United Nations Food Systems Summit

Context: There is a need to achieve the United Nations-mandated Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) by 2030 and address climate change in view of food production, leaders and subject matter experts stressed at the United Nations Food System Summit.
Need

• The food system will not prosper until all sectors concerned work together,we must urgently move from incremental and siloed action towards a systems approach.
• Therefore, it is inevitable that all stakeholders and people within the system play a crucial role through responsible and innovative practices in ensuring that everyone has access to healthy food.

About Food System

• According to Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), food systems encompass the entire range of actors and their interlinked value-adding activities involved in the production, aggregation, processing, distribution, consumption and disposal of food products.
• Food systems comprise all food products that originate from crop and livestock production, forestry, fisheries and aquaculture, as well as the broader economic, societal and natural environments in which these diverse production systems are embedded.

Key Points

• More than 90 heads of states and governments submitted their national strategies and commitments to strengthening the food systems.
• The leaders emphasised that while we consume different types of food, the food system unites us. 
• They stressed how nations encounter challenges and how this platform offers to assist them in addressing them.

Five action areas to help inform the transitions needed to realise the vision of the 2030 agenda have emerged from the Summit process. These include:

• Nourish all people
• Boost nature-based solutions
• Advance equitable livelihoods, decent work and empowered communities
• Build resilience to vulnerabilities, shocks and stresses
• Support means of implementation

Road Ahead

• The world is looking forward to a simpler and more inclusive food system. The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has already given the world a ‘One-Health’ vision, and the world is optimistic of a food system that recognises the associated concerns of non-judicious use of chemicals as well as unregulated animal intensification.