Transformation to a healthy food system is blocked by three key barriers

Despite its critical role in sustaining billions of lives, the global food system fails to deliver for health, rights, and particularly, nature. A report published today by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and Chatham House highlights three system barriers – the cheaper food paradigm, market consolidation and investment path dependencies – that must be addressed to meet sustainable development goals.

The report, Unlocking Sustainable Transition for Agribusiness, explores these three barriers – perceived, technical, institutional, or economic “lock-ins” – and the role that intergovernmental organizations, financial institutions, the private sector, and civil society can play to remove them. The report is published ahead of the UN Food Systems Summit +4 Stocktake (UNFSS+4) on 27-29 July, co-hosted by Ethiopia and Italy, and follows the original UN Food Systems Summit in 2021.

“With the Global Biodiversity Framework, governments have already committed to reducing subsidies that harm biodiversity, reducing pollution from nutrients, pesticides and hazardous chemicals, and protecting at least 30 per cent of land and sea. Yet despite this abundant political momentum, the global food system remains vulnerable and contributes to the triple crisis of climate change, nature loss and pollution,” said Doreen Robinson, Deputy Director of the Ecosystem Division at UNEP. “Unlocking the positive potential of agribusiness, as shown in this report, is essential to achieving a sustainable, equitable, and health-supporting food system.”

Globally, over 800 million people are facing hunger today. Around 30 per cent of food – from harvest to consumption – is being wasted. Poor diets contribute to 1 in 5 premature deaths. The food system’s hidden environmental and health costs may be up to USD 20 trillion. Agribusiness – capital- and input-intensive businesses engaged in industrialized agricultural value chains – is at the heart of this system. 

Private actors are central to the global food system. The most powerful among them are large agribusinesses and investors, with great potential to transform, at scale and at speed, the way in which food is produced and consumed. 

This market is sustained by subsidies, taxes, and regulations shaped by the first lock-in: the cheaper food paradigm, according to which food must be cheap to produce and to buy, even if costly for the environment and human health in the long term (e.g. through overconsumption and increased waste). The report recommends more regulation and public research to reward sustainable practices and increase the costs of doing business-as-usual. 

This paradigm contributes to two additional lock-ins, The second lock-in is market concentration whereby private sector can be resistant to change, competition, or disruptive innovation and limits farmers’ agency and income. The third lock in is investment path dependencies, reflecting trends established over the past 80 years. These dependencies focus on boosting efficiencies and sales, while increasing farmers’ reliance on seeds, agrochemicals, and digital platforms controlled by large corporations, but with significant costs to the environment and other sustainable development goals.

There is an urgent need to reform standards and taxation to reflect long-term environmental and health costs. This requires shifting harmful subsidies, increasing investments in public research and development, requirements for transparency, and incentives for protecting healthy soil, reducing emissions, and shifting towards healthier diets.

Consumer actions can accelerate these shifts. A growing number of citizen-led initiatives are increasing scrutiny of agribusiness practices and investor decisions, pushing for reductions in harmful emissions, soil and water pollution, and for improvements in food’s nutritional values. 

This would result in agricultural machinery and chemical production that are less dependent on fossil fuels; Food sourced from diverse landscapes rather than monocultures; Meat processing could yield greater profits through high-quality, low-impact, high-welfare products, and alternative plant-based or cultivated meats 

Overall, the food system can become less input- and technology-intensive, and more diverse and knowledge-intensive. UNEP is committed to supporting the evolution of farming into a protective force of healthy humans, animals, and ecosystems.

NOTES TO EDITORS 

About the UN Environment Programme (UNEP)
UNEP is the leading global voice on the environment. It provides leadership and encourages partnership in caring for the environment by inspiring, informing and enabling nations and peoples to improve their quality of life without compromising that of future generations. 

About Chatham House

Chatham House is a world-leading policy institute, based in London, with a mission to help governments and societies build a sustainably secure, prosperous and just world.

For more information, please contact:

UN Environment Programme: unep-newsdesk@un.org

Chatham House: pressoffice@chathamhouse.org