Digital innovation is a key feature in the global and national discourse on food systems transformation. Efforts to better integrate food systems—defined here as the constellation of actors and their activities originating from agriculture, livestock, forestry, or fisheries, as well as the broader economic, societal, and natural environments in which they operate, including the production, aggregation, processing, distribution, consumption, and disposal of food products (Dwivedi et al. 2017; FAO 2018; Njuki et al.

Management of postharvest food loss and waste (FLW) is an important strategy in efforts to sustainably meet the food and nutrition needs of the world’s growing population. Sustainable food systems are critical to achieving food security and nutrition for all, now and in the future. Food systems cannot be sustainable when a large proportion of the food produced using limited resources is lost or wasted in the supply chain.

Agricultural inputs, including fertilizers, seeds, breeding stock, crop protection chemicals, machinery, irrigation, and knowledge, are key to innovation and productivity improvement, and are the backbone of any agricultural revolution. They are an integral part of the food supply chain, which comprises the production and distribution of food, and as such a key component of the food system (HLPE 2017).

Food systems are a foundation of human and planetary well-being and central to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Yet they also contribute to ill health, inequity, environmental degradation, and greenhouse gas emissions. These challenges demand urgent food systems transformation. Such a transformation requires understanding the status of food systems across their diverse functions.

The highlands of North Shoa in Amhara region are dominated by cereals (wheat, barley and tef) followed by food legumes. The productivity of cereals and food legumes is low due to biotic and abiotic stresses as well as insufficient input supplies like certified seeds, planting materials, inoculants, and other inputs. Because of diseases and insect pests, acidity and water logging problems, farmers are reducing areas of food legumes and growing more cereals leading to low crop diversity that can reduce soil fertility and health, incomes, food diversity and increase disease threats.

This document explains ongoing activities and preliminary plans for the establishment of a
multipurpose innovation hub at the WorldFish Nusatupe Research Station in Western Province,
Solomon Islands.The innovation hub concept responds to national demand for a facility to convene research, training and services with national and provincial partners.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools are rapidly transforming the way people work, providing opportunities for improving efficiency, accelerating innovations, and supporting human decision making. The area of policymaking is no exception. To explore the advantages and disadvantages of customized chatbots for supporting food policy research, we created a virtual food policy expert using a customized AI system using training literature drawn from about two dozen food policy research reports or food policy documents.

The Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia (TAFSSA) district agrifood systems assessment aims to provide a reliable, accessible, and integrated evidence base that links farm production, market access, dietary patterns, climate risk responses, and natural resource management with gender as a cross-cutting issue in rural areas of Bangladesh, India, and Nepal. It is designed to be a district-level multiyear assessment.

To improve the farming efficiency, Egypt has been struggling to narrow the water, energy, and yield gaps owing to exacerbated water shortage. For quantitative diagnosis of farming performance, the paper presented an on-farm water, energy, food, and carbon-footprint (WEFC) nexus index made up of four equally pillars. The arithmetic average preserved the multi-centric approach and equal importance of the four pillars.

Agriculture plays a major role in economic growth, but it is also an important source of greenhouse gas emissions in Kenya. To achieve Kenya’s NDC target of cutting GHG emissions by 32% by 2030 relative to business-as-usual (BAU) of 143 MtCO2 eq, there is need to identify and promote scalable innovations for food system emissions reduction. The CGIAR Initiative on Low-Emission Food Systems (Mitigate+) can contribute towards Kenya’s NDC. The Mitigate+ Initiative aims to reduce annual global food system emissions by 7% by 2030. Kenya is among the prioritized countries for the initiative.

There is an urgent need to rethink our global food systems. The world is facing a nutrition crisis, and the way we produce and consume food is altering the equilibrium of our planet, causing environmental damage and biodiversity loss, and climate change which further compromises food security. Children are disproportionately affected, and school meals are being increasingly recognized as a key investment for governments to tackle these challenges. Through national school meals programs, around 418 million children currently receive a meal at school every day.

The increasing population and changes in the climate in Africa demand a more sustainable approach to water usage for improved food and water security in the region. One of the key users of water, agriculture serves as the primary livelihood in Ghana, with a growing focus on cocoa production. To effectively implement sustainable water management strategies, it becomes imperative to conduct hydrological studies, including water balance components and water quality at sub-national and watershed scales. This would assist decision-makers in the proper planning and interventions for agriculture.