UN Food Systems Summit 

• The UN Food Systems Summit conducted recently aimed to build a consensus on altering our food production systems to reduce the sector’s huge emissions without cutting down funding.
• The summit highlighted the reality of our food systems disrupting the planet’s health.
• Around 90 countries “committed” to reform the food systems that range from what food we grow to how we do it, from what we eat to how governments support the producers, and for what. 

Significance of the reforms in food system

• Food systems support 3.2 billion people’s livelihoods and cannot be ignored.
• The food system transformation is considered essential in achieving the sustainable development agenda 2030 since they are central to global challenges of hunger and climate change, poverty and inequality. 
• This makes strong sense as 12 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) out of 17 are directly related to the food system.

Other global events in reforming food system

• The 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties in November in Glasgow, Scotland, is expected to take up the food and agriculture systems from the perspective of climate change. 
• On December 7-8, 2021, Japan will host the Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Summit that will focus on improving nutrition within global food systems. The UN Food Systems Summit this year provides the context to these events to take up reforms in the food systems.

Existing issues in the food system

Could not meet the SDG

• Though the world produces enough to feed 10 billion people every year which is much more than the current world population, yet the world will not be able to meet the SDG of eradicating hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms by 2030. 
  • In 2020, one third of the world’s population could not access adequate food.
  • Inequality in access to adequate and healthy food is widening precipitating malnutrition.
  • Lack of a healthy diet has resulted in 690 million people in chronic malnourished states and 2 billion individuals suffer micronutrient deficiencies. 
  • According to various estimates, poor quality diets are linked to 11 million deaths per year.

Heavy toll on the planet’s health

• As per Living Planet Report 2020 by World Wide Fund for Nature, a Switzerland-based International Non-Profit, earmarking increasingly more land for agriculture to produce more has caused 70 per cent of global biodiversity loss and 50 per cent of all tree cover. 
• Intense agriculture, processing and delivering food produce account for 25 per cent of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). 
• The hidden cost of the contemporary food systems to the environment and public health is $ 12 trillion per year which is expected to rise to $16 trillion by 2050. 

GLOBAL REFORMS

Reforming Government Support system

• A Multi-Billion-Dollar Opportunity: Repurposing agricultural support to transform food systems—a report released by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) identifies governments’ support system for farmers and agriculture as first target for reform. The UN aims not to eliminate support but to repurpose it in a way that its adverse impacts are negated. 

Why?

• 87 percent of the total support is price distorting and environmentally and socially harmful.
• Most of the support and incentives are tied to the production of a specific commodity and does not benefit all farmers. 
• The support is for the most emission-intensive sectors like sugar and beef production. 
• The current support systems invariably help corporate more than producers.

UN recommendations

• The UN has a six-step recommendation for governments
  • Measuring the support provided; 
  • Understanding its positive and negative impacts; 
  • Identifying repurposing options; 
  • Forecasting their impacts; 
  • Refining the proposed strategy and detailing its implementation plan; and, finally, 
  • Monitoring the implemented strategy. 

Challenges

• The systems’ reform decides food prices, level of food in- take, and the food trade on which farmers depend. 
• Not all countries can take up the same type of reforms instead countries have deployed these support systems to make their agri-products marketable that helps to sustain the farmers. 

Conclusion

• Repurposing agricultural support to shift our agri-food systems in a greener, more sustainable direction including by rewarding good practices such as sustainable farming and climate-smart approaches can improve both productivity and environmental outcomes.