Opinion: Food systems harm people and planet. Here is how we fix that

The most pressing human and planetary health challenges of the 21st century revolve around the food we produce, process, distribute, sell, and consume. Strategic, tailored action plans that include robust data collection and are aggressively designed to attract private financing are now key to transforming the global food system. By every measure, the global community is off track to meet the audacious goal of ending hunger and malnutrition by 2030. In 2021, in support of the United Nations Food Systems Summit’s secretary-general declaration, more than 100 member states committed to national action pathways that by 2030 would move the world closer to a more equitable and resilient food system. To ensure success in these commitments, the U.N. secretary-general agreed to convene a biannual stocktaking of national and global progress. So, in late July, thousands of global state stakeholders, private sector and civil society organizations, and hunger and climate advocates gathered for the second U.N. Food Systems Summit Stocktaking, or UNFSS +2, in Rome to evaluate our collective progress to date. While the stifling Mediterranean heat wave enveloping Rome magnified the urgency around climate inaction and its ramifications for human and planetary health, the stocktaking fell woefully short on delivering concrete action toward achieving both our Sustainable Development Goals and Paris climate goals. The good news: Tribalism among the community of stakeholders in search of a singular solution to delivering a just, sustainable food system transformation has diminished. Disparate stakeholders now acknowledge that geographic and cultural differences across the complex food system require embracing a diverse platform of solutions to grow, transport, and consume food in a way that respects both people and the planet. The bad news: The necessary actions and financing are not coming forward fast enough and at sufficient scale to address the multifaceted, accelerating food systems crises we face today. For context, in an age when technologies have extraordinary capabilities and business innovations abound, our food system is failing, with underserved communities disproportionately bearing the health, climate, and economic burdens. Worldwide, 3.1 billion people cannot afford a diverse, nutritious diet; over 780 million people will suffer from diabetes by 2045, with poor diet causing the majority of these cases; and poor nutrition is a leading cause of premature death and major chronic diseases globally. In sum, malnutrition, diet-related chronic diseases, and associated inequities are getting worse, not better. The food system’s impacts on planetary health are just as catastrophic: Food systems are a primary contributor to climate change, accounting for over one-third of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas, or GHG, emissions, leading biodiversity and freshwater losses, and driving the depletion of forests and other natural habitats. Roughly two-thirds of agrifood-related GHG emissions arise directly from agricultural production and land use changes, with the remainder originating from energy-intensive food processing, transport, packaging, and food retail activities. Harms are bidirectional: climate change strains our food systems’ adaptive capacity and people’s consistent access to healthy foods. Together, food and land use systems generate “hidden” environmental, health, and poverty costs estimated at almost $12 trillion a year for people and the planet, a number larger than the value of the system’s world output measured at market price. Food systems are just as culpable for the accelerating global planetary health, human health, and poverty crises of our generation as they are capable of generating the solutions necessary to fix them. But the window of time left to leverage global will and capital to keep us from the brink of a food systems collapse is rapidly closing. The global food systems community must capitalize on the next set of mobilizing events — Climate Week and SDG Week in New York, as well as the 28th U.N. Climate Change Conference, or COP 28, in Dubai — to elevate food and agriculture as a core component of global, equitable climate action and financing with strategic, long-term, and commercially viable solutions. So, how do we start? First, we must advance an agenda that acknowledges there is no one-size-fits-all solution for fixing the global food system. To sustainably transform food systems for people and the planet, a diversity of solutions is required, working on different time horizons, scales, geographic contexts, dimensions, and challenges across the value chain. These must acknowledge the harmonies and trade-offs that exist between climate, human health, and equity and prosperity goals. Second, to deliver on such a food systems transformation, we must implement robust data collection and impact measurement and management systems to track, estimate, and quantify those trade-offs; inform country-level action; and ultimately drive accountability by all stakeholders to achieve greater transparency of the benefits and consequences of actions and efforts. Based on this data, we can then champion and accelerate the specific, evidence-based, and innovative solutions that optimize equitable returns for people and the planet and achieve true connectivity and circularity across the value chain. Third, we must aggressively partner, align, and mobilize private sector stakeholders within and outside the bounds of the traditional food system in recognition that without radical change, our shared goals for equitable returns for people and the planet will remain unmet. Food systems are woefully underinvested in, particularly by private financiers. Tackling underinvestment will require addressing the factors driving this lack of capital head-on. How does that look? First, by offering innovative, collaborative funding models that leverage investment from diverse public and private sources with different risk appetites, return requirements, and potential social goals to de-risk food system investment. Also by creating a common lexicon and database of global private finance flows into the food system to communicate more effectively and increase transparency of what investments are needed and where. And thirdly, by showing financiers that the corollary of food and agriculture investment risks is the tremendous opportunity they provide for driving financial success through changing our food systems to ones that improve human health, ensure equitable livelihoods, minimize carbon footprint, and protect biodiversity and other natural resources. For example, the Food and Land Use Coalition identified 10 critical transitions for food systems transformation — spanning healthy diets and regenerative agriculture to strengthening rural livelihoods and reducing food loss and waste — representing $4.5 trillion a year in new business opportunities by 2030. Estimates suggest a high performing, inclusive food system providing equitable returns for people and the planet will require $300 billion to $350 billion of new investment per year into these critical transitions — less than 0.5% of global GDP. Mobilizing financiers around these new business opportunities, with proven commercially viable models to adapt to different geographic and food system contexts, will be fundamental to drive effective, sustainable food systems change. The road map to achieving the Paris climate goals, ensuring health and health equity, and securing equitable livelihoods hinges on embracing a diversity of solutions, measuring and managing impact trade-offs across these goals, and mobilizing innovative funding mechanisms around an audacious and just food systems transformation.