The Food Systems Approach: Sustainable Solutions for a Sufficient Supply of Healthy Food

Despite the big increase in world food production, there are still more than 800 million people who are chronically malnourished. Added to that, this growth in production has been accompanied by growing pressure on the environment. A food systems approach can help find solutions that will provide the world's growing population with a sufficient supply of healthy food within the environmental limits. It finds solutions by intervening in parts of the system (and where necessary outside the system) other than where the problem occurs. 

The notion of 'access' has been at the center of debates about food security since the mid-1990s. It is no longer simply about the availability of food, but also about affordability and the preferences (often driven by policy or other incentives) that influence people's access to that food. This has shifted the focus from activities within the food production system (production, transport, processing) to the outcomes of those activities in the form of the consumption, access, and availability of food (all elements of 'food security'). Because access to affordable, healthy, and diverse food depends not only on production but also on factors outside the food production system, a broader approach is required when analyzing the impact of interventions aimed at enhancing food security. The conceptual framework of the food system is ideal for this purpose. 

This shift in focus from production chain activities to their outcomes can also be seen in the increasing attention to sustainability and climate resilience (and adaptability) with regard to food system activities. The food systems approach helps us to look further than production activities alone in that it also documents the environmental impacts and socio-economic outcomes of the food system. 

Conversely, interventions in the food system's socio-economic or biophysical context can also influence the agent response within the system by influencing the behavior of actors within that system through changes in the system context. Examples include stimulating the demand for healthy food and encouraging producers to invest in more sustainable production methods. With respect to promoting demand for healthier food, the Global Panel says that governments, in collaboration of course with the private sector and civil society (including NGOs), can directly and indirectly encourage the consumption of healthy food through subsidies, taxes, dietary guidelines, labeling, information, research, and other measures.