By Daniel Itai
The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has cited that the current global agrifood system is sick.
According to FAO, the agrifood system encompasses everything connected to food and agriculture, from what we eat to the way food is sold, distributed, processed, and grown. This includes not only food but also other products like fuel and fiber.
“We need to transform the agrifood system because its power to provide solutions is not there. The system is sick, weak, and lacks resilience,” said Corinna Hawkes, FAO’s Director of Food Systems and Food Safety Division.
“The potential power of the agrifood system to provide solutions is not there until we transform it to make it stronger and help it provide the solutions we know it can provide.”
Some major challenges include the way food is grown and produced, which contributes to climate change, weakening the agrifood system.
However, the system can also be a source of solutions to climate change.
Moreover, the agrifood system is producing food that makes people sick, affecting their ability to function well within the system.
Hawkes emphasized the urgent need to bring diversity back into the agrifood system, from the plate all the way to the farms.
Over the last decades, there has been a focus on producing certain key commodity crops for efficiency and productivity, but this has reduced diversity and weakened the system’s resilience.
To combat this, it is essential to produce diversity, which is beneficial for biodiversity,
the environment, and people’s health, ensuring a variety of food on our plates.