Analogy time – lets you and I imagine we’re going out for dinner (and hopefully you’re paying you generous human you). But here’s the thing, we can’t pick a place, and it’s getting kind of annoying now… Do we want to go to that local, whole in the wall, family owned place or are we opting for a well-known, popular chain restaurant on the high street? Well what if we say our deciding factor is whichever is more sustainable, and that this restaurant choice actually represents where the whole global food system should go. No pressure then…

The global food system has a huge impact in terms of climate change and biodiversity, in a delicious catch 22 of both cause and effect of these factors. Therefore, when it comes to a sustainable future, it is an absolutely key ingredient that cannot be missed from the recipe. And, this system is set within a wider dramatically changing backdrop, with a vastly growing population set to reach over 10 billion by the end of the century (United Nations) and strong projections for changing diets corresponding to rising living standards (for example the 73% projected increase in meat consumption by 2050, unbaaaalievable…BBC World Series, 2024). Therefore these changing demands represent a risk and opportunity to either bring greater benefits or costs – but how can those be defined?

First and foremost, food systems desire to achieve food security as an overall outcome (will get to key terms later, don’t worry my foodies) which is encompassed by access, availability, utilisation (or otherwise nutritional value) and stability. Global malnutrition has been steadily rising with some saddening stats to evidence this trend (in 2022, roughly 9.2% of global population was facing chronic hunger, equivalent to about 735 million people – 122 million more than in 2019 (United Nations)). And so, there is an opportunity to buck this trend and look at what parts of the system can be re-engineered to aid food security. And bundled up in all of the above is so much more than just feeding people – food security is intrinsically linked to sustainability, both environmentally and socially. For the former, the question is what are the right environmental conditions to meet global food demands? And the latter asks what are the necessary economical enablers for people to access and earn from food that is both stable and just? 

Well, to boil down the debate that is happening around the ‘global food table’ you can think of this in two lines of argument:

1. Sustainable intensification – expanding a market-led approach. In essence consolidating the food producers and processors which proposes to ‘[increase] land productivity (e.g., closing yield gaps) with minimal additional environmental impact’ (Dalin, 2019) 
2. Localisation – enabling greater capabilities of national food self sufficiency, extending all the way down to nurturing smallholder producers to open up economic opportunities and resilience 

^and if I were to boil this down even further? ‘Go big’ or ‘go home’ – to lean into globalisation or back to ‘home’ so that food markets return to more domestic value chains. The below explores both these sides and their benefits/ trade-offs from my research so far. Hopefully my guiding principles stand that I’ll be applying lenses of not just the environmental but the social justices too. Alright, lets tuck in.

Amuse Bouche: Key Terms

Food security – ‘all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life’ (Ericksen, 2008)

Food system – ‘a set of activities ranging from production through to consumption’ (Ericksen, 2008). This can therefore be considered as all actions across the stages of production, processing, consolidation, distribution, consumption and disposal of food. 

Food sovereignty –  ‘Food sovereignty relates to a political movement to secure the right of peoples to democratically control or determine the shape of their food systems and to produce sufficient and healthy food in culturally appropriate and ecological ways’ (Delabre, 2024) 

Agroecology – ‘a holistic and integrated approach that simultaneously applies ecological and social concepts and principles to the design and management of sustainable agriculture and food systems. It seeks to optimize the interactions between plants, animals, humans and the environment while also addressing the need for socially equitable food systems within which people can exercise choice over what they eat and how and where it is produced’ (FAO)

Think about the above inter-related dynamics for the above, particularly for 1 and 3….

