It’s long been clear that if food systems will ever truly be transformed, policymakers will need data to guide their decisions and measure their impact. But there was never a comprehensive means for them to do that — until now.
A group of food systems researchers and experts has developed a science-based monitoring architecture to assess food systems transformation worldwide. It emerged from discussions at the first United Nations Food Systems Summit in 2021, where among other things countries made commitments to create sustainable food systems. It’s also where the Food Systems Countdown to 2030 Initiative, or FSCI, was born.
The initiative spent the past two years putting together that architecture — and last month they laid out their methodology in a peer-reviewed article in the journal Nature Food. They also published a first annual countdown report that paints a picture of the current state of national food systems and measures them against the new framework.