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By way of transforming food systems

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This blog post is written by Master’s student; Anudini Wijayarathna, Rural Development & Natural Resource Management, SLU and Camilla Lindberg, MSc Environmental Science, SLU. The content is based on their experience in participating in the United Nations Food Systems Summit 2021,‘The People’s Plenary – Accelerating Action for the Future We Want’.

Women working within agriculture in Asia.

In a phase where the COVID-19 pandemic has destructively affected global food systems and food security, the much-needed global discourse on transformation of food systems was conducted by the UN Food Systems Summit 2021.

The aim of the summit was to create a platform in bringing all-inclusive, diverse and effective strategies to transform today’s food systems, through which the world can achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 – and we have listened to some of it and are happy to share some of our thoughts.

The session, ‘The People’s Plenary – Accelerating Action for the Future We Want’ brought attention to various efforts that the global community have initiated for this transformation through worldwide pre-summit dialogues. We were excited to listen in on this particular part of the summit to see what the national dialogues, that we also had taken part in, had generated in terms of collective action. During this session one thing that stood out to us was the multitude of coalitions that have been created around different food system issues. The coalitions are a way of collaborating and sharing knowledge to enable and accelerate the commitment of transforming the food systems to be sustainable and in line with Agenda 2030. We thought this was a great way of generating action around a specific topic as well as inspiring to see so many people wanting to share and work together.

We have described some of the coalitions below and what action areas they are related to:

Coalitions across the world

One of the coalitions from action area one, Nourish All People, is The Coalition of Action for Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems for Children It is & All. The coalition is described as a broad coalition that focuses on aligning and strengthening actions across sectors to be able to achieve collective impact on healthy diets. The actions the coalition is mainly focusing on should address malnutrition, unsafe foods and environmental impacts of food production.

The Global Sustainable Livestock Coalition is a part of action area two to Boost nature based solutions of production and their overarching goal is to “support decision making at all levels for farmer- and value-chain-oriented national/bioregional development”. Livestock production affects development in the economic, social as well as the environmental system and the coalition is a way to optimise sharing of best practises between stakeholders across scales.

Vegetables at a market. Credit: Pixabay

The session has also shed light on the strategies across the world to reduce food loss and waste under the Coalition on Food is Never Waste under action track two. While one in ten people in the world suffer from hunger, a large amount of food is wasted, which also results in releasing greenhouse gases. Thus, the initiative urges the consumers to avoid buying excess food while utilising what we buy. It also depicted the need to invest more in facilities to preserve food, and technologies for food waste management such as the food losses measuring method developed in Sweden to reduce food loss within food production.

Indigenous Peoples Food Systems coalition is connected to action track three; Advance Equitable Livelihoods, Decent Work, & Empowered Communities. The main objective of the coalition is to strengthen and protect indigenous people’s food systems across the world as well as scale up and disseminate the traditional knowledge and good practices already there that have the potential to transform the global food system as a whole.

Coalition of Action 4 Soil Health (CA4SH), linked to action track four, is established around the main objective of improving soil health with the intention of changing diverse perspectives of food systems constructively.  Paying farmers not only for volume but also for the quality and soil health, scaling up science-based solutions and innovation, sharing knowledge with farmers through field schools to store carbon in soils, increasing plant-based meat and dietary products and many other initiatives were uncovered by this coalition.

For a sustainable future

In review of these efforts, we felt encouraged to see that the summit and its’ extended network is mobilising people to act and specifically to collaborate. To be able to transform such complex systems as the food systems, cross-scale and cross-sectoral collaborations are definitely needed. Perhaps these coalitions can be a perfect place for the sharing of knowledge and practices to take place.

Nevertheless, we also find these initiatives are not as simple as we see. Especially the pandemic has made some people’s vulnerability worse because of health issues, unemployment and poverty, lack of access to food and resources and many more. Under such circumstances, will these coalitions be able just to come out of the worse scenario or to overcome the detrimental effects of the pandemic and create long-term sustainability in food systems? Most importantly, continuation of these collaborations in the long run is essential to see a visible change in food systems.

