Addressing the vulnerability of the global food system

Abstract

Nearly 1 billion people depend on international trade to sustain their food requirements, making the global food system a vital component of food security. On June 27, Chatham House published Chokepoints and Vulnerabilities in Global Food Trade. This report shows that the global food system is reliant upon highly delicate trade routes, which navigate through 14 so-called chokepoints—such as the Suez Canal, Black Sea ports, and Brazil's road network—where food trade is vulnerable to interruptions or disruptions. These include unpredictable weather, war, or institutional chokepoints, whereby local authorities could decide to restrict access to block passage of food. The report also highlights that climate change will intensify chokepoint risks. Food systems describe the path that food takes from field to consumer. They encapsulate everything from the so-called eater, to retail and food provisioning, food production, processing, and marketing, and transport and trade. By the middle of the 20th century, increased food production and shifting dietary preferences towards a more westernised diet led to the establishment of a global food system. Today, most of the world's food is purchased from the global market. 60% of the world's energy intake relies on three crops: maize, wheat, and rice, of which much of the yield goes to feed livestock. These are produced only in a finite number of producer regions. The system's stability is threatened by growing pressures, as population growth, shifting consumer demands, and slowing crop yield growth are tightening the balance of the supply–demand in some countries. If the world's population reaches, as predicted, 9 billion individuals by 2050, to maintain our current access to food, crop yields will have to increase by 50%. However, agriculture and food processing are major contributors to global carbon emissions, and increasing crop yields seems unsustainable within the remit of the Paris agreements to keep the average global temperature rise under 2°C. Climate change has a compounding effect on food insecurity, as experts predict that adverse weather conditions linked to climate change will decrease the nutritional quality of crops. Because food production is so closely intertwined with carbon production and positive health outcomes, WHO estimates that 12 of 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) require good nutrition to be met. The demand for a westernised diet, characterised by overconsumption of meat, highly processed foods, over-refined sugars, highly refined and saturated fats, and a reduction in plant-based fibre, must be stemmed. This food needs a lot of energy to be processed, without increasing its nutritional value. It is incompatible with export to many developing countries with slowly rising incomes, where the base diet is highly starchy and where access to high-calorie food, brought in by multinational food companies growing their markets, contributes to the global burden of diet-related non-communicable diseases, such as diabetes. With growing insecurity, it is time to rethink priorities to prevent global food system failures. Community-based approaches promoting a shift in perception towards climate-friendly food consumption can alleviate some of the stress on the system. Harnessing this impetus, in Eating for 2 Degrees, a report released June 26, the charity WWF assessed dietary changes that need to be made in the UK by 2020 and 2030 to meet the Paris agreements. To achieve a 30% reduction in carbon footprint, consumers should considerably reduce consumption of meat and cheese, and replace it with legumes, nuts and oilseeds, leading to decreased demand for livestock production and increased demand for more diversified crops. However, to instigate long-term change, systems cannot afford to project the responsibility onto the individual, and must implement global interventions. Governments must incentivise corporations to market food that is consistent with a healthy and sustainable diet, and encourage consumption of more primary products, diversification in agriculture, domestic production, and self-sustainability. More data and science will support our understanding of how global food trade affects both environmental and health outcomes. The upcoming 2018 EAT-Lancet Commission and The Lancet Commission on Obesity aim to increase this knowledge. To achieve SDG 2—end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture—an effective framework is needed which accommodates consumers and producers, and diverse communities and lifestyles. Only by clustering policy goals together, those relating to health and those hampering our consumption of energy, will results on food security be effective, moving away from a commercially driven enterprise and towards a system that remains commercially viable but emphasises health and sustainability objectives.