This report, developed by the World Economic Forum’s New Frontiers of Nutrition community in collaboration with Accenture, advocates for a significant shift in strategy for global food system transformation towards a focus on both human and planetary health.
This report, developed by the World Economic Forum’s New Frontiers of Nutrition community in collaboration with Accenture, advocates for a significant shift in strategy for global food system transformation towards a focus on both human and planetary health.

This initiative, integrating public, private and community sectors, focuses on increasing the availability, access and adoption of nutritious food choices that are in alignment with global sustainability objectives. Highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the urgent need for dietary improvements to combat chronic diseases and strengthen individual and societal resilience is a key focus. The initiative proposes strategies for healthier diets, emphasizing nutrient-rich, minimally processed, predominantly plant-based foods and aims for widespread adoption by 2035.

Key approaches include incentivizing the production of healthy foods, making them desirable, affordable and accessible, and strengthening the link between food and health in consumer minds. The report underscores the necessity of a combined focus on planetary and human health, calling for collaborative, cross-sector efforts to reshape food systems and policies, ultimately aiming for a more equitable and sustainable food landscape with improved global health outcomes.

Through a combination of agriculture, pollution and climate change, arable land has decreased by 33% in the last 40 years.
The expansion of agricultural land is also a leading driver of deforestation, with more than 41 million trees cut down per day, resulting in the release of large amounts of carbon dioxide, a reduction of carbon sinks and the devastation of vital ecosystems.

Conventional farming practices also compromise soil fertility and agricultural productivity, resulting in the loss of an estimated 12 million hectares of arable land per year.48 While the loss of arable land can have negative impacts on food security, the loss of nutrient-rich topsoil, organic matter and soil micronutrients reduces the nutritional content
of crops themselves, in addition to depleting resources for nearby ecosystems. Reliance on extensive irrigation puts stress on limited freshwater resources, with water scarcity representing one of the largest geopolitical threats of the 21st century and affecting 40% of the world’s population.49 Chemical inputs such as glyphosate and other chemical pesticides further strain freshwater resources and pollute aquatic ecosystems.

Concepts of nutritional access remain significantly more studied in Anglophone countries. In the United Kingdom, an estimated 1.2 million people live in a food desert, defined as a lack of healthy food within a transit-oriented geographic
area.106