Apart from that, some of these actions could contradict different sustainable development goals. The coalitions’ effort of promoting plant-based dietary products can be a constructive change in acquiring health benefits for people whereas it can be a livelihood and environmental threat. For example, almond milk can be a comparatively nutritious plant-based substitute yet, almond cultivation is highly water extracting and labour consuming. Thus, it is also vital to integrate the implementation processes of these initiatives with the other Sustainable Development Goals.  Moreover, to see a sustainable future, the implementation strategies of these initiatives might have to be shaped constructively according to the situation.

If you want to know more about or get in contact with any of the coalitions, visit the FSS website or email foodsystemssummit@un.org.

Ethiopia assesses Environmental Monitoring and Assessment for Agenda 2030

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The blog post is written by Kevin Bishop, Professor at the Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment, SLU, and Solomon Gebreyohannis Gebrehiwot, Assistant professor at the Ethiopian Institute of Water Resources (EIWR) and Water and Land Resources Center (WLRC), Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia. 

A field excursion to considering the possibilities for environmental monitoring and assessment in Ethiopia. Photo: Kevin Bishop

There is a global consensus to work towards the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). But to set a course to these goals, and then navigate through the trade-offs and synergies between these goals is a challenge. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment (EMA) has been a central feature of how many industrialized societies, including Sweden, have tried to achieve environmental goals for half a century now. But Agenda 2030 involves the economic and social dimensions as well as the environmental dimensions of sustainable development.

A group of researchers from Ethiopia, Chile and Sweden, all with ties to SLU, looked at how EMA could be renewed for a more effective role in Agenda 2030 that encompasses socio-economic dimensions and respects the complexity of knowledge needed to understand nature’s contribution to socio-economic development (Bishop and Jönsson, 2020). The three national settings were chosen to focus on how EMA’s potential looked in societies with different income levels, with a focus on issues surrounding forests and waters.

One outcome of the project is a new article examining EMA in Ethiopia (Gebrehiwot et al., 2021). National experts and practitioners were gathered and interviewed by the country’s Academy of Science to look at what the country currently has in the way of EMA, but also opportunities for the future, since the possibilities for observing ecosystems have developed tremendously in recent years, including remote sensing, genomics, and citizen science.

The stakeholder discussions in Ethiopia revealed a strong and shared belief that evidence-based assessments can help manage the challenges posed by the simultaneous pursuit of multiple SDGs. The most remarkable finding for those involved in the expert meetings was discovering the existence of more environmental M&A than the expert group had anticipated. That highlighted a weakness that many of the participants already suspected, namely that the environmental data which does exist are not well-communicated. The information resources remain largely unknown to decision-makers and even relevant experts, to say nothing of secondary stakeholders and the public at large. Given how Europe and other industrialized societies struggle to achieve the goals of “open science”, the issue of data documentation and sharing is an even more acute challenge in low-income countries.

Solomon and other experts gathered at the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences, Feb 2018. Photo: Kevin Bishop

Strengthening existing public institutions, encouraging local participation through citizen science and adoption of up to date technologies to create national platform for EMA would be an important step to fill in the gaps identified in this study. Furthermore, this would facilitate addressing the needs for more integrated monitoring and assessment of the interactions between the use and management of water, forests, and other resources as well as to better navigate synergies and conflicts between SDGs.

Common to all the countries in the study, the participants in the Ethiopian study found that the evidence base must be translated into socially accepted knowledge in order to navigate potential synergies and conflicts between different SDGs. A strength Ethiopia has for this is the presence of government financed extension agents in villages across the country. This meant that developments in the evidence-base could be rapidly communicated and worked with down to the level of individual land-owners. Potential was also recognized in Ethiopia for more participatory environmental analysis methods that could promote a more inclusive dialogue on natural resource management.

Together with the other two case studies in Sweden and Chile, a theoretical framework regarding legitimacy and governance has been developed that could help evolve EMA into a powerful new tool which builds on a long tradition of environmental monitoring and assessment, but with the strength of co-production of knowledge suited to the vision of Agenda 2030, and a focus on learning processes in governance, creating versatility for different contexts (Alarcon et al., 2021).

This blog post is based on a published report:
Gebrehiwot, S. G., Bewket, W., Mengistu, T., Nuredin, H., Ferrari, C. A., & Bishop, K. (2021). Monitoring and assessment of environmental resources in the changing landscape of Ethiopia: a focus on forests and water. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 193(10), 1-13.

