Transform global dining practices: The necessity of revamping food systems for quality and sustainability
In a world where food systems are geared towards quantity over quality, and dominated by a few staple crops that lack diverse nutrients, investing in nutritious, hardy crops offers significant benefits for addressing global hunger, malnutrition, and promoting sustainable food systems.
These nutritious crops, such as teff and orange-fleshed sweet potatoes, provide key vitamins and nutrients that help combat malnutrition, particularly in children. Pulses, on the other hand, offer affordable plant-based protein, critical in food assistance and diet diversification.
One of the key advantages of these crops is their hardiness and climate resilience. Crops like pulses and certain tubers grow well in drought-prone or extreme weather regions, enhancing the reliability of food supply under climate stress.
Moreover, these crops contribute to environmental sustainability. Pulses improve soil fertility by fixing nitrogen, require less water than animal protein sources, and reduce dependency on synthetic fertilizers. Precision approaches using drones and digital tech optimize yield and minimize resource waste across crops, reinforcing sustainability and productivity.
In addition, these crops can lead to economic empowerment of smallholder farmers. Locally grown nutritious crops, when linked to markets such as school feeding programs, increase farmers' incomes and food availability in their communities, helping reduce intermediaries and provide stable demand.
Strategies to invest in and promote these crops include supporting smallholder farmers through training in improved agronomic practices, post-harvest handling, storage, and linking them directly to markets. Integrating digital agriculture tools such as drones, IoT, and AI to enhance precision farming can also optimize input use, real-time crop monitoring, and increase climate resilience, thus improving efficiency and sustainability.
Promoting diversity in food systems by including a variety of culturally adapted nutrient-dense crops in diets and public food programs also helps stabilize food availability. Government and multi-agency investment programs that align with food security and sustainability goals can create enabling environments for innovation and scale crop investments in line with national strategies.
Investing strategically in nutritious, hardy crops with supportive technological, market, and policy frameworks can significantly advance global efforts against hunger and malnutrition while fostering sustainable, climate-resilient food systems. This approach aligns with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2, 3, 12, and 17.
The costs of inaction on nutrition are estimated to be US$41 trillion over the next decade. Urgent action is needed to prevent hunger and malnutrition from increasing by 20% by 2050.
The story aligns with topics such as Food & Agriculture, Lifestyle, and Policy & Finance and is relevant to regions such as Africa, Asia Pacific, Europe, Global, Middle East, South America, South Asia, Southeast Asia.
For more stories on this topic, visit https://www.context.news/. This story was published with permission from Thomson Reuters Foundation. Afshan Khan, the assistant secretary-general of the United Nations and coordinator for the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement, and Morgan Gillespy, the director of the Food and Land Use Coalition, are among those working to make a difference in this area. In Brazil, the Food and Land Use Coalition is connecting the food industry, global markets, and family farming to better align local and regional efforts, attract investment, and encourage innovation. Social behavior change and efforts to tackle harmful marketing are key to managing obesity rates.
- Investing in nutritious, hardy crops like teff and orange-fleshed sweet potatoes, which are rich in key vitamins and nutrients, can combat malnutrition, particularly in children.
- By growing pulses, a type of nutritious crop, in drought-prone or extreme weather regions, food supply can be maintained under climate stress, contributing to environmental sustainability.
- Incorporating pulses into diets can provide affordable plant-based protein, thus aiding food assistance and diet diversification efforts, essential for promoting health-and-wellness.
- Embracing precision farming techniques, leveraging digital tools such as drones and AI, can optimize crop yield, minimize resource waste, and reinforce sustainability and productivity.
- Strategic investment in nutritious, hardy crops, accompanied by supportive technological, market, and policy frameworks, can align with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2, 3, 12, and 17, thereby advancing global efforts to address hunger, malnutrition, and climate change.
