Food Security - From the Global to the Local Dimension

Abstract

Food security, environmental health and quality, and social well-being represent key outcomes of sustainable food systems. Achieving global food security is an important element of the Un Agenda 2030 and its Sustainable Development Goals. The course will explore the contribution of Sustainable Food Systems to achieve the SDGs.

Objective

The main outcomes of food systems are food and nutrition security, environmental quality and health (including the protection of natural resources and the mitigation of climate change impacts), decent livelihoods and social wellbeing. The year 2021 is a special year when it comes to sustainable food systems. Nine years from now, the Agenda 2030 and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) comes to an end. However, global community is still far from achieving many of the goals, especially Goal 2 zero hunger. Even worse, the global hunger situation has deteriorated in recent years. In 2021, UN Secretary-General, Mr Antonio Guterres, will convene a Food System Summit in September to launch «bold new actions to transform the way the world produces and consumes food, delivering progress on all 17 Sustainable Development Goals».. This year, the Food Security course takes up topics closely linked to the five Action Tracks formulated by the organizers of the Food System Summit. The Food System Summit serves as space to share and learn, with a view to fostering new actions and partnerships and amplifying existing initiatives. https://foodsystems.community/. The concept of “Food systems” is key to understand the complex framework of actions to ensure food and nutrition security of present and future generations around the globe. Farmers and the related farming practices, food processors, logistics operators and retailers as well as the consumers themselves are some of the key actors in any food system. Others are policy makers, public administration, research institutions, etc. Several methods and tools have been developed to assess the sustainability of agriculture and of food systems. Different approaches have been set-up and tested to facilitate the transition of food systems within their given local environment towards more sustainability. The course will focuse on transformation pathways towards sustainable food systems. Students should learn from practical experiences and discuss, in groups and with experts from FAO and other organizations, the complexity but as well the pathways to improve the functioning of local food systems. The students should discover and explore approaches, tools, strategies and policies which support the transition of food systems or specific elements of them at different scale: local, national or even global. We want to address how the barriers to adopt them could be overcome.

Content

Achieving a transformation to sustainability is a major challenge of the world. Because adverse impacts of climate change are very likely to worsen with time, a global transformation to sustainable food and agriculture should begin now. At the World Food Summit (WFS) in 1996 food security was defined as follows: “Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food which meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.” Availability, access, utilization and stability are generally recognized as the four dimensions of food security, combining (i) availability of food at a certain time and a certain place, (ii) individuals physical and monetary accessibility, (iii) appropriate use of the food to make sure it’s healthy and of high quality and (iv) stability of the food system, especially regarding the economic, political and environmental conditions. The High Level Panel of Experts of the Committee for Food Security (CFS) recommends in their last report released in 2020 to acknowledge two dimensions: Agency, as the capacity (of individuals or groups) to make their own decisions about food production, processing, distribution and consumption, and their ability to participate in processes which shape food system policies and governance. Sustainability, as the long-term ability of food systems to provide food security and nutrition in such a way that does not compromise the economic, social and environmental bases of food security and nutrition. According to the 2019 FAO report on “The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World,” the world faces an unacceptably high burden of malnutrition. Over 820 million people do not get enough food to eat, and malnutrition is responsible for more ill health than any other cause. At the same time, obesity has contributed to 4 million deaths globally. Worldwide, there is an urgent need to improve the way food is produced, consumed, and wasted in order to increase sustainability. Three main aspects will support the learning process during the course: (i)Exploring visions, concepts, approaches and tools that are leading to any improvement of functioning of any food system (local, national, global), such as among others, sustainability assessment methods, agroecology, nutrition-sensitive value chain approach, climate-smart agriculture and tools (like SAFA framework developed by FAO), responsible investments, circular economy and especially food waste management, safe food initiative, one-health concept, etc.; (ii) Identifying and analyzing examples of cities, regions, countries which have developed their own strategies and pathways to make a transition to a sustainable food system; (iii) Reflecting about the role of policy making processes, United-Nations Agencies like FAO, the research and especially the agriculture research, and other institutional players, the NGOs and the civil society, the consumers, the private sector and the public administrations. Eradicating hunger and ensuring food security for all at any time is one of the key challenges of our society. The specific issues related to “food systems” will be at focus of this course. In desk research, discussions and by listening to experts, we critically reflect and analyze how food security can be achieved, livelihoods improved and natural resources conserved. Based on case study analysis of examples from FAO work and others, we will discuss promising pathways to address this global challenge.

Resources