- Global food systems are not meeting all the needs of people and planet.
- Considering the needs of consumers and farmers could shape a fairer, more resilient system.
Global food systems are not meeting all the needs of people and planet. Currently, more than two billion people globally are overweight or obese, more than 600 million people fall ill due to unsafe food each year and one in nine people in the world are undernourished. In parallel to issues around malnutrition and safety, one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year — approximately 1.3 billion tonnes — gets lost or wasted. The food system is linked to other negative effects such as high energy and water consumption, deforestation rates, societal conflicts, migration, and climate change.
What if we rethink food systems from the perspective of consumer and farmers to sharpen our focus on people and planet? About 500 million family farmers produce the majority of the world’s food, yet they’re the most affected by poverty and the ones most marginalised from decision making. At the same time we could make it easier for the world’s 7.7 billion consumers to shape a fairer, more resilient system, shifting 100-year-old consumption patterns to leave fewer people hungry.
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