Alarcon Ferrari, C., Jönsson, M., Gebreyohannis Gebrehiwot, S., Chiwona-Karltun, L., Mark-Herbert, C., Manuschevich, D., Powell, N., Do, T., Bishop, K. & Hilding-Rydevik, T. (2021). Citizen Science as Democratic Innovation That Renews Environmental Monitoring and Assessment for the Sustainable Development Goals in Rural Areas. Sustainability, 13(5), 2762.

Bishop, K. and Jönsson, M. (2020). Med miljöanalys som verktyg: Skogen och Agenda 2030. KSLA Nytt och Noterat, 2020(1): 4-5)

 

More connections: Sustainable livestock opportunities and new food system realities

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Shirley Tarawali, assistant director general of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and chair of the Global Agenda for Sustainable Livestock, made a keynote presentation at an Agri4D online conference, Food Systems for New Realities, held 28–30 Sep 2021. The conference was organized by SLU Global and the Swedish International Agriculture Network Initiative (SIANI), with support from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida). This blog post was first published by ILRI 4 Oct 2021. 

Tarawali’s remarks, ‘More connections: Sustainable livestock opportunities and new food system realities’, pulled examples from the livestock sector to illustrate the importance of existing, new and diverse connections to deliver on the future sustainable, inclusive, resilient and inclusive food systems we all aspire to.

A transcript of her remarks follows.

As I considered the theme of this conference, Food systems for new realities, and the core question it addresses, as I brainstormed with colleagues—and I particularly want to acknowledge ILRI’s Susan MacMillan and David Aronson in this regard—I found myself circling back again and again to the new connections that have arisen recently, and more connections that are needed to address—and to influence—the new realities.

Of course, food connects us all! We all need to eat. We all have preferences. We all like to make choices—especially about food!

But when it comes to food—especially milk, meat and eggs—let’s be careful that the wealthier ones of us don’t allow our choices or the voices about our choices to impact on those who have little or no choice and for whom these foods would make an immense difference to their wellbeing.

There are some connections that relate to this overall theme and which are part of those new realities—new connections that influence and deliver.

Food system connections

  • With ‘more food’ needed to feed ‘more people’, we need to better connect how food is produced, transported, processed, marketed and consumed
  • We need to understand the connections among the many ways that foods are produced and their impacts on the environment
  • We need to understand and address the multiple trade-offs as well as connections involved in making our food systems truly sustainable

For small- and medium-sized livestock enterprises in low- and middle-income countries, where the people–livestock connections are still very close and where demand for milk, meat and eggs is growing fastest, the oft-cited connections now are between livestock and the environment and livestock and human health.

But let’s not forget other connections:

  • Livestock provide livelihoods, jobs and incomes for more than a billion people
  • Women, who in lower-income countries make up two-thirds of all mixed crop-and-livestock farmers, have a unique intersection with livestock
  • Household stock are often the only asset that women can own
  • Farm animals may be the only means for a girl to go to school
  • Cattle, buffaloes, camels, sheep, goats, pigs and poultry and their many products provide women with nutritious food, or, if they sell those foods, with the income needed to buy other foods, to feed their families
  • And germane to today’s topics is livestock’s role in ‘agroecology’ and the ‘circular bioeconomy’ (‘closing the loop’). Because small and medium production enterprises often take the form of integrated crop-livestock systems, they are already operating as a circular bioeconomy, albeit one that needs improved efficiency and productivity. Or these enterprises take the form of pastoral herding systems, which play essential roles in, and present new opportunities for, environmental stewardship of the world’s vast rangelands.

Globally, we have the UNFSS (United Nations Food Systems Summit), COP26 (United Nations Climate Change Conference), N4G (Nutrition for Growth global pledge drive) and CBD (United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity) all being held in just in the last quarter of 2021. These meetings are connecting people, conversations, ideas, commitments and investments.

Pandemic lessons about connections

  • The pandemic has painfully but usefully reminded us just how globally connected we all are. Perhaps Dr Tedros’ pandemic mantra—‘No one is safe until we are all safe’—needs to be expanded to global food systems—‘No one is fed or nourished until we are all fed and nourished’
  • We’ve seen how ‘connected science’ delivered (spectacular) vaccine solutions
  • And we’ve seen how vaccines alone will not suffice; we need similarly focused connections within and among institutions, policymakers, government officials and socio-economists
  • And, of course, the pandemic has underscored the need to understand the connections between people, animals and environments within a ‘One Health’ paradigm

Let me now turn to three connections that still must be established, developed and strengthened—three connections that are themselves interconnected!

