The world faces a growing food systems crisis. The number of people who go to sleep hungry around the world grew by over 100 million in 2020. Obesity rates are up too, having tripled since 1975. Food supply chains continue to be disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change — and commodity-driven deforestation remains a problem in many tropical forest-rich countries.

At the same time, the human quest for food is responsible for about a quarter of all global greenhouse gas emissions. That quest consumes more than 70% of all freshwater, is a major polluter of water and the leading driver of forest and biodiversity loss.

These crises are the reason for the UN Food Systems Summit, scheduled for September 2021 with a Pre-Summit happening at the end of July. It’s the first-of-its-kind opportunity for nations around the globe to tackle the question: How can we nutritiously feed a growing population amid worsening climate change while holding the line on further conversion of natural ecosystems, meeting the Paris Climate Agreement and lifting millions of farmers out of poverty?

Realizing the Full Potential of the Global Food System
A big part of the answer is that we need a cohesive plan for the food system to simultaneously produce, protect, reduce and restore. This strategy is laid out in WRI’s flagship World Resources Report, Creating a Sustainable Food Future.

Produce: The world needs to sustainably boost yields on existing agricultural lands in order to meet projected growth in demand for food without expanding agriculture’s land footprint.

Protect: The world needs to protect remaining native, natural ecosystems (e.g., forests, wetlands, grasslands) from agriculture-related conversion and degradation. These ecosystems store the majority of terrestrial carbon and provide critical ecosystem services that underpin food production such as water regulation, pollination and climate regulation.

Reduce: The world needs to “bend the curve” in demand growth for land-intensive products by reducing existing inefficiencies in the food system, such as by halving the rate of food loss and waste by 2030, shifting to more sustainable and healthy diets, and reducing competition for land and food from other sectors such as biofuel production.
Restore: The world needs to restore what’s been lost — revitalizing nature in some places and restoring productivity to degraded agriculture in other places.

The “produce, protect, reduce and restore” approach can nutritiously feed nearly 10 billion people by 2050 and help lift poor farmers out of poverty, while putting food and land use systems on a path to compliance with the mitigation goals of the Paris Agreement on climate change. ....

For instance, a number of breakthrough technology innovations can play a role. An estimated $300 billion to $350 billion in investment is needed to scale change in food systems. And everyone, ranging from smallholder farmers to food companies to individual consumers, needs to be included in the decisions, actions and benefits of a better food system. Altogether, creating a sustainable food system requires a suite of critical transitions that span food supply, food demand and human well-being.
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