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- Chapter 4 Ensuring sufficient availability of sustainably produced, nutrient-rich food
Key messages
A pre-requisite for universal access to sustainable, healthy diets is that there be sufficient availability of appropriate foods. Today, agriculture and related food policies are not supporting healthy diets at the most fundamental level. They are simply not producing enough of the foods needed for healthy diets globally. Supply constraints are not the only problem: all aspects of the food system interact to determine what is physically available to a consumer at a particular price point. But it is essential to ensure that sufficient quantities of nutrient-rich foods are available to everyone. To achieve this, more funds need to flow to secure the supply of staple foods while also significantly increasing the support for non-staples.
Guiding principles for action. The following represent important actions to frame the transition:
- Policy needs to rebalance what is produced to ensure sufficiency of nutrient-rich foods. The quantity of foods produced will continue to be very important. But in the future, any food supply agenda must be coupled with an equivalent food quality agenda so that the world has more food than at present and more nutrient-rich foods produced in sustainable ways.
- Enhancing the role of smallholