With only ten years left to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), there is increasing recognition among researchers, policy makers, stakeholders, and civil society of the crucial role played by food systems. The convening of the UN Food Systems Summit in 2021 highlights the growing view that better policies for food systems are needed to deliver progress on all the SDGs

Food systems are expected to provide food security and nutrition for a world population which is projected to grow to nearly 10 billion by mid-century. Food systems are also central to the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of households around the world. Moreover, food systems are not only highly dependent on the environment, but also exert important pressures on it. In all three dimensions, the world is facing important challenges:

This chapter describes the main expectations of food systems in terms of the “triple challenge” of providing food security and nutrition for a growing population; providing livelihoods for hundreds of millions of people involved in farming and along the food chain, and contributing to environmental sustainability. The achievements of food systems are not as black and white as is sometimes assumed, as there has been remarkable progress in some areas. At the same time, major shortcomings exist on all three dimensions. Much is already known about how better policies could contribute to improving outcomes. Agricultural policies around the world tend to use highly distorting measures, often creating incentives for overproduction and overuse of inputs. Such policies are inefficient ways to improve livelihoods or food security, and often have negative environmental effects. Reforming these policies would go a long way to meeting the triple challenge.

A food systems approach has the advantage of creating awareness about synergies and trade-offs between policy domains which have historically often been treated in isolation, including interactions which spill across international borders. This chapter shows how policy makers can design coherent policies for food systems through better coordination across policy communities. Documenting and quantifying potential spillover effects is an important first step. Where synergies are found, one policy instrument will rarely be sufficient to meet all objectives; rather, a mix of instruments is usually needed. When trade-offs are found, experience shows that these can often be avoided by a smarter choice of policy instruments. But when trade-offs persist, the question is how society should choose between competing objectives. While those choices need to be based on the best possible evidence, they involve value judgments and need to be made in a way that commands broad support across society, is consistent with international obligations, and effectively addresses the triple challenge.

This chapter shows that achieving better policies for food systems often requires overcoming frictions related to facts, interests, and values. While much is known about how policies for food systems can be improved, in other areas there are substantial knowledge gaps. At the same time, policy reform creates both winners and losers, and groups with diverging interests will try to influence the policy process. But not all policy disagreements revolve around facts and interests. There is often no societal consensus on what the relative priorities should be, as people differ in the values they emphasise. To complicate matters, frictions in one area (e.g. differing values) can also reinforce frictions in another area (e.g. by making people less willing to consider facts that go against their initial beliefs). The chapter identifies several good practices which can help prevent or manage frictions around facts, interests, and values.

The seed sector makes an important contribution to meeting the triple challenge facing food systems by supporting food security and nutrition, livelihoods, and sustainable resource use and climate change mitigation. But contentious issues related to plant breeding arise in debates around food systems. These include the role of private-sector investment in plant breeding; issues around access, benefit sharing and conservation of genetic resources for plant breeding; and the role of new plant breeding technologies. Building on the framework developed in this overall report, this chapter argues that many of the contentious issues derive from the interplay of disagreements over facts, interests, and values.

Ruminant livestock is an important source of protein and livelihoods, but is a significant contributor to environmental problems, including climate change. This chapter reviews its contribution to the triple challenge and illustrates how governments in Ireland, the Netherlands and New Zealand (countries with important ruminant livestock sectors) are navigating trade-offs and incorporate facts, interest and values in their policy process. Scientific facts, including from independent advisory groups, play an important role but are not always widely accepted by the public or stakeholders. Through consultation with stakeholders, policy makers hear from groups with different interests, including those with livelihoods at stake. Values play a role as well, including farmers’ sense of belonging to a rural community, the importance of reducing climate change emissions in all sectors, as well as animal welfare, preserving landscapes, and the ethics of eating meat. Policy developments have also been influenced by court challenges and innovative mechanisms such as deliberative processes.

This chapter provides an overview of the processed food sector as it relates to each dimension of the triple challenge. The term “processed food” is defined here as any food that has been altered in some way from its raw state. The processed food sector accounts for a significant share of income generation and employment and is essential to maintaining a steady global supply of safe, affordable, and nutritious foods and is thus key to supporting food security and nutrition. Despite broad benefits brought by food technology, some processing activities produce foods that are energy-dense and nutrient-poor and are associated with negative health effects when consumed in excess.

This final chapter summarises the findings of the report and draws policy implications. While the performance of food systems in terms of the triple challenge has not been as black and white as some suggest, there are major shortcomings. Better policies for food systems are a powerful lever to improve food security and nutrition, livelihoods, and environmental sustainability. Coherence across these areas will require breaking down silos between agriculture, health and environmental policies, but will also require overcoming knowledge gaps, resistance from interest groups, and differing values. Robust, inclusive, evidence-based processes are thus essential to making better policies for food systems.