Giving Compass' Take:

• Food Tank sits down with Pavan Sukhdev, Founder-CEO of Gist-Advisory, and contributed to 'The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity for Agriculture and Food" (TEEBAgriFood). A report that inclusively evaluates the food system's social, human, and environmental impact on society. 

• How can we encourage policy changes for a better food system? How can philanthropists and other private sector entities do more to address food system impact? 

• Read about how youth participation will be a part of changing the food system. 

Pavan Sukhdev is the Founder-CEO of Gist-Advisory, a sustainability consultancy, and is on the Steering Committee for the new, groundbreaking report “The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity for Agriculture and Food” (TEEBAgriFood).

This report explores how to evaluate our agriculture and food systems while considering a range of social, human, and environmental impacts and dependencies along food value chains.

Food Tank had the opportunity to speak with Pavan Sukhdev about the TEEBAgriFood report, the consequences of our current food system, and the importance of properly evaluating those consequences to promote system change.

Food Tank (FT): What is the most interesting thing you learned from working with TEEBAgriFood?

Pavan Sukhdev (PS): The most interesting thing I learned from TEEBAgriFood is that there is no single ‘most interesting thing’ when it comes to food systems! What worries me are the many dimensions, scale, and seriousness of several invisible impacts of today’s food systems, and how little they are acknowledged and acted upon by policymakers.

FT: What is the most significant unintended consequence of our current food system that policymakers, funders, and donors ignore?

PS: I’m not sure that there is an ethical answer to your question! Can it be ethical to ‘rank,’ for example, climate change impacts on future generations versus health impacts on current generations versus the risk of losing several hundred million village livelihoods?

FT: Why is it important to value the environmental impact of our food system?

PS: The ecosystem and biodiversity impacts of food systems are among their most serious, yet economically invisible, impacts, together with their impacts on human health, global climate change, and village livelihoods.

Read the full article about the impact of food systems  by Brian Frederick at Food Tank