New report highlights huge challenges facing food systems to deliver healthy diets

29 September 2020, Rome – Facing huge challenges to deliver healthy diets and ensure food security for all, food systems must urgently become more resilient and sustainable, according to the latest report from a high-level panel in partnership with the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition launched today its new report, ‘Future Food Systems: For people, our planet, and prosperity’, at a virtual event co-hosted by FAO.

The report assesses the developing crises that relate to malnutrition, the dysfunctional relationship between food systems and the natural environment, and also the lack of resilience of food systems – highlighted most recently by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Launching the report, the Director-General of FAO, QU Dongyu, said current food systems do not enable us to adequately protect the health and well-being of people. 

Referring to the recent State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI 2020), Qu stressed the number of those people affected by chronic hunger had increased by 10 million to 690 million in 2019.

“People eat what is available and what they can afford,” he told members of the panel. “Both the SOFI2020 Report and the Global Panel Report came to the same conclusion that a healthy diet is not affordable to a large proportion of the world’s population.”

However, QU noted that digital technology, innovation and investment could make a substantial difference to food systems, and he invited governments to make a political commitment to providing social protection for the vulnerable as well as policies that increased household incomes, especially among smallholder farmers. He also welcomed the release of the report on what is the first International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste.

The report contains recommendations for action including an appeal to policy makers to bring together relevant ministries so they can realign production systems and focus on global development targets, like the Sustainable development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, to enable progress.  The report also called for policy makers to build resilience in food systems, particularly as COVID-19 has highlighted their current deficiencies and vulnerabilities.

Sir John Beddington, co-chair and former Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Government, said the report had revealed a terrible situation in food systems and nutrition but emphasized it was not too late to take action.  His co-chair, John Kufuor, the former president of Ghana, said speed was critical if there was to be a transformation of food systems and protect the quality of life.

Agnes Kalibata, the President of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), pointed out food needed to be affordable and underscored the importance of next year’s first-ever UN Food Systems Summit, for which she is the UN Special Envoy, saying it would provide an opportunity to engage globally.

The panel found that an estimated 26 percent of the world’s population experienced hunger or inadequate access to nutritious food in 2019. It also said most countries were not on track to meet nutrition targets for 2025 set by the World Health Assembly.

“Food systems are locked in a spiral of decline with environmental systems,” the report stated. “They are also major causes of degradation of the environmental systems on which they themselves depend (including biodiversity, freshwater, oceans, land and soils).

If left unchecked there would be an immense threat posed by transgressions to food systems and food security in the future, the report said.

It stated that the number of people living in fragile settings was projected to reach 2.3 billion, which includes 80 percent of the global poor.

The Global Panel is an independent international group of leaders who hold, or have held, high office and show strong personal commitment to improving nutrition. It was formally established in August 2013 at the Nutrition for Growth Summit in London and is funded by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).