Summary
Current food systems around the world are straining
under the weight of multiple challenges, while at the same
time contributing significantly toward several of those
challenges. Hunger and malnutrition are again on the rise,
up from about 620 million undernourished people in 2014
to almost 690 million in 2019, and from 563 million obese
adults in 2012 to 672 million in 2016. At the same time,
land and soils, as well as biodiversity and ecosystems, are increasingly being degraded. [..]
Meanwhile, the global population is projected to grow to 9.7 billion by 2050, adding another 2 billion people to be fed while increasing pressures on natural resources – hence the need for the adoption of more sustainable consumption and production patterns. [...]
While fighting global poverty, food insecurity, and malnutrition are moral imperatives, promoting sustainability is a sine qua non for food security and nutrition. If our natural resources are depleted and our ecosystems collapse, it will no longer be possible to produce and consume food. To avoid such a situation, we need to transform our food systems and pursue the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which call for major transformations in order to end hunger, achieve food security, and improve nutrition in a sustainable way by 2030.
The challenges described above are multidimensional and interrelated, and therefore require the adoption of a system-based approach that takes into account the interrelations between the different elements across the food system, rather than focusing only on one or a limited subset of food system components in isolation.