We must take the opportunity offered by events to reconfigure the world’s food systems – and that involves seeing them as systems

When we first sat down to conceptualise this issue, we thought about the need to speak to the journey philanthropy has been on when it comes to food systems and where it goes next. 2021 has, in many ways, been the portal between the past, or normal as we knew it, and the opportunity for a new world rooted in equity, justice, resilience and hope.

Each year, philanthropy spends billions on issues which are implicitly connected to food systems – whether that’s environment and nature conservation, or action on climate and planetary health, or human rights, nutrition and sustainable development – but food systems are seldom explicitly addressed in funding strategies.

A work in progress seems like a cliché but it feels right here. 2021 has been a landmark year for awareness and for action on food systems. At the international, national and sub-national process levels, nations and other food system actors gathered at the UN Food Systems Summit 2021, UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), UN Biodiversity Conference (CBD COP15), and the UN Committee on World Food Security. From healthy diets and resilient production practices, to action to stem biodiversity loss and species conservation, to the governance and economics that heavily affect the entire world system, food systems have been at the centre of each of these political agendas.

Unsurprisingly, there have been as many areas of consensus as there have been of deepening schisms and tensions about power, knowledge, representation, corporate influence on government, and all the associated debates about pathways forward. In this context, the clarion call for systems transformation has resounded. And where we go next in this reality has never been more vital.

Read the full article about making progress towards food systems justice by Ruth Richardson at Alliance magazine.