Delivering Food Systems Diversification: A New Imperative

This article was originally published on Medium and has been co-authored with Joao Campari , Global Leader, Food and Agriculture Practice, WWF ; Juan Lucas Restrepo Ibiza , Director General, Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT ; Roseline Remans , Honorary research fellow with the Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT, and Director of Glocolearning ; Stefan S. , Executive Director, Global Crop Diversity Trust

The World Food Prize Foundation recently announced Cary Fowler and Geoff Hawtin as the 2024 Laureates. We applaud the recognition of these two leaders which is also a recognition of the need for greater food system diversification.

Rule number one for any financial investor is diversify your portfolio. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Spread the risk. So, it is quite bizarre that we do the exact opposite of this with something as precious as our food systems. In a world increasingly exposed to shocks, natural disasters and conflicts, this mindset is even more unwise.

Consider the data. The number of “loss relevant natural events” –e.g. storms, floods, drought, extreme heat, forest fires — has increased over the past 50 years. The number of intrastate conflicts is the highest since records began in 1976. Biodiversity in agricultural landscapes continues to decline at a worrying pace, largely due to the few monocrops that motivate deforestation and environmental degradation and make our diets rather monotonous. This includes food diversity. Of the thousands of plants and animals used for food in the past, less than 200 currently contribute to global food supplies and only 9 account for almost 70% of total crop production.

Across scales, diversity of food production contributes to diversity of the supply chain, and its resilience, which in turn contributes to diet diversity of people and natural ecosystems-integrity — especially in countries where incomes are lower and biodiversity higher-. Yet global food production diversity has barely changed over the past 60 years. Diet quality, underpinned by diet diversity, has not changed in South Asia over the past 40 years and in sub Saharan Africa it has worsened.

While the case for diversity is becoming widely accepted the question remains how to deliver it? Most attempts have been scattered and focusing on single segments of the food system: diversity for improved diets or for agronomic reasons, or for livelihood promotion or for climate adaptation.

Taken individually the outcomes of specific diversification investments make them less attractive than they should be. But once we view these efforts through a food systems lens, the multifunction, multi-benefit returns and their potential to generate a bigger impact emerges. In other words, efforts to diversify diets are always going to be stymied by a failure to diversify production in farms, which will make the prices of new foods expensive

Similarly attempts to promote the genetic diversity of food crops for nutritional reasons will fall foul of a failure to convince consumers to diversify their diets if we do not invest in education and awareness raising. And efforts to make agriculture more inclusive of neglected and underutilized crops will fail if farmers cannot find value chains and markets for them, or if cold chains are not in place.

Effective diversification of any one food system component relies on diversification efforts in other parts of the system: that is why we refer to decisions about food production, storage, transport, processing, marketing, advertising, purchase, preparation, consumption and disposal as a system.

Our organizations have realized this and we want to give food systems diversification a chance. We work in different parts of the food system. The Crop Trust at the very upstream end — collecting, conserving, and promoting genetic diversity and making it available for researchers, plant breeders and farmers. WWF works to turn around the decline in the diversity of plant and animal species. The Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, part of CGIAR, focuses on the intersection of nutritional and environmental diversity. The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition works to diversify diets by promoting access to healthier foods and curbing the consumption of unhealthy foods by bringing supply, demand and policy together in an environmentally sustainable way.

This is why we will work — individually and together — to promote greater richness and variety throughout the food system. We want food systems to be able to better withstand shocks, volatility and perturbations, because we want the health and wellbeing of people and the planet to be able to do so too.

Diversification is not only about security and hedging against risk, but also about exploring all the opportunities that nature and humanity have to offer. This is what our 4 organizations will strive to do over the next five years, working with dozens of partners on the ground. Our food systems — and the people and planet that depend upon them — deserve nothing less.