When looking at the overall numbers, one could argue that there is a profound crisis in our current food and land-use systems. On a preliminary exam, food and land use systems (FLS) have delivered well during the last decades, with production outpacing population growth and achieving to make food affordable for households on a global scale. However, FLS have also generated “hidden” environmental, health and economic costs.  If the current trend is followed, these hidden costs are expected to grow significantly due to, on one side, irreversible damage to key ecosystems and thus declining food security in certain regions, and on the other hand, increasing public health costs, due mainly to chronic patterns of excess food consumption [1].

Together with the energy and transportation industries, FLS are by far one of the biggest drivers of environmental damage by summing up to 30 percent of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Moreover, it is estimated that one-third of all the food produced goes to waste [2] and thus all the energy and water it takes to growing, harvesting, transporting and packaging it is also wasted [3]. Accounting only for food waste, if food wastage were a country, it would be the third largest emitting country in the world. In addition to the GHG emissions, the overuse of fertilisers and increasing use of herbicides and pesticides is polluting air, water and soils, creating ecological harm and material risks to human health in rural and urban areas [4]. Lastly, the focus of quantity over quality has led to the fact that today 75% of the world’s food is generated from just 12 plants species and 5 animal species. This narrows our resilience against upcoming events such as climate change and new pests, and therefore posing a high risk to food security in the future [5].

At the end of the last century, some authors already claimed that our food systems were failing us when it came to producing sufficiently nutritious food. The so-called “hidden hunger”, meaning micronutrient malnutrition, affected then over two billion people worldwide. This resulted in poor health, low worker productivity, high rates of mortality and morbidity, increased rates of chronic diseases, among other issues [6]. Last year comparison between the market value of the global food system and the costs due to health-, environmental- and economic-related issues was conducted by SYSTEMIQ and the Food and Land Use Coalition. They stated that only the costs related to undernutrition and obesity summed up to 4.5 trillion USD worldwide, in contrast to the 10 trillion USD of the market value of global food systems [7]. As a conclusion to this study, it was determined that the hidden costs of FLS summed up to nearly 12 trillion USD. A more extensive breakdown of the hidden costs is shown in the figure below. Over the years, the need to ensure quality of food has become more evident, but there is still a long way to go.

Figure 1: Comparison between the market value of global food and land use systems and its hidden costs [7].

Similar to policies adopted over the last decade to encourage investment in renewable energy, sustainable food systems must be supported by Governments to promote their development. The private sector also plays a key role in the transformation that is to come. Establishing subsidies for new food systems can give certain guarantees to the private sector, and therefore attracting investors to projects that would otherwise be too risky [8]. Also, it is required that the “rules” established by Governments determining how the whole system operates are changed to encourage practices that create public benefits and penalise behaviours that harm the public good [1].

Although SDGs two and twelve try to raise awareness about the need of a transformation in our current system, public investment in agriculture is globally declining, even though hunger is on the rise again in a worldwide scale [9]. At the political level, redefining our present systems also means investing in tackling problems related to climate change and water and food scarcity, which are often a source of political instability [10].

References:

[1] The Food and Land Use Coalition, «Growing Better: Ten Critical Transitions to Transform Food and Land Use,» 2019.

[2] J. Gustavsson, C. Cederberg, U. Sonesson, R. Otterdijk y A. Meybeck, «Global Food Losses and Food Waste,» Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome, Italy, 2011.

[3] M. Eriksson y I. Per-Anders, «Carbon footprint of food waste management options in the waste hierarchy – a Swedish case study,» Journal of Cleaner Production, vol. 93, pp. 115-125, 2015.

[4] T. Searchinger, R. Waite, C. Hanson y J. Ranganathan, «Creating a Sustainable Food Future: A Menu of Solutions to Feed Nearly 10 Billion People by 2050. Final Report,» World Resources Institute, Washington DC, 2019.

[5] T. Tscharntke, Y. Clough, T. C. Wanger, L. Jackson, I. Motzke, I. Perfecto, J. Vandermeer y A. Whitbread, «Global food security, biodiversity conservation and the future of agricultural intensification,» Biological Conservation, vol. 151, pp. 53-59, 2012.

[6] R. Welch y R. Graham, «A new paradigm for world agriculture: meeting human needs. Productive, sustainable, nutritious.,» Field Crops Research, vol. 60, pp. 1-10, 1998.

[7] L. Pinell, «Estimating the "hidden costs" of global food and land use systems,» SYSTEMIQ, 2019.

[8] N. Moreau, «Biodiversity for Resilient Food Systems,» de EAT Stockholm Food Forum 2017, Stockholm, 2017.

[9] United Nations. Economic and Social Council, «Special edition: progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals,» 2019.

[10] M. Lagi, K. Z. Bertrand y Y. Bar-Yam, «The Food Crises and Political Instability in North Africa and the Middle East,» SSRN, 2011.