Food Systems

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted trade of food and farm products, and the agricultural sector is under immense pressure to overcome trade barriers while also responding to climate change. With ongoing tensions between major economies and with current structural impacts in trade and food security, the upcoming (and now twice-postponed due to the pandemic) 12th WTO Ministerial Conference is necessary to provide an opportunity to address and reform agricultural domestic support and to update the global trade book.

Several constraints limit the ability of smallholder farmers in low and middle income countries (LMICs) to reach their production potential. One such constraint is access to formal finance; smallholders and other agricultural value chain participants frequently cannot access credit necessary to invest in new crops or technologies and deal with risks and shocks and/or savings products necessary to safely carry wealth from harvest to planting.

Increasing urbanization plays a major role in shifting patterns of food supply and demand and thus in transforming food systems. These transformations carry significant implications for the livelihoods of rural populations, presenting both challenges and opportunities. A new paper published in Food Security examines some of these impacts in Africa south of the Sahara (SSA) and South Asia, as well as the enabling environments needed to help rural communities benefit from the changes.

The CGIAR COVID-19 Hub has released updated policy notes regarding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on global and regional food systems. This latest series of updates covers several FSP priority countries, including Ethiopia, Nigeria, Malawi, and Bangladesh.

Despite tremendous progress made in the last decade to produce enough food to meet the demands of the growing population, around 811 million people lived in hunger in 2020 and nearly half of the world’s population lacked year-round access to adequate food due to climate change, poverty, and the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the 2021 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report.