Transforming

food systems for people, nature and climate

Rationale: Malnutrition is pervasive worldwide, with almost 2 billion people overweight, a further 2 billion suffering from micronutrient deficiencies, and 820 million undernourished. This action area seeks to improve food and nutritional security by ensuring that healthy, nutritious food is affordable and available to all – and is produced in a way that reduces environmental impacts.

Priority activities

• Diversify school meals which, as well as playing a critical role in child nutrition, can also support local agriculture and markets while simultaneously improving health, nutrition and education, making communities more resilient.

• Establish proper safety nets for vulnerable groups.

• Diversify sources of, and increase access to, protein rich foods. Increase sustainable blue food and alternative protein production and consumption.

• Undertake Climate and Health Vulnerability Assessment.

• Revise dietary guidelines in line with the human and planetary health diet to ensure nutrition recommendations align with global climate goals and SDG 12 on sustainable production and consumption.

• Explore other measures, including regulatory, to actively promote dietary shifts.

• Enhance diversification of production systems and development of value chains and market linkages for nutrient rich, biodiverse products.

Rationale: This action area seeks to reduce income inequalities that undermine social cohesion and economic development, ensuring decent standards of living for farmers and creating the enabling conditions for a just transition.

Priority activities

• Identify and implement measures which improve the standard of living of farmers, fisherfolk, and workers in agriculture, including opportunities for women and youth.

• Enhance food sovereignty and promote re-localisation of sustainable food systems.

• Establish safety nets for vulnerable groups and use public resources to support forest and coastal communities.

• Promote the inclusion of women, marginalized groups and youth in the decision-making and development of strategies to transform food systems.

Rationale: Record-breaking floods, droughts and other climate-related extreme weather events are expected to pose particularly significant challenges to farmers and fisherfolk worldwide. This action area seeks to mitigate some of these risks, with a particular focus on support for the most vulnerable (including women, youth, children).

Priority activities

• Promote adoption of climate adapted breeds and crop varieties, and inclusion of long-term accessions in gene banks to provide solutions for future climates.

• Improve access to insurance, shock-responsive social protection and safety nets to support those affected by climate impacts and other shocks to food systems.

• Improve access to climate information services and early warning forecasts for climate-related risks.

• Improve access to, and promote adoption of, sustainable water management technologies at farm and landscape level (rainwater harvesting, drip irrigation, supplemental irrigation, agroecology and managed wetlands, etc.).

• Diversify production systems at all scales to reduce climate risk, including ensuring that all lands and water are under multifunctional land and water use planning.

• Promote an integrated risk management approach through platforms that connect early warning systems with early action and finance.

• Invest in research to support the development and equitable scaling up of digital agriculture and climate services as an integral component of enhanced investments in food system transformation.

Rationale: This action area seeks to enhance the nature contribution of agriculture including improving soil health, fertility, and productivity, which are essential for food security and ecosystem services.

Priority activities

• Increase the share of land under regenerative, resilient and adaptive practices.

• Implement low-disturbance and carbon-enhancing practices such as no-till agriculture, cover crops, crop rotation, intercropping, organic fertilizers, integrated pest management and paludiculture.

• Measure impacts on soil health, yields and livelihoods, contributing to local data collection efforts that support regenerative agriculture systems.

• Improve water use efficiency and management in agriculture through technologies, practices, policies, and incentives that reduce water demand, increase water productivity and conserve water quality.

• Plan and enforce the use of marine and freshwater resources in a way that is equal to that afforded to land.

• Enhance bio-circular economy through recycling of food and other organic waste, and support reuse of biowaste as renewable energy.

• Ensure zero agricultural land expansion on high-carbon landscapes.

• Improve transparency and accountability of finance and major commodity supply chains driving conversion of high-carbon landscapes.

• Develop early warning systems and information management for food demand and supply outlook.

• Support farmers in reducing pesticide usage without compromising production.

Rationale: This action area aims to empower women, IPLCs and other marginalized groups who play a vital role in food production but often face discrimination and barriers in accessing land, resources, markets, and services.

Priority activities

• Strengthen legal frameworks to protect and empower women and marginalized groups in accessing land, resources, markets, and decision-making processes.

• Strengthen institutional capacity and available mechanisms to secure and protect land rights and tenure for IPLCs, women and other marginalized groups.

Rationale: This action area seeks to promote sustainable natural resource management, with corresponding benefits for climate, nature, livelihoods, and productivity, whilst also enhancing links between food security and ecosystem resilience. In particular, the conversion of forests and other ecosystems to agricultural land is a major driver of deforestation and biodiversity loss and increases impacts of droughts and floods.

