Transforming Food Systems Under Climate Change Through Innovation

Our food systems have performed well in the past, but they are failing us in the face of climate change and other challenges. This book tells the story of why food system transformation is needed, how it can be achieved and how research can be a catalyst for change. Written by a global interdisciplinary team of researchers, it brings together perspectives from multiple areas including climate, environment, agriculture, and the social sciences to describe how different tools and approaches can be used to tackle food system transformation. It provides practical, actionable insights for policymakers and advisors, demonstrating how science together with strong partnerships can enable real transformation on the ground. It also contributes to the academic debate on the transformation of food systems, and so will be an invaluable reference for researchers and students alike. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

An authoritative reference on food system transformation and how it can be achieved in the face of climate change.

This Open Access book compiles the findings of the Scientific Group of the United Nations Food Systems Summit 2021 and its research partners. The Scientific Group was an independent group of 28 food systems scientists from all over the world with a mandate from the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations. The chapters provide science- and research-based, state-of-the-art, solution-oriented knowledge and evidence to inform the transformation of contemporary food systems in order to achieve more sustainable, equitable and resilient systems.

This book focuses on the contested nature and competing narratives of food system transformations, despite it being widely acknowledged that changes are essential for the safeguarding of human and planetary health and well-being. The book approaches food system transformation through narratives, or the stories we tell ourselves and others about how things work. Narratives are closely connected with theories of change, although food system actors frequently lack explicit theories of change. Using political economy and systems approaches to analyze food system transformation, the author focuses on how power in food systems manifests, and how this affects whom can obtain healthy and culturally appropriate food on a reliable basis. Among the narratives covered are agroecology, food sovereignty and technological innovation. The book draws on interviews and recorded speeches by a broad range of stakeholders, including international policymakers, philanthropists, academics and researchers, workers in the food and agricultural industries and activists working for NGOs and social movements. In doing so, it presents contrasting narratives and their implicit or explicit theories of change. This approach is vitally important as decisions made by policymakers over the next few years, based on competing narratives, will have a major influence on who will eat what, how food will be produced, and who will have a voice is shaping food systems. The overarching contribution of this book is to point toward the most promising pathways for achieving sustainable food systems and refute pathways that show little hope of achieving a more sustainable future. This book will be of great interest to students, scholars and policymakers interested in creating a sustainable food system which will ensure a food secure, socially just and environmentally sustainable future.

Food systems are currently facing tremendous challenges and changes globally. On the one hand, population growth, urbanization, and increased affluence are expected to catalyze dietary shifts and broader changes to food systems in the coming decades. On the other hand, food systems (and changes therein) have major environmental and social ramifications. As a result, fostering the sustainable transformation of food systems is seen as one of the major challenges for meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, understanding food systems, and transforming them in a sustainable manner is far from straightforward, especially as our food systems have multiple intersecting economic, social, technological, and cultural dimensions. Moreover, food systems encompass different stakeholders operating at different levels with enormously different interests and worldviews.

The workshop was organized by the CGIAR Research Initiative on Low-Emission Food Systems (MITIGATE+), which is implemented by a large consortium of partners. The Initiative aims to reduce annual global food systems emissions by working closely with key actors in target countries to co-create knowledge that enables them to make evidence-based decisions and address challenges in food systems discourse, policy development, and implementation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Initiative’s partners support the establishment of a multistakeholder platform and a “living lab for people” (LL4P) that will support bottom-up innovation cases to help transform food systems in Nandi county, Kenya, while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The workshop was part of a series of stakeholder workshops that aims to help clarify development opportunities, the role of different actors in Nandi county, and their interests. The intention was to bring actors together, invite them to think about a joint vision for food systems in the county, and share perspectives on entry points for initiating system change.

Available online: https://pub.norden.org/nord2020-048/ This cookbook of strategies for change is about the role that a strong public innovation system plays along the pathways towards sustainable food systems. We demonstrate this through a mission approach for deliberate food system transformation that can support people, planet and society. This strategy cookbook will provide the ingredients – templates for developing interventions, guides for how to get started and examples of cross-cutting projects – that you can use to create your own recipes for change. We offer a new, emergent way to work with complex and dynamic systems. The cookbook is intended primarily for national and regional innovation agencies, as the government has both a mandate and more authority than any other entity to lead the change needed to achieve sustainable food systems. However, because innovation ecosystems include a variety of different actors, this strategy cookbook also provides valuable insights into the roles that entrepreneurs and civil society and research organisations can play to cultivate change from the bottom-up.

This open access book examines the interactions between India’s economic development, agricultural production, and nutrition through the lens of a “Food Systems Approach (FSA).” The Indian growth story is a paradoxical one. Despite economic progress over the past two decades, regional inequality, food insecurity and malnutrition problems persist. Simultaneously, recent trends in obesity along with micro-nutrient deficiency portend to a future public health crisis. This book explores various challenges and opportunities to achieve a nutrition-secure future through diversified production systems, improved health and hygiene environment and greater individual capability to access a balanced diet contributing to an increase in overall productivity. The authors bring together the latest data and scientific evidence from the country to map out the current state of food systems and nutrition outcomes. They place India within the context of other developing country experiences and highlight India’s status as an outlier in terms of the persistence of high levels of stunting while following global trends in obesity. This book discusses the policy and institutional interventions needed for promoting a nutrition-sensitive food system and the multi-sectoral strategies needed for simultaneously addressing the triple burden of malnutrition in India.

Transformations of Global Food Systems for Climate Change Resilience: Addressing Food Security, Nutrition, and Health provides poignant case studies of climate change resilience frameworks for nutrition-focused transformations of agriculture and food systems, food security, food sovereignty, and population health of underserved and marginalized communities from across the globe. Each chapter is drawn from diverse cultural contexts and geographic areas, addressing local challenges of ongoing food and health system transformations and illustrating forms of resistance, resilience, and adaptations of food systems to climate change. Fourteen chapters present global case studies, which directly address the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the Food and Agriculture Organization’s global call to action for transforming agriculture, addressing food security and nutrition, and the health of populations impacted by climate change and public health issues.They also integrate reflections, insights, and experiences resulting from the COVID-19 Pandemic. This edited volume includes research on (1) enhancing food sovereignty and food security for underserved populations with a particular focus on indigenous peoples; (2) improving locally contextualized definitions and measurements of climate change resilience, food security, hunger, nutrition, and health; (3) informing public health programs and policies for population health and nutrition; and (4) facilitating public and policy discourse on sustainable futures for community health and nutrition in the face of climate change and natural disasters, including ongoing and future pandemics or emergencies. Within this book, readers discover an array of approaches by the authors that exemplify the mutually engaged and reciprocal partnerships that are community-driven and support the positive transformation of the people with whom they work. By doing so, this book informs and drives a global sustainable future of scholarship and policy that is tied to the intersectionality and synergisms of climate change resilience, food security, food sovereignty, nutrition, and community health.

On July 22-23, 2020, the Food Forum of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine hosted a virtual workshop that explored the integration of the health, societal, economic, and environmental effects and future needs of the food system. The main objective of the 1.5-day workshop was to understand how to achieve a more sustainable, resilient, equitable, and nourishing food system. Workshop sessions examined three main dimensions of the food system: vulnerabilities, resiliency, and transformation. The workshop included discussions on global change, access to health and food, resiliency in complex dynamic systems and resiliency for the future, and consumption- and production-oriented strategies that could transform the food system. This publication highlights the presentation and discussion of the workshop.