Three new food system connections needed

Connections to diversity

  • Reality for each of us depends very much on our local context, which very much differs depending on where and how we live. This is particularly true of livestock, which globally play multiple and very different roles, involve very different species, and are raised to produce a range of commodities in very different environments and under very different circumstances.
  • Because these different realities are often overlooked, debates about the roles of livestock, for example, can get polarized, with contrasting views about whether livestock are part of the solution, or part of the problem, in addressing the new food system realities.

I’m as guilty as anyone of having this kind of polarized (unconnected) viewpoint. Working in the developing world, I have thought that the ‘livelihoods’ livestock provide are more important in poor than in rich countries. I was wrong of course. People in wealthier countries employed in livestock production, processing, trading, retailing, etc. are just as dependent on livestock as the millions raising farm animals in poorer countries. That to me just emphasizes the need for very different pathways to reach a united goal to improve our food systems.

Or think, for example, of the pathways needed in the developing world for a smallholder mixed farmer, or a medium‑sized dairy cooperative member, or a pastoral herder, or a female head of household, or a traditional village elder or a young urban entrepreneur, and think of the many traders and processors of livestock foods and the many people providing feed and veterinary and other inputs and services to livestock farmers. Think of the variety of animal husbandry practices: from massive dairies in China to medium‑sized enterprises raising a few hundred pigs in the emerging economies of Asia, to family farms raising one or two cows and a handful of goats and chickens in Africa. What this huge diversity tells me is that a sustainable development trajectory—and the actions and science needed to drive it—will differ greatly depending on where one starts from, and with what resources.

Connections to science

While global food trends right now are heading in the wrong direction—with increasing numbers of people descending into poverty and hunger—our globalized world has, paradoxically, more new knowledge, more science and innovation, more enabling technologies than ever before.

As the pandemic has shown us, ‘connected science’ can deliver miracles such as rapidly developed vaccines against a new pathogen. But to make a bigger, and more equitable, difference in a diverse world, that science must be connected to, and contextualized within, a broad and diverse set of institutional, policy and social environments.

Connections to investments

We heard last week at the UNFSS of several large financial commitments to realizing the better food systems we aspire to. We must make those financial connections also work for these ‘new realities’, even when those realities are challenging, conflicting, confusing or paradoxical. By connecting people from different worlds, donors from different countries, ideas from different disciplines, innovations from different communities with a wealth of new science and knowledge, we can make the difference that makes the difference.

Let’s connect!

Let’s deliver!

Watch a video of Tarawali’s short (7-minute) talk here: https://youtu.be/QOJlSeY0kxE

Is there a definite value of water?

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This blog post is written by Jennie Barron, Professor at the Department of Soil and Environment; Agricultural water management, SLU

Photo: Jennie Barron, SLU

Water is a multifaceted resource from simply being served our daily glass of water, to the complex flow through the landscapes to produce food, recreation and other ecosystem services. Because of the multiple uses and benefits of water, there are many challenges of valuing and weighting benefits and impacts for the different uses and users.

This becomes evident in times of shocks and in crises. For example such as when the landscape  or society runs out of water, as in the extreme drought of 2018 in Sweden, or when 2 billion of people lack health and sanitation facilities to simply wash hands to cope with COVID-19. The past years global and local crises of COVID-19 has left no one untouched. And the crisis of COVID-19, has really reoriented the issue of conversation of water, and the value of water. 

The projections of water related crises is on the rise, as food security, sustainable development and climate change takes place. The need to find metrics, process and practise to weight the benefit and impacts of water scarcity will therefore be the key. This year’s World Water Development Report is thus a first step to summarise and synthesise the current perspectives on valuing water. It builds on the recent developments such as the High Level Panel of Water  Statement (2018)  “Every drop counts” and  assessments on water security for food and nutrition by FAO (2020)  â€œ Overcoming water challenges in agriculture“.

