Corinna Hawkes the Director of FAO’s Division of Food Systems and Food Security says that a holistic and sustainable approach that takes into account economic, social, and environmental factors, and that brings people together, is needed to ensure nutritious food and sustainable livelihoods for all.
He spoke before the UN Food Systems Summit + 2 Stocktaking moment, which will consider global agrifood systems.
What is the agrifood system?
Corinna Hawkes: The agrifood system is everything connected to food and agriculture. What we eat as well as the way food is sold, distributed and processed. It also includes how to grow or harvest food on land, in the sea, and other non-food products, such as fuel and fiber. All of these processes involve a whole host of activities, investments, and decisions.
An agrifood system combines all these into an interconnected system; for example, if we want to grow fruits and vegetables to make people eat healthier, we need to think about not only growing vegetables, but also how to deliver them to people.
Agrifood systems are also a space for solutions including climate change, loss of biodiversity, malnutrition, chronic diseases, food insecurity, poverty and combating the lack of urban sustainability. Agrifood systems are the solution to the world’s most pressing challenges.
Why does the world need to change agrifood systems?
Currently, the power to provide solutions is not there. The agrifood system is sick. The way it is designed and operates means that it is weak, broken and lacks stability.
So, the frustration and the challenge here, is that the potential power of the agrifood system to provide these solutions is lost until we can transform it to be more sustainable.
Some of the major challenges include the way food is grown and produced which contributes to climate change, which weakens the agrifood system.
What is an example of a current major challenge in agrifood systems?
One thing we’ve done is take a lot of diversity out of the system that includes everything from what’s on our plates to what goes back to the farm. So, we need to restore that diversity.
During the past decades there has been a specialization in the production of some important commodity crops. This is a great idea from a productivity and efficiency perspective; it’s cheap to eat, it means you can sell food, and it reduces production costs. It is important that we produce these crops efficiently.
But what we see is that reducing diversity too much reduces the stability of the system. And we have seen in recent conflicts how the dependence of some of the main producers has further undermined stability.
Diversity is also good for biodiversity and the environment, as well as nutrition for consumers.
How can these challenges be overcome?
There are many ways to transform agrifood systems. The most important way is to integrate all the systems that require the integration of people.
One of the major challenges is that different people are trying to improve biodiversity, nutrition or food safety, while others are trying to improve poverty and the livelihood of agricultural producers.
We need to work together in the system and figure out how to provide these solutions. In this way we begin to see that the agrifood system can be seen as a problem because it is weak, but it is something very strong.
What good works are being promoted today?
I’m really excited about some of the initiatives that are happening at the subnational, urban and city levels. There is a lot of energy in big and small cities where local authorities and many stakeholders are really active.
They improve market infrastructure so that people have better access to food, to make food safe and to reduce loss and waste.
So, we’re starting to see these important connections being made, and that’s happening in hundreds of cities around the world.
What can we expect from the upcoming UN Food Systems Summit +2 Stocktaking Moment?
What I hope to see from the Stocktaking meeting two years after the UN Food Systems Summit is that governments and many other stakeholders will come together to honestly discuss the challenges and share their successes and their challenges in making change.
I want to see a sense of unity between governments and other stakeholders who can agree that they will do better together if they share experiences and good practices to overcome challenges.
The ideal outcome of the summit is that the momentum created will continue and that the commitment to change will not only remain as a commitment but lead to actions on the ground to actually bring about change.