Foresight 2.0 report: Future Food Systems: For people, our planet, and prosperity.

 

This evidence-based report offers policy solutions to improve the quality of diets using a food systems approach through promoting availability, accessibility, affordability, desirability, and sustainably, healthy diets for all.

 

Drawing on the latest science and evidence, the report identifies the systemic policy failures that are behind these interlinked crises and sets out the essential steps, which need to be taken so that food systems can transition to become fit for the future. Read more about the report in a new blog on the  website by Shenggen Fan, Global Panel member and Former Director General of IFPRI.

In order to deliver sustainable, healthy diets for all, food systems must be fundamentally transformed. They remain profoundly dysfunctional. Most countries are not on track to meet most of the nutrition targets for 2025 by the World Health Assembly. So much more has to be done, including shifting dietary patterns globally to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and impacts on biodiversity.

 

The Report

• The aim and key added value of this report is to draw on the best available science and evidence to set out a practical way forward which is grounded in the realities of policy development in LMICs.
• The advice and recommendations offered by the Global Panel are aimed primarily at decision makers in LMICs, but they alone cannot turn global challenges around. In a highly interconnected world, high-income countries also have a vital role to play, particularly where their own decisions have impacts on LMICs. High-income countries (HICs) not only share responsibility for some of the major problems facing us all but are also facing obesity and diet-related disease epidemics of their own.
• This report shows that the underlying problems run deep. Our food systems are failing to produce the foods essential for healthy diets in sufficient quantity and at affordable prices. They are also driving degradation of the natural environment – soil, water and air quality, biodiversity loss and climate change – and dangerously undermining our future well-being. Since this report was commissioned in 2018, COVID-19 has highlighted just how fragile and precarious the world’s food systems have become. The situation is unsustainable.

See Panel members with partners and other stakeholders talking about the report here.

Speakers and Panelists:

• Dr QU Dongyu, Director-General, FAO & Global Panel member
• Dr Anna Lartey, Director, Food and Nutrition, Food and Agriculture of the United Nations (FAO)
• H.E. John Kufuor, Co-Chair, Global Panel
• Sir John Beddington, Co-Chair, Global Panel
• Dr Agnes Kalibata, UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the 2021 Food Systems Summit
• Prof. Patrick Webb, Global Panel Technical Adviser
• Prof. Tim Benton, Co-Chair, Global Panel Lead Expert Group
• Dr Francesco Branca, Director of the Department of Nutrition and Food Safety, World Health Organization (WHO)
• Ms. Diane Holdorf, Managing Director, Food and Nature of World Business Council for Sustainable Development
• Dr Sania Nishtar, Special Assistant on Poverty Alleviation and Social Safety to the Prime Minister of Pakistan

Join the conversation on Twitter using #Foresight.