Priority activities

• Secure effective protection for, and management of, all natural ecosystems.

• Restore forests, degraded lands, oceans, peatlands and other ecosystems through natural or assisted regeneration including (where relevant and appropriate) afforestation, reforestation, rewetting, maximizing use of indigenous species and other NBS.

• Implement zero-deforestation commitments by governments, private sector actors, civil society, and consumers to halt the expansion of agriculture into forested areas.

• Work constructively with other governments and international organisations to agree sustainability standards for the agricultural commodities that contribute disproportionately to deforestation.

• Support farmers in reducing pesticide usage for local ecologies.

Rationale: Food systems, including their energy consumption, account for ~30% of global emissions. Reducing these emissions by 83% is essential to mitigating climate change and meeting existing global agreements and targets (e.g., SDGs, Paris Agreement, Global Methane Pledge). The agrifood system has the potential to contribute actively to the energy transition, in coordination with better use of renewables.

Priority activities

• Reduce methane emissions from agriculture (e.g., rice cultivation, livestock management including enteric fermentation, manure management and herd reduction where necessary).

• Improve nitrogen management including in fertilizer application without compromising food security.

• Abate CO2 emissions throughout the food value chain, including production, processing, distribution, packaging, and retail – as well as consumption, where dietary shifts should be actively promoted. Energy-related abatement could include the replacement of traditional biomass (e.g. charcoal) for cooking in low income countries and households, utilization of renewable energy for agriculture production, processing and distribution (solar-powered irrigation, electrification of the transportation system, low emission maritime shipments), and the direct contribution of agricultural, including forestry, products to energy production, either as primary use (e.g. energy crops) or for residuals (conversion of food waste or underutilized crop residues).

• Reduce nutrient losses through technologies, practices, policies, and incentives that balance fertilizer demand and supply, enhance fertilizer uptake by crops, and prevent fertilizer runoff and leaching into water bodies.

Rationale: 30% of the world’s food supply is currently lost or wasted. This action area addresses these inefficiencies whilst also increasing food availability, reducing GHG emissions, saving natural resources (water, land, energy), and boosting economic growth.

Priority activities

• Improve post-harvest handling and storage of food products (e.g., increase prevalence of temperature and humidity-controlled storage).

• Measure national baselines, identify hotspots for food loss and waste and improve data availability.

• Promote tracking of quantity of food wasted throughout food supply chains

• Raise public awareness, combined with targeted policies, incentives and regulatory frameworks aimed at reuse and reutilization, including the reduction of household waste. 

• Encourage private sector actors to implement food loss reduction technologies and practices, and to require their supplies to do the same.

Commit to enhanced monitoring of FLW – and to a 50% FLW reduction target at national level.

Rationale: Digitisation of food and land use systems is occurring through precision farming, gene-editing techniques, and enhanced logistics, enabling producers and consumers to make better informed choices. Similarly, new technology is enabling real-time tracking of natural resources, whilst also enhancing productivity.

Priority activities

• Invest in R&D of innovative, low-emission technologies, practices and products that can enhance the sustainability and resilience of food systems (e.g., cold chain, alternative proteins, irrigation solutions, reducing GHG emissions from crops (e.g., rice) and livestock (e.g., Enteric methane), drought resistant / climate resilient crops, orphan crop breeding, extension services, remote sensing of emissions traceability etc.).

• Improve access to climate adapted varieties and breeds for producers; climate information services and early warning forecasts; and other climate adaptive technologies and practices.

• Provide open access to public sector data (e.g., on land registries, fisheries, soil health etc.). Regulate and incentivize private sector to do same, where appropriate.

• Sign up to the Agriculture Breakthrough.

Rationale: Public finance needs to shift urgently towards supporting more sustainable and resilient modes of production. Similarly, public procurement and tax structures, which can shape consumption choices and thus promote healthy diets, should also be redirected such that they deliver better outcomes for people and the planet.

Priority activities

• Redirect agricultural subsidies to ensure they avoid perverse incentives for forest and ecosystem conversion / degradation. Policy (including subsidy) design should also ensure bioenergy crops do not compete with food crops for land.

• Develop investment pipelines to support agriculture research and innovation – including in alternative proteins R&D and manufacturing capacity development.

• Use government purchasing power to promote, and build demand for, healthy, sustainable diets.

• Align food pricing structures within public procurement and taxation, with consumption guidelines that respect human and planetary health.

• Consider how fiscal incentives can be used to support the development of more sustainable and resilient food systems and consumption by those who cannot afford healthy diets.

• Support sustainable, or regenerative, or nature positive agricultural research and innovation notably on under consumed healthy foods.