 Going from high level statements to reality and practise

 Agriculture is such sector that is an intense water appropriator globally, both in using rainfall, and extracting water for irrigation. In addition, agriculture can have a negative impact on water quality, as a source of agro chemical pollution both from crop and livestock production. Valuing water for irrigation is a particular challenge, as the fresh water from surface and groundwater sources is contested for many users, including the environment, aquatic benefits and food. However, in regions where many people are affected water scarcity and hunger, the value water might bring into agriculture can make significant livelihood improvements. For example in the work assessing benefits for smallholder farmers in the dry area of Bundelkhand , India led by Garg et al (2020), evidence-based soil and water innovations introduced, improved landscape water use and the farmer incomes by up to 170%. At the same time downstream water availability reduced with 40% in a normal rainfall year. Here a dialogue on upstream benefits and values, may need to be negotiated with downstream users.  In a case of livestock systems intensification in Tanzania (Noetenbart et al 2020), choosing the most resource saving option of intensification can have negligible impacts on water use. For example a comparison of livestock production accounting for water appropriation into the fodder, showed that extensive dryland grazing could only marginally increased total water appropriation, whilst improving water productivity with 20-50%, when combining animal health, breeding and feed options.  Here the most water demanding livestock scenario was the system with import of high protein (and more water demanding) fodder crops.

Photo: Jennie Barron, SLU

 Investing to secure water for agriculture is an enabler of development. 

Globally, about 40% of food comes from irrigation-dependent crop production systems, helping to support nutritious and all year food supply. Whereas regions and countries are running out of water, we have other regions that could better support irrigation development to adapt to weather extremes and bring both steady supply of food and nutrition and income. In Sub-Saharan Africa, less than 3% of the crop area is under formal irrigation. Yet smallholder farmers are evolving and investing themselves in so-called farmer led irrigation, despite a number of technical , social and financial challenges (Lefore et al 2019).

It is becoming evident that water is a critical enabler in development and Agenda 2030 for human health, incomes, food and nutrition as well as ecosystem services. Water needs to be bothsafeguarded for multiple benefits, as well as negotiated and explored in some cases, for additional uses in anthropogenic landscapes. By opening for reflecting multiple values, we can develop data, tools and weight benefits and trade-offs more just and equal among uses and users. In 2022, it is the +30 years of the Rio Declaration (UN Earth Summit 1992), including the statement of Integrated water resource development (IWRM) Let’s hope that water is back on the agenda for enabling development as, carefully negotiated for its multiple use and value.

What’s cooking at CGIAR?

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Photo credit: UN Sustainable Development Goals

SLU has a long tradition of partnerships with the CGIAR, both at the institutional and individual scientist-level. The CGIAR is the world’s largest agricultural research and innovation network with 8 000 staff globally, focused on agriculture in low and middle income countries.

The CGIAR is currently reorganizing and has launched a new research and innovation strategy with the aim to transform food, land and water systems in a climate crisis. The One CGIAR vision for 2030 is a world with sustainable and resilient food, land and water systems that deliver diverse, healthy, safe, sufficient and affordable diets, and ensure improved livelihoods and greater social equality, within planetary and regional environmental boundaries. Climate change and the climate crisis is at the forefront of the new strategy that describes the food systems challenges in the contexts of six major regions across Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, South Asia and Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

The strategy targets multiple Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and strives to achieve measurable benefits across five Impact Areas: (1) Nutrition, health and food security, (2) Poverty reduction, livelihoods and jobs, (3) Gender equality, youth and social inclusion, (4) Climate adaptation and mitigation, and (5) Environmental health and biodiversity. Three-year investment plans are set up for 2022-2024 and a number of CGIAR Initiatives (research programs) are under development. These initiatives will replace the previous Research Programs (CRPs).

The CGIAR will work with regional and national partners including universities and research institutes, business actors, and international partners. Scientists at SLU together with partners in low- and middle income countries from collaborations in research and capacity development are well positioned to contribute to this work. SLU’s global policy for Agenda 2030 points to several opportunities for cooperation between SLU and the CGIAR to contribute to the SDGs. To facilitate and support the dialogue between scientist at SLU and the CGIAR, a one page capacity statement based on SLU’s policy and the CGIAR strategy is made available here.

For more information, please contact the authors:
Ingrid Öborn, Professor at the Department of Crop Production Ecology, ingrid.oborn@slu.se
Ulf Magnusson, Professor at the Department of Clinical Sciences’, ulf.magnusson@slu.se
Sara GrÀslund, Head of SLU Global, sara.graslund@slu.se