In many parts of the world, from local to international organizations and governments, we are hearing a cry for food system transformation. What are these cries calling for?
Transformation is much more than change. A common definition says transformation is a thorough and dramatic change in form or appearance. A more natural system definition is a metamorphosis during the life cycle of an animal. A caterpillar transforms into a butterfly, which is a total transformation. The caterpillar changes as it grows, but it transforms as it emerges from its cocoon and spreads its wings to fly.
So what does it mean when we say we must transform our food systems? Looking around at commentaries and communications, transformation seems to have become the “term de jour.” But how is the term being used? From my perspective as an agroecologist, just as the term “sustainable” has been overused and misused, I fear the same is happening to transformation. Just as the butterfly transforms when it leaves the cocoon, food systems must become something totally different than they are today. In other words, a total paradigm shift is needed.
The way we produce our food is under pressure like never before. And with the climate crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic now posing the greatest challenges to nourishing the expanding global population, our precious and fragile food systems are fast reaching a breaking point.
So do we intensify the current systems of farming with small changes and new technologies, or is there a better way? Writing in a new book, Transformation of our food systems, published by the sustainable development organization Biovision and the German farming charity Foundation on Future Farming, scientists and food security experts put forward the foundation for food system transformation. Agroecology – a farming philosophy and approach that works for nature and people – they say, can nourish the world, fight climate change and help solve the global food security crisis.
Importantly, the book also builds on the first global UN-led work on food security, the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) report. Published in 2009, the report highlighted the urgent need for greater resilience in order to sustain future food supplies. It even warned that our food system would not withstand a global pandemic, and informed many of the UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.
Over a decade later, there is increasing awareness of the fundamental need for a sustainable food system. Now, ahead of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) and the UN’s Food System Summit in 2021, it is vital that the world moves decisively toward a better food future, informed by science-based targets. Agroecology, with its participatory, transdisciplinary, and action-oriented approach, is a big part of the scientific foundation upon which transformation can build.
The book has eight key messages that are described in detail in a paper by Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, Lim Li Ching and Ivette Perfecto available at: https://www.globalagriculture.org/fileadmin/files/weltagrarbericht/IAASTD-Buch/Key_Messages_E-1.pdf.
Business as usual” is (still) not an option. A radical transformation of food systems is necessary.
Failure to make progress at national and global levels is due primarily to lack of political will, power imbalances and system lock-ins.
We cannot solve today’s multiple, converging and accelerating crises with uni-dimensional, linear, reductionist or mechanistic responses. We need, rather, to embrace a food systems approach with solutions that have multiple, converging and positively reinforcing outcomes that bring beneficial synergistic effects across multiple domains.
Progress toward a livable and viable future requires deeply participatory democratic processes and cannot be attained without attention to basic rights – in particular the rights of farmers, women, Indigenous peoples, people of color, and other people working in rural areas.
Stabilizing climate and reversing trends in biodiversity losses requires transforming agri-food systems toward agroecological systems, reducing food waste and loss as well as meat consumption in most regions, and prioritizing and valuing natural, social and human capital.
Promotion of healthy, diversified and sustainable diets can both reduce the major forms of malnutrition and offer multiple reinforcing co-benefits to human and ecological health.
Rebalancing power in the agri-food system requires action to both curtail the power of dominant corporations and large businesses that underpin the industrial food system and to provide space for different trade and marketing systems that empower and allow small-scale and peasant farmers, Indigenous peoples, women, and rural and urban communities to flourish.
Systems transformation requires a re-visioning and re-centering of values of equity, reciprocity and solidarity; principles of democracy, justice and collectivity; and the recognition that humans exist within, not outside of, nature. The process of transformation also implies re-valorizing the local, socio-cultural, biodiverse and resilient.
The book is available for free download at https://www.globalagriculture.org/transformation-of-our-food-systems/book.html. The true meaning of food system transformation is clear. We are ready for an IAASTD+10! Will we listen and act this time?