Starter course: The role of the food system on climate change and biodiversity feedbacks explained

Climate Change 

When it comes to climate change, the food system contributes in the range of 21-37% of global Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (Tandon, 2021) across the end to end value chain. It is also the biggest demander of land space, with over half the globe’s habitable land space used for it (Ritchie, 2019) which, you might guess already, has detracted from previous natural carbon sinks such as forest cover and wetlands that naturally absorb C02 (P.S.I’m moderately obsessed with mangroves, check out my post on them here). And of course it is impacted by climate change too. You’ll be able to see the symptoms of this right now with the food hyperinflation, not just due to wider political influences like Covid and current conflicts, but also due to extreme temperatures in 2023 causing shortages (Edmond, 2024). Therefore not only are extreme weather events like heatwaves and cyclones disrupting agricultural yields but also the slower temporal seasonal changes, such as reductions in rainfalls causing previous crops to not be viable where they once were.

Biodiversity

Yeah I hear you, of course you’re going to say climate change is the biggest threat to biodiversity, but in actual fact the framing of this top threat is lack of available habitat, a big driver being agricultural land conversion. This may feel more prevalent in some countries more than others, for example in the UK our dramatic loss of forest cover was felt long ago, but now countries with intact wild habitats such as tropical forests and wetlands are experiencing this land give over for the purpose of food production (a key example being palm oil specifically in South East Asian countries like Indonesia and Malaysia). This lack of habitat has led to some pretty sad outcomes, such as species isolation or increased human-animal conflicts (think tigers venturing into cities type of thing). In 2015, the biosphere breached the safe operating space for four boundaries, with food systems being responsible for crossing three of these boundaries (Gordon, 2017).

Other top threats to biodiversity? Well, in order, the top 5 are

1. Land use (as above)
2. Overexploitation (overfishing, overharvesting etc.)
3. Climate change (yes, clever clogs, you got this one)
4. Pollution
5.  Invasive alien species (IAS), 

(The Royal Society, 2023)

Scanning those above, you can see food systems contributes to all of those…but I want to double click on two of them briefly:

IAS – which by definition are ‘animals, plants or other organisms that are introduced by humans, either intentionally or accidentally, into places outside of their natural range’ (IUCN, 2021). This becomes an expanding threat alongside the expansion of markets to the global level, of which food imports and exports form a huge slice of that trade pie. Studies find that international trade accounts for 30% of threats to species globally (Liu, 2013). 

Pollution. Agricultural trends globally are increasing production inputs, explicitly talking about fertiliser and chemical pesticide use here. These, if not contained, leach out into nearby soils and waterways and impact biota functioning, causing serious biodiversity decline. Note though that, as far as I’ve seen, there is no mitigation pathway that shows a possibility for no use of fertilisers in the future if we are to meet global food availability. Back to this inputs discussion in an upcoming ‘course’ below.   

Beyond these two factors, is health itself, a web or ‘nexus’ across the spheres of climate change, biodiversity and environmental/ social health. The Climate-Biodiversity-Health (or CBH) nexus by Newell is a good one to reflect on below, in terms of the intertwined push and pulls between them all when it comes to agriculture (Ghadiri, 2024)

P.S. I know I spent longer on biodiversity here than climate change which was intentional because my interpretation of global and national initiatives as well as public consciousness of the importance of biodiversity is severely lacking. Biodiversity decline we’re seeing now is huge, literally the 6th mass extinction event (my other blog post here on that here) and in itself, is necessary for a plethora of ecosystem services to us (air quality, agricultural production reliant on pollinators, nutrient cycling - the list goes on). It’s not just a ‘nice to have’ to protect biodiversity for biodiversity's sake, but is a key factor in our sustainable future (aka declining nature based services will undermine progress toward 80 percent (35 out of 44) of the assessed targets of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals - Carlson, 2020).

