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FOOD SYSTEMS ARE EVOLVING QUICKLY TO MEET GROWING AND CHANGING DEMAND, BUT THEY ARE NOT SERVING EVERYONE’S NEEDS. As we modernize food systems to make them climate-smart, healthy, and sustainable, we must also strive to make them inclusive of smallholders, youth, women, conflict-affected people, and other poor and marginalized people. IFPRI’s flagship report examines the obstacles and opportunities for inclusion, looks at the growing range of tools and technologies that can enhance inclusiveness, and considers the key role that food system policies can play in making food systems work for everyone. Drawing on recent findings, IFPRI researchers and other distinguished food policy experts consider critical aspects of building inclusive food systems:
• How can inclusive food systems help break the intergenerational cycle of poverty, hunger, and malnutrition?
• What can be done to strengthen the midstream of food value chains—transporters, distributors, processors, and retailers—to give smallholders and rural people better access to markets and services?
• Will Africa’s food systems generate sufficient jobs for the region’s rapidly growing youth population?
• How can women be empowered within food system processes, such as household decision-making, negotiations with market actors, research decisions, and policymaking?
• Can conflict-affected people and refugees be integrated into food systems—either in their new homes or the places they fled—to help them rebuild their lives?
• How can national food system transformations contribute to improvements in dietary diversity, food safety, and food quality for all?
• What major trends will affect food security, nutrition, and inclusion of disadvantaged peoples across the globe in 2020?
The 2020 Global Food Policy Report also presents interesting trends revealed by several key food policy indicators, including country-level data on agricultural spending and research investment, productivity in agriculture, and projections for future agricultural production and consumption.
The 2020 Global Food Policy Report focuses on the need to build inclusive food systems, both to ensure that marginalized and vulnerable people enjoy the benefits and opportunities that food systems can bring and to support sustainable development. Inclusive food systems can help create better economic opportunities for poor people, mitigate climate change impacts for the most vulnerable, and spark innovation for the production and consumption of healthy foods.
When this report went to print, the coronavirus outbreak posed a new threat. As the world battles this pandemic and as economies and livelihoods are disrupted, the poor and vulnerable are likely to suffer the most. Addressing the impacts of this shock—from supply chain and trade interruptions to severe unemployment to rising poverty levels—urgently requires effective, targeted social protection for the most vulnerable in the short term. For long term resilience, we must build inclusive food systems. This ninth annual report examines who is excluded in today’s food systems and how to improve the terms on which individuals and groups participate so that everyone can reap their benefits.
