Game Changing Solutions for Food System Transformation
By Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition
Ahead of the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit, the Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition has developed a short paper summarising a set of game changing solutions identified in the Panel’s recent foresight report ‘Future Food Systems: For people, our planet and prosperity’.
The Panel’s Foresight report is closely aligned with the objectives of the forthcoming Summit. While a transition to healthier, more sustainable food systems will require a myriad of actions conditioned by local settings, a number of cross-cutting recommendations stand out from the findings of the Foresight report because of their critical importance and far-reaching implications.
These include enhancing and repurposing food-based dietary guidelines and new measures of ‘success’ to guide policy decisions, and a new set of incentives to rebalance food prices to simultaneously address challenges of affordability, availability, consumer demand, and sustainability.
Also highlighted are measures to promote the consumption of sustainable, healthy foods in in public facilities, such as schools, childcare centres, nursing homes, hospitals and other public institutions, and the reform of trade policies to focus on resilience, accessibility and affordability of healthy diets. Financing food system reform can be realised through a set of measures to incentivise the private sector to realign its resources, and the establishment of a dedicated Global Financing Facility.
Together, the recommendations identified in the summary paper provide a set of actions that could provide maximum leverage for food system transition and should be considered as a priority by policy makers engaging with the Food Systems Summit.
The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the United Nations Food Systems Summit.