Mains: Lets chain it – arguments around market expansion

1. Productivity through agricultural intensivity. First and foremost, the main argument in favour of further opening up the market (or ‘agriculture sustainable intensivity’, if we use the clever clogs term introduced in my opener) is that it has the greatest impact on increasing efficiency and productivity. What that means is we can effectively do ‘more with less’, reducing the land space we need by ensuring we maximise the outputs and reduce/ monitor waste. A landmark publication in this space was provided by the World Bank in 2007, whereby it stated for the majority it is envisaged there will be a ‘slow migration out of the traditional sector’ (World Bank, 2007, p. 36) because non-market-focused smallholder farming is considered a ‘holding pattern in the long transition out of low productivity family farming’ (World Bank, 2007, p. 241). With limited access to technological advancements, up to date agri-scientific (think I just made this word up) knowledge and using less fertiliser inputs, this cocktail is argued to lead to limited returns and greater chance of wastage. This viewpoint is strongly held right now by the global civil society, such as the United Nations Food Organisation Agency (FAO) and the World Bank.

• Perpetuating a ‘business as usual’ market-led powerbase? BUT (you knew it was coming) there are some dynamics that must be understood here before passing judgement. The discourses as proposed by these institutions have been criticised by others for being in the interests of the large food manufacturers. If you look closely at the Sustainable Development Goals, goal 2 being ‘zero hunger’, within this you’ll clearly see advocating for trade expansion through removing international restrictions and ensuring stable food markets (The Global Goals) which gives a strong whiff of neoliberal sway. In other words, clearly favouring the existing power regime of export food models and corporate consolidation versus domestic,free market ‘polypoly’ (you learned a new word too right?)  

1. Spann comments ‘I suggest the ‘agriculture for development’ agenda that is present in the SDGs is really about ensuring the interests of agribusiness at the expense of ensuring actual sustainable development’ (Spann, 2017).
2. Also, this point about being more productive may actually be misguided – van der Ploeg (2014) found smallhold farms generally achieve higher production per unit of land, and so we need to question how ‘productivity’ is being measured, and whether these measures are valid, or massaged in support of wider agendas

2. Ability to regulate labour conditions/ stability. This one is a pretty easy mouthful to get down you. Given greater market expansion, this enables greater regulatory involvement in both how production, processing and distribution activities are carried out as well as compliance to reporting and monitoring requirements. This, in fruition, is powerful –  it not only means that there will be greater power in data aggregation across varying scales (all the way up to painting an international model of the food system) but it also means that the latest scientific knowledge and policymaking can funnel its way through to implementation ‘on the farming ground’ in a much speedier adoption path than it would. These are a consequence of simply having a less fragmented, industrialised ecosystem that enables the enforcement of standards. And given the detrimental role the food system has to play in what our sustainable future looks like, we do need this transparency and quick moving regulatory ‘whip’ in place to make positive things happen.

Long live local  – arguments around a smallholder ecosystem

Agroecology. So, remember folks, we’re talking about agricultural processes that support sustainable interactions across the ecosystems in question, and that extends to both ecological as well as social dynamics. Now, across my readings, I’ve found a mixed buffet of academic readings stating smallholder farming is more and less agroecological than its industrial counterparts…

• Better. There’s a couple of reasons here. The first is that, due to less comparable incentives to produce large scale output and generally having longstanding and often culturally significant ties to their lands, ‘family farms’ are more ecologically friendly in their approaches built up over the years (Gyapong, 2021) – but note this study looks at West Africa only mmkay? In essence, they have a deeper, intrinsic understanding of their land and what regenerates and degenerates it. The second is, again due to lesser pressure for hitting hard numbers in their yield, they require less intensive inputs (pesticides, fertilisers, water etc.). It’s definitely clear, global industrial farming is demanding more upfront inputs, and these tend to be either damaging for the surrounding environments or are using resources that are in short supply – that doesn’t sound too sustainable does it? 
• Worse. On the other hand (yep, you’re getting fusion cuisine here) , there are arguments that industrialised farms are best at close loop nutrient cycling – what does that mean? In essence, they look across the production process and identify how they can keep resources in circulation, meaning more efficiency by turning waste into value (and I mean that quite literally, manure is a pretty epic fertiliser). A study in an extremely deprived rural Guatemalan farming region found that, with the help of NGOs, peasant farms had improved their ability to maximise resource use through learning to use cycling processes they had been taught that mimicked existing industrial processes (González-Esquivel, 2020).

