learn about what a “food system” really means.

When the United Nations announced the annual food systems summit in the middle of last year, I wasn’t 100 percent sure what a food system was beyond farmers, food, and people eating food. — It’s so much more.

When you think about “seed to table,” and you really drill into all that takes place between someone harvesting seeds to plant, package, and/or sell, and then you consider irrigation systems (water), climate, transportation, and fuel cost, you start to understand how connected our food systems are to almost everything.

You can start at a seed, or a fish, or a farm animal and follow it through a food system to discover the many industries that have touchpoints to processing, moving, and selling these products, but it doesn’t stop there. Food systems are also about people, fueling and keeping them healthy and thriving.

The UN Food Systems Summit created five “action tracks” to group the main objectives and respond to the…