Opinion: We agree that our food systems must be overhauled – now what?

Three weeks ago, the United Nations Food Systems Summit threw into stark relief the fact that our current food systems are unsustainable. They are failing not only the consumer, but the very people who grow our food. At least 3 billion people cannot afford healthy diets. The lives of up to 811 million people are blighted by hunger — including farmers. At the same time, food systems, which are responsible for about a third of greenhouse gas emissions, are a major driver of climate change.

Many of the people who grow our food barely earn enough to survive. According to a recent study of a number of crops sourced from small-scale farms in low- and middle-income countries, only 6.5% of the consumer price in supermarkets reaches the farmer. Traders, food manufacturers, and retailers take the lion’s share.

However, the summit was not called just to condemn our food systems as it may seem, but to put us on the path to changing them. The summit and its run-up — featuring thousands of dialogues and meetings at all levels — brought together the people who can provide solutions: farmers, Indigenous peoples, world leaders, development organizations, civil society, scientists, and the private sector.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development ensured that the voices of marginalized rural farmers — the people who work the land, care for our natural resources, and supply the world with roughly one-third of its food — were part of this global conversation. We supported the organization of more than 40 national, regional, and global independent dialogues led by farmers’ organizations and Indigenous peoples’ groups.

Together with partners, we also surveyed rural farmers in Africa using radio programs and mobile phones to hear their challenges and proposed solutions. Their inputs were presented as an official submission to the summit, and will help inform the decisions made on future actions as the process continues.

Everyone participating in the summit agreed that we need to disrupt, remake, and transform food systems so that they deliver adequate nutritious food for everyone, within planetary boundaries, to ensure sustainability while providing decent incomes for those who work in them. But how?

Concrete actions

IFAD’s flagship Rural Development Report launched last month recommends concrete actions that can be taken. It outlines the shift needed in natural resource management to focus on agroecological techniques, as well as farmer-owned and locally informed approaches to food production and climate adaptation.

Among other things, the report details how investing more in locally owned rural businesses that support activities beyond the farm gate, such as storing, processing, marketing, and food distribution, can increase employment and open up new markets. It also recommends creating incentives to reward healthy diets and nature-based practices, such as re-foresting and protecting mangroves, which results in carbon storage, protection against sea-level rise, and increased populations of marine life.

Enabling small farms to boost their production using more innovative and sustainable technologies, which includes becoming resilient to climate change, is also a priority.

So too is rewarding farmers for providing ecosystem services that help preserve the planet’s resources, such as the provision of water, maintaining healthy soil, and regulation of pests. This will ensure recognizing the real cost of food, which is much more than a price tag on a package. Above all, the actions we take must leave no-one behind, and that means addressing power imbalances and promoting decent wages and living incomes throughout our food systems. Inequality means continued hunger, poverty, and lack of opportunities for future generations.

How will we finance it?

It is not enough to know what has to be done, we also have to be able to pay for it. According to estimates, transforming food systems could cost $300 to $350 billion a year over the next decade.

While financing will need to come from various sources, there is already money in circulation that could be put to work to address some of the inequities and inefficiencies of our food systems.

Public development banks are financial institutions controlled or supported by central or local governments that aim to boost economic development in a country or region. PDBs that invest in food and agriculture as part of their portfolio account for almost two-thirds of formal financing for agriculture, with annual investments of approximately $1.4 trillion, according to research soon to be released by the Institute of New Structural Economics and Agence Française de Développement. Their role in financing food systems transformations could be game-changing.

At the food systems pre-summit in July, we announced, together with AFD and Italy’s Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, the formation of a coalition of partners to harness the potential of PDBs to help finance “greener” and fairer food systems. Next week, the second Finance in Common Summit will be held in Rome where IFAD will further advance this initiative to drive a shift in PDB investments.

To do this, many PDBs need to repurpose their investments to reorient, optimize, and scale-up their financing for social and green investments, and to benefit the rural small-scale producers working in some of the world’s poorest countries.

For some, this includes improving their targeting, risk assessment, and management, as well as their ability to better track and report on environmental and social impact. Many also need to develop more attractive instruments to stimulate investments from the private sector, along with accessible and affordable financial products for rural producers and small- and medium-sized agri-businesses.

Can food systems really change?

It’s not an easy job but it can be done. We need strong, united, and decisive action on a global scale. And this means all of us need to commit to change and take action — not just governments, development agencies, and the organizations in the U.N. system — but also the private sector, scientific community, financial institutions, farmers, processors, marketers, transporters, consumers, and each person involved in food systems.

We certainly need powerful actors with the political will and dedication to drive a new agenda and the financial clout to make it happen. But every one of us has a role to play — since everyone who eats has a stake in feeding the world without destroying it.

The summit was not a silver bullet but a down payment for a future in which food systems deliver nutritious diets, decent livelihoods, and protect nature. We have laid a foundation. Now the real work begins.