2. Social justices and food sovereignty. There’s a recognition across the food sovereignty communities (like La Campesina, a political international movement that supports peasant land workers) that the growing market orientation of the food system has led to increased land grabbing from international investments (Gyapong, 2021). This effectively involved dispossession of ‘family farm’ land through either a slow outpricing of local farmers against the competitive, economies of scale or national government deals with foreign investors effectively privileging these corporate rights in over national smallholder farmers who are then subject to legal battles they are designed to lose. There’s much more on this, but given its a simple point to understand, I’ll move us on.

3. Higher nutritional output. We all remember the food wheel right?! The global food system has become increasingly industrialised over time, with a trending ‘consolidation’ to more dominant international players as we’ve munched on in the previous above courses. But not only has this affected economics (through pricing and livelihood disruptions) but also in terms of nutritional values. Spann describes this as ‘narrowing dietary diversity’ (Spann, 2017) because these big players have favoured high input, less nutritious food products given they are cheaper (otherwise called cash crops). And so, just like the market itself, the product range has consolidated – the buffet bosses culling the spread, what a sad thought indeed for your upcoming ‘breakfast included’ package deals…!! 

Jokes aside, should this trend continue, this obviously points to a deteriorating sustainable model – increasing volume, decreasing value. We have never produced ‘more’ than now per capita, an acceleration in ‘volume’ that exceeds population growth (240% increase from 1961 to present day, or in kcal per capita from 2189 kcal per capita per day to 2884 kcal today, Gordon, 2017). BUT the nutritional requirements for meeting human health have not had improved coverage and have actually declined, with agricultural spaces not meeting supplies of key areas of nutrition, like fruits, vegetables and pulses (Gordon, 2017). And, of course, that’s not to mention the consumer demand for processed foods skyrocketing, (consumption of processed meats and sugary sweet beverages increased by as much as 35%−50% in 25 years from 1990). 
Where has this misguided ‘quantity over quality’ focus got us? Malnutrition now affects 1 in 3 people in every country directly (and remember malnutrition isn’t just undernutrition, but obesity too – Gordon 2017). Let’s dwell a little bit longer on this conclusion here because its a pretty big deal – malnutrition is now the number one driver of decreased life expectancy. And so, thus far, it appears food market liberalisation has caused the overall system towards diminishing returns – sure, if you look at profitability, the big players have gained, but when it comes to human health, that is what has suffered alongside ‘rural’ or ‘smallholder’ economic health.

Dessert: Wrapping up…

Back to us and our indecision over what restaurant to pick. Well, what do you think? (I’d be keen to know, leave a comment!). But if I left it there, you’d probably tell me to sort go get myself a microwave meal from Aldi and storm out so here’s my viewpoint: 

I know we hadn’t considered it before, but maybe we need to look for a franchise rezzo instead? What I mean by this is, couldn’t there be a flexible agricultural model whereby we provide agroecological ‘templates’ and support these being implemented on a hyperlocal level? If there is an implementation approach in place for smallholders to have access to resources, both knowledge and tools, this would aid them in maintaining strong agroecological practices, maximising productivity but generating a model that supports greater diversity which we know now is key to our continued food security and reversal of the malnutrition trend. Studies have shown that interventions from NGOs have supported local farmers to improve their methods, and surely alongside these changes, the template could include the need to bake in data collection/ measurement approaches so my previous point in favour of globalisation because of transparency and monitoring capabilities doesn’t suffer as a result of a more diverse, multi-player market.

In fact, my viewpoint chimes with an existing one – a ‘new rurality’ to farming (Gyapong, 2021), where there is a place for  ‘family farms’ to persist but with positive modernisation as inspired by large-scale agricultural wins and environmental science. And this is where the analogy comes in handy – ‘franchising’ means we could put the guardrails in place for these rural food producers but not ‘own them’. They would possess and have autonomy over their land and continued livelihoods, but the relationship with NGOs as well as government agencies is key to ensuring they understand and can harvest the benefits of these guardrails, not see them as cages. Beyond this, these ‘templates’ must be designed collaboratively with rural smallholders – we definitely shouldn’t assume that the large-scale farms have it all right, and stand to benefit greatly from harnessing long-term family farmer collective knowledge. Finally, ending on the social point of participatory justice – that smallholders should have the right to drive their futures whilst being guided by national/ international sustainable policies. We must include marginalised groups in policymaking, or else perpetuate the unfair power structures that favour large corporations. Hopefully this post has planted some seeds for you to ponder over…!

sources (or sauces?):

• Tandon, A., ‘Food systems responsible for ‘one third’ of human-caused emissions’, Carbon Brief (2021). Available here 
• Ritchie, H., Poser, M., ‘Land Use; How is humanity using the Earth’s land? And how can we decrease our land use so that more land is left for wildlife?’, Our World in Data (2019). Available here
• Edmond, C., Geldard, R., ‘Extreme weather is driving food prices higher. These 5 crops are facing the biggest impacts’, World Economic Forum (2024). Available here
• United Nations, ‘Our growing population, Global Issues. Available here
• BBC World Series, ‘Is lab-grown meat better for the environment?’, 2024. 
• Dalin, C. and C.L. Outhwaite ‘Impacts of global food systems on biodiversity and water: the vision of two reports and future aims’ , One Earth 1(3) 2019, pp.298–302. 
• Ericksen, P.J. ‘Conceptualizing food systems for global environmental change research’, Global environmental change 18(1) 2008, pp.234–245.]
• Delabre, I, ‘Food security and food sovereignty’, University of London (2024). 
• Gordon, L.J., V. Bignet, B. Crona et al. ‘Rewiring food systems to enhance human health and biosphere stewardship’, Environmental Research Letters 12(10) 2017. 
• Liu, J., V. Hull, M. Batistella, R. DeFries, T. Dietz, F. Fu, T.W. Hertel, R.C. Izaurralde, E.F. Lambin, S. Li and L.A. Martinelli ‘Framing sustainability in a telecoupled world’, Ecology and Society 18(2) 2013. 
• IUCN, ‘Invasive Alien Species’, (2021). Available here
• The Royal Society, ‘How do humans affect biodiversity?’, Reversing Biodiversity Loss (2023). Available here
• World Bank
• The Global goals, ‘Zero Hunger’, available here
• Spann, M. ‘Politics of poverty: the post-2015 sustainable development goals and the business of agriculture’, Globalizations 14 (3) 2017, pp.360–378.   
• FAO, ‘Agroecology Knowledge Hub’, available here
• BBC World Series, ‘Is lab grown meat better for the planet?’, The Climate Question (2023). 
• Van der Ploeg, ‘Peasant-driven agricultural growth and food sovereignty’, The Journal of Peasant Studies (2014). Available here
• González-Esquivel, C.E., Camacho-Moreno, E., Larrondo-Posadas, L., Sum-Rojas, C., de León-Cifuentes, W.E., Vital-Peralta, E., Astier, M. and López-Ridaura, S., ‘Sustainability of agroecological interventions in small scale farming systems in the Western Highlands of Guatemala’  , International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability 18(4) 2020, pp.285-299. 
• Gyapong, A.Y. ‘Land grabs, farmworkers, and rural livelihoods in West Africa: some silences in the food sovereignty discourse’  , Globalizations 18(3) 2021, pp.339–354.
• Gordon, L.J., V. Bignet, B. Crona et al. ‘Rewiring food systems to enhance human health and biosphere stewardship’, Environmental Research Letters 12(10) 2017. 
• Ghadiri, M., ‘Applying a climate-biodiversity-health framework to support integrated food systems planning and policy’ Journal of Environmental Management, (2024).