The world is facing a critical food crisis, with stark statistics highlighting the urgent need for change. One in ten people globally face hunger, while an astonishing two billion individuals struggle with overweight or obesity. To make matters worse, approximately one-third of all food produced goes to waste, and agriculture contributes significantly to global greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for about a third of the total. It's time to revolutionize our food systems to prioritize health, sustainability, and justice, and that's exactly what a group of Cornell experts is striving for.
Led by Professor Mario Herrero, a team of five Cornell Food Systems and Global Change (FSGC) members has coordinated a special issue of The Lancet Planetary Health, published on November 3rd. This issue is a call to action, emphasizing the importance of multi-faceted approaches that consider both human and planetary well-being.
"This special issue is a game-changer," Herrero explains. "It showcases the need for simultaneous actions to maximize the positive impacts on environmental protection, human health, and just food systems."
The inspiration for this initiative stems from the EAT-Lancet Commission, a global collaboration of experts from over 35 countries and six continents. Their second report, released on October 3rd, highlighted the urgency of transforming our food systems. Daniel Mason-D'Croz, a senior researcher at Cornell, notes that the FSGC group realized the report only scratched the surface, prompting them to develop this special issue to delve deeper into the complex issues at hand.
Our planet's boundaries are under immense pressure due to climate change, land use challenges, and biodiversity loss. Food systems are at the heart of these crises, as Mason-D'Croz explains: "The food system is like a water balloon; when you push on one part, something else pops up. Transforming it is a delicate balance. We want to reduce emissions, land use, and water consumption, while also ensuring affordable access to healthy diets and fair wages for food producers. It's a complex web of interconnected challenges."
One key aspect discussed in the special issue is the shift towards healthy diets, as recommended by the EAT-Lancet Commission. While this transition offers health and environmental benefits, it also presents a challenge: fresh fruits and vegetables, which are more perishable than processed foods, may lead to increased food loss and waste. Marina Sundiang, a postdoctoral associate in FSGC and lead author of one of the papers, emphasizes the need for measures to reduce and manage food loss and waste to counterbalance this effect. Solutions include more frequent, smaller shopping trips for consumers, increased access to composting facilities for communities, and government investment in research to improve storage practices and develop healthier processed options.
Throughout the special issue, researchers explore potential solutions for producers, consumers, and governments to improve food systems. For consumers, the key recommendation is adopting a healthy diet with modest animal-sourced food consumption and increased fruit and vegetable intake. For producers, the focus is on increasing productivity and circularity, or nutrient recycling, throughout the food supply chain, such as through better fertilizer management. Governments are urged to provide sustained support for scientific research and development to create new varieties and management practices that can feed more people with fewer resources.
Thais Diniz Oliveira, a former postdoctoral associate in FSGC and now a sustainable development specialist with the United Nations Development Programme, and Matthew Gibson, a postdoctoral associate in FSGC, also contributed to this special issue. Gibson, who began his Ph.D. program in environmental policy just after the first EAT-Lancet report was published in 2019, emphasizes the transformative impact of these reports on understanding the interconnectedness of social and ecological systems. He hopes this second report and special issue will inspire similar revelations in others.
"My hope is that this special issue will spark new collaborations between food systems research and policy," Gibson says. "We've brought together cutting-edge models and researchers from around the world, but there's still so much we need to uncover. Especially how to transform systems at the necessary speed and scale. Time is of the essence, and there's a lot of work to be done."
Other key contributors to this research include Wageningen University in the Netherlands, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, University College London, the University of Purdue in Indiana, and the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, D.C. This groundbreaking work was funded by the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the CGIAR Foresight Initiative, and donors who supported the individual modeling teams.
The world is watching as these experts spearhead the conversation on planetary diets, offering a glimmer of hope in the face of global food challenges.
