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Fed up

How changing the way we eat can contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals

September 20^th, 2021

Food is so much more than what we put into our bodies. At a human level it’s a deeply important part of our culture and history, tied to our sense of self, family and community.

Zooming out to look at food as part of a ‘system’, the way we grow, produce and distribute it becomes logistical, geopolitical, global, and deeply entwined with climate change.

Large parts of the world eat quite differently from even one or two generations ago. The more we’ve developed the technology to eat food grown far away, or to choose pre-packaged and pre-cooked, the longer and less stable food chains have become, and the more carbon it costs to eat.

At the same time, the most vulnerable suffer not because food is scarce — the world produces enough to feed everybody — but from the political and logistical factors that make it too expensive or hard to get.

Agricultural subsidies are a big part of the problem. A new UNDP, FAO and UNEP report reveals that of the US$540 billion spent on subsidies, a huge majority of that — 87 percent — causes price and market distortions and encourages practices that damage the environment and disproportionately benefit big producers at the expense of small farmers.

A pandemic of hunger

COVID-19 has shown what we already know is wrong with modern food chains—they are unstable, unsustainable and unfair.

The World Food Programme estimates the numbers of hungry people jumped by 161 million between 2019 and 2020 — up to 811 million. Acute hunger is at a five year high.

The Agricultural Commodity Price Index is the highest it’s been since 2013, and in June of this year had surged 33 percent higher than January 2020.

The World Bank predicts that the shock of COVID-19 to food chains will continue into 2022 and could reverse years of rising living standards. Yet even before the pandemic, climate change, natural hazards and conflict were posing severe threats to food security.

Wasting away

As the poor struggle, rich countries produce and waste ever more, relying on destructive agriculture that is driven by the desire for more animal products, which in turn is eating up the remaining undeveloped land.

This is disastrous for climate change because it cuts away at the land that stores carbon and leaves a greater surface that releases it. Livestock production is already responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gases. Add livestock production to other land use, which impinges on peat, grasslands and wetlands, and that figure rises to around 30 percent.

At the same time, workers’ rights are being abused and the indiscriminate use of petro-chemical fertilizers is stripping topsoil of its nutrients, exhausting previously healthy soils at alarming and dangerous levels.

Feeding the Sustainable Development Goals

Metaphorically and literally, food is at the root of all 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

Without proper nutrition, sustainable agriculture, and fair treatment for all those who produce, harvest and distribute food, there can be no prosperity, peace, justice or equality.

To reach the goals and the 2030 Agenda, the way we produce food — and the types of foods we eat — must change.

The United Nations Food Systems Summit aims to transform food systems.

Based on conversations with Indigenous peoples, young people, farmers, researchers and governments, it will lay out an ambitious plan to address the intertwined issues of hunger, poverty and climate change.

A just and sustainable food system rests on having enough for everybody, ensuring that food isn’t wasted, that farming methods and eating habits protect and nurture the soil, and that those who work the land are treated and paid fairly.

Food for action

Agricultural food systems have a critical role to play in ending poverty, eradicating hunger and reducing inequalities.

UNDP works at every level of food production, and with families and farmers around the world, to remove unnecessary links from the food chain and to ensure that nutritious food gets to those who need it most.

Our SDG Impact Accelerator network is working to change the way we think about and practice farming. Digital agriculture and precision farming provide automatic, accurate real time data from sensors, GPS and flow meters, allowing farmers to improve soil quality and productivity.

In Africa the Accelerator Labs are focusing on the agricultural supply chain. Many Africans live in densely populated cities — it’s estimated that two thirds of Nairobi’s residents live on just 6 percent of its land, often in overcrowded settlements, and food production in places such as Zimbabwe relies heavily on the informal sector. Accurate information is vital to ensure that the armies of small farmers can get their goods to cities in the most efficient way possible.

“Repurposing agricultural support to shift our agri-food systems in a greener, more sustainable direction — including by rewarding good practices such as sustainable farming and climate-smart approaches — can improve both productivity and environmental outcomes,” UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner said. “It will also boost the livelihoods of the 500 million smallholder farmers worldwide — many of them women — by ensuring a more level playing field.”