Viet Nam Human Rights
2021 Revealed the Fragility of Food Systems
The end of this year has revealed the fragility of food systems when faced with sudden disruptions such as those observed during the COVID-19 pandemic. These disruptions have increased the number of people with limited or no access to food in the world. Today, more than 811 million people suffer from hunger, according to recent studies.
The State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA) 2021 report, published in November by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) states that three billion people cannot afford healthy diets, and another billion could soon join these ranks if the crisis of the pandemic reduces their income by a third.
According to current projections, if an alteration in the transport routes of food products continues as it has been since the start of the pandemic, the cost of food could suffer an increase. This increase would greatly affect 845 million people.
These disruptions would impact on long-term trends in the food system, the welfare of people, their assets, their livelihoods and security, the ability to withstand future disarrays caused by extreme weather events and the heightening of diseases and pests in plants and animals.
Global agrifood systems, related to the complex production of agricultural food and non-food products, as well as their storage, processing, transportation, distribution and consumption, produce 11 billion tons of food annually and employ billions of people, either directly or indirectly.
The recent FAO report analyzes whether low-income countries face greater difficulties as a result of impacts of the pandemic than middle-to high-income countries. After analyzing this specific situation in more than 100 countries, the report confirms the trend that low-income countries face greater difficulties; however, middle- and high-income countries are not excluded from these impacts.
Such is the case of middle-income countries like Brazil, where 60% of the value of their exports comes from a single trading partner, which reduces their options if their main counterpart is affected by the disruptions generated by COVID-19.
The same can happen in high-income countries, such as Canada or Australia, if they are exposed to transportation variants due to the long distances required to cover food distribution.
According to recent expert studies, reducing essential connections in the distribution network could cause local transport time to increase by 20% or more, thus increasing food costs and prices for consumers.
Resilience in agrifood systems by governments should be one of the main strategies to respond to current and future challenges, seeking to diversify sources of inputs, production, markets, supply chain and actors, supporting the creation of small and medium-sized companies, cooperatives, consortiums and other groups to maintain diversity in the agrifood value chains.
In addition, the resilience of vulnerable households should be improved to ensure a world without hunger, through greater access to assets, diversified sources of income and social protection programs in the event of a crisis.
Today, family farms represent 90% of all farms in the world. FAO established a technical platform for family farming with the aim of fostering innovation and the exchange of information between regions.
According to the Director-General of FAO, QU Dongyu, when resources and knowledge are shared “innovation is accelerated”, and while “this platform will allow us to think big, it will also facilitate the adoption of concrete measures” which will in turn allow for the conservation of biodiversity. This represents the first step towards rural transformation.
The relationship between agricultural nutrition and climate change is another outstanding component of the shocks that have continued to occur in 2021.
The increase in temperatures and the growing impact of radical atmospheric effects are exponentially affecting agriculture, causing an increase in the prices of raw materials as recorded by recent trends, and consequently aggravating the conditions of hunger and malnutrition.
If this trend continues, by 2050 agrifood production will decline by around 10%, at a time when there would be a strong increase in the world population.
There are also opportunities to reverse these trends related to agriculture, food and the environment, but in order for this to happen, greater investments is needed in this sector.
From precision agriculture and early warning systems, to improving the use of food waste and converting it into clean energy, to using water more efficiently, many practices are already being carried out in different countries. These solutions offer a sense of hope and show that we can reverse the present negative trends. When reflecting on the difficulties of the past year, we should continue to work towards finding concrete solutions instead of just pointing out the difficulties that the future of the agrifood industry faces.
Popular Posts
-
Religion is a part of the spiritual life in society, this phenomenon of the superstructure has been strongly changed with economic - social... -
Vietnam has just done well for the second cycle of Universal Periodical Review (UPR) in Geneva, Switzerland. So, what’s the UPR? an... -
Thai people in Shutdown Bangkok protests Not until this crisis, we have realized the ne... -
Representatives from foreign countries congratulate Viet Nam on its election to the Human Rights Council for the first time on November ... -
A street flowers vendor in Hanoi Another new spring has come to Vietnam, bring... -
If nothing changes, there will be a preferential credit program with hundreds of thousands billion of capital for agriculture and r... -
Recently, several anti-governmental individuals have established series of illegal groups and organizations in the name of civil soci... -
Radio Free Asia (RFA) is a private, nonprofit international broadcasting agency of the United States government that broadcasts and...
All comments [ 20 ]
Most people rely on supermarkets, and these megastores dominate our food economy. They are part of a system that depends on large-scale agriculture and production, smooth-flowing international food trade and fast turnaround times.
what happens when system vulnerabilities are exposed and they break down? What catches our fall?
We need a resilient food system. This means going beyond the ecological idea of resilience as merely survival during times of stress, and instead proactively building a food system that can both respond quickly to changing circumstances and act as a safety net.
What we’ve seen during the COVID-19 pandemic is exactly what you’d expect from a vastly underprepared population: panic buying, spread of misinformation, and passing blame. The cascade of panic has highlighted major economic, social, and political flaws.
Supermarkets, and much of the supporting infrastructure, have in many ways stepped up during the crisis.
Rapid changes and crisis-driven hoarding led to empty shelves (a shock for those used to “on demand”) and unavailable online delivery slots.
Demand for veg boxes, milk, and dry goods deliveries spiked, as did requests to join community supported agriculture and local farm schemes.
Huge numbers of community-based food hubs, food banks, small farms, and even independent gardeners responded.
Diversity in the food system is paramount. This goes beyond the number of options in a shop. We need to look at how food is produced, processed, transported, and made available, along with impacts and knock-on effects.
Take the mass retail model that provides food to most people across the global north. The sort of industrial agriculture it relies on is ideal for producing masses of uniform food, but not for planetary or human health and wellbeing.
Industrial agriculture thrives on monoculture, where whole fields and farms are planted with a single crop, but so do pests and diseases.
By removing biodiversity we have made it easier to sow and harvest, predict and control. But generations of selective breeding means increasingly homogeneous crops and livestock, which lack the genetic diversity to adapt to evolutionary pressures like diseases.
Large-scale intensive agriculture amplifies this risk. In monocultures, there are no physical barriers or buffers to hinder selective sweeps in susceptible populations. When something virulent crops up, it can spread like wildfire.
Outbreaks of Nipah virus in several Asian countries led to hundreds of deaths between 1998 and 2018. In 2019, African Swine Fever killed hundreds of millions of pigs in China. COVID-19 joins a long list of blights that we have unintentionally encouraged.
Community supported agriculture schemes, food banks, and food hubs can do this because they are already networked locally and can rely on emergency helpers.
These pose a dual risk, potentially both triggering global crises and failing to deliver provisions.
For our own welfare, we should ensure that there is more to the food landscape than industrial agriculture, large-scale processing, and mega-retail.
Reversing the alarming trend of rising food insecurity requires transformations towards just, sustainable and healthy food systems with an explicit focus on the most vulnerable and fragile regions.
Global food insecurity fell for decades, but it is steadily rising again1. A primary driver of this alarming trend is the double burden of climate shocks and violent conflict in areas that are already food insecure. The recent COVID-19 crisis is exacerbating this trajectory.
Transformations of food systems must explicitly address the challenges and meet the needs of the most vulnerable and fragile regions
Your comments