Giving Compass' Take:

• Food Tank interviews economist Dr. Wei Zhang, who authored a new report about evaluating our food system for sustainability. Studying the impact of food production, "from farm to fork to disposal," should help us enact better policies and improve our health.

• Zhang urges more "systems thinking" for donors and stakeholders in agriculture, meaning everything about the food system must be taken into account before we can make an impact for the better. Will organizations in this sector follow such advice?

• Indeed, if we have to start somewhere, this article confirms that a better food system starts from the ground up.

Dr. Wei Zhang is an economist, focusing on ecosystem services, agriculture, and the environment. She is the coordinating lead author of a new, ground-breaking report from the Economics of Ecosystems & Biodiversity for Agriculture and Food (TEEB AgriFood). This report addresses how to evaluate our food system in the context of agriculture, ecology, and human health.

The goal of TEEB AgriFood is to more comprehensively determine the costs, benefits, and impacts of food production. What makes some produce less expensive in most supermarkets is in part the use of cheap fertilizers and pesticides, but that retail price does not take into account costs like environmental damage from runoff. To ensure the sustainability of the food system, an important step is to account for the side effects, or externalities, through market mechanisms. TEEB Agrifood is creating a framework for looking at all the impacts of food, from farm to fork to disposal, including effects on livelihoods, the environment, and health. This can help farmers, decision makers, and businesses more explicitly look at the impacts of different practices and policies.

Food Tank had the opportunity to discuss with Dr. Wei Zhang the need for systems thinking when examining our food system.

FOOD TANK (FT): What is the most interesting thing you learned from working with TEEB AgriFood?

WEI ZHANG (WZ): How important ‘worldview’ is to how you conceptualize issues and develop or choose tools to address those issues. Using systems thinking requires a shift in fundamental beliefs and assumptions that constitute our worldviews. These are the intellectual and moral foundations for the way we view and interpret reality, as well as our beliefs about the nature of knowledge and the processes of knowing. Systems thinking can help by changing the dominant mindset and by addressing resistance to more integrated approaches.

Read the full article about the importance of understanding the entirety of the food system by Brian Frederick at Food Tank.