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Counting on nature for the food we eat

Our food supply is at risk if we do not invest in more resilient, diverse food systems

July 24^th, 2023

As the United Nations Food Systems Summit +2 gets under way in Rome, the number of people in need of urgent, life-saving food assistance is rising at an alarming rate. According to FAO’s State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report, 193 million people in 53 countries experienced crisis food insecurity in 2021.

As UN Secretary-General António Guterres has stressed:

“The war in Ukraine has compounded problems that have been brewing for years: climate disruption; the COVID-19 pandemic; the deeply unequal recovery.”

War, slow recovery from the pandemic-induced recession; climate shocks, including floods, droughts and heat waves hitting multiple regions of the world; energy, food and fertilizer price spikes: these interconnected crises are exacerbating food insecurity.

The UN Food Systems Summit reminds us that food system transformations have started to happen, but there is still an implementation gap to be closed. How can a focus on nature help?

Diversifying our food systems

Globally, conflict remains the main driver of food insecurity. As impacts of war in Ukraine ripple across the world, the dangers of depending on an increasingly globalized food system are clear. In 2021 the Russian Federation and Ukraine ranked among the top three global exporters of wheat, barley, maize, rapeseed, rapeseed oil, sunflower seed and sunflower oil.

But homogenization of food consumption habits leaves the world reliant for nourishment on a limited number of crops from a limited number of places. Just three cereal crops – rice, maize, and wheat – provide 60 percent of our calorie intake globally. While global and regional trade play a significant role in poverty reduction, high concentrations of crops exported by a small number of companies or countries make prices more volatile, and the poor more vulnerable.

The root causes of food insecurity must be addressed for a permanent transformation towards a resilient food future. What is clear from disaster response in countries such as Ukraine, is that when crisis hits, it’s too late to act.

Egypt, for example, relied on the Black Sea Region for 85 percent of its wheat imports, causing major food shortages when the war in Ukraine began.

Responses to the repeated food systems crises cannot be piecemeal – a complex problem needs complex thinking to reach a solution. UNDP has brought together a broad-based Integrated Task Team (ITT) to plot a course for a global food systems transformation in the face of these crises. The complexity of the challenge is demonstrated by the breadth of membership of UNDP’s ITT, with personnel from UNDP’s Crisis Bureau, the Food and Agricultural Commodity Systems (FACS) team, Disaster Risk Reduction, Climate Change Adaptation, and experts from the Humanitarian Development Peace Nexus, Inclusive Growth, and Governance.

The fragility of our global food systems has become glaringly apparent in the wake of COVID-19, the war in Ukraine and climate shocks, highlighting the need for a holistic, planetary approach to solve the problem. Photo: NASA

Protecting nature for a food secure future

The link between thriving nature and thriving food systems was a central theme at the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15) held in December 2022 in Montreal, Canada. Productive food and agricultural commodity systems depend on nature, rich biodiversity and functioning ecosystems. Biological diversity makes nutritious food available; provides quality freshwater; protects from natural hazards; regulates infectious disease and climate and air quality; and provides medicines and timber, fibre and fuel.

Yet at the same time, agriculture is one of the main contributors to climate change through greenhouse gas emissions. Destruction of natural habitats to make way for agricultural expansion is a principal driver behind biodiversity and ecosystems services loss.

Excessive use of chemical and synthetic fertilizers to increase crop yields can contaminate fresh water; cause toxic algal blooms; put human health at risk and threaten future food security. Of US$540 billion in annual government support to agricultural producers, 87 percent are price distorting or harmful to nature and health.

To make our food systems more robust, practices that reduce our negative impact on our environment must be accelerated, while supporting valuable, diverse, traditional, and nutritious local food products. Indeed, nature-based approaches – because they take full account of the entire ecosystem and take a longer-term view – should build resilience in food systems and help to insulate them against shocks from trade and climate.

Sustainable farming practices, including reducing the use of chemical and synthetic fertilizers, can help make our food systems more resilient. Photo: Shutterstock

Brave land: The case of Cuba

Change is possible – and the experience of Cuba proves it. The Caribbean archipelago is considered among the world’s most biodiverse ecosystems. Despite 60 years of isolation and hardship caused by economic embargoes, Cuba has turned its land degradation challenge into an opportunity.

After two hurricanes hit Cuba in 2008, devastating the Pinar del Rio region, the government introduced a policy to revive the ravaged and unproductive landscape. Partly due to the lack of imported agricultural inputs, low-input, sustainable farming methods were promoted.

Hurricane Gustav tore through Cuba's western province of Pinar del Río in 2008 rendering a once highly fertile landscape largely unproductive. Photo: Shutterstock

A parallel Global Environment Facility-financed Country Pilot Partnership on Sustainable Land Management, supported by the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Environment Programme and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, catalysed a shift from high-input monoculture to low-input, organic methods of growing diverse crops and livestock.

Onay Martinez Diaz was among 12,000 farmers who took part in the initiative. Today, he applies principles such as green manuring, mulching, bio-fertilizers, bio-pesticides, intercropping, and mixed agro-forestry on his 22-hectare organic farm named ‘Tierra Brava’, meaning ‘brave land’.

"I have millions of insects and worms working for me," Onay said. "I consider myself an ecosystem manager rather than a farmer!"

He now cultivates a diverse range of crops, including soursop – a Caribbean crop well-suited to the local climatic conditions – and seven varieties of mango. The different crop fruiting times allow Onay to supply several markets over much longer periods in the year.

Across Cuba, such practices have been implemented on over 15,000 hectares of land at demonstration sites to combat desertification, halt deforestation and restore degraded soil. Food producer incomes have at least doubled at demonstration sites, making food systems more resilient and improving water-use efficiency by up to 70 percent at some sites.

Biodiversity and food systems

Aligning our food systems with nature-based solutions will improve human health and livelihoods as well. As the Food Systems Summit in Rome reminds us, we have a unique and urgent opportunity to address the food crises unfolding in front of us. But this requires holistic, long-term solutions and not short-term fixes. These will also contribute – more than most other options – to climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Building biodiversity and genetic diversity into ecosystems will make food systems more resilient and better able to withstand shocks, pests, diseases and other disruptions in the long-term. If there is one lesson we can learn from our natural world, it is how to emulate nature’s remarkable resilience and ability to adapt to short-term shocks, to evolve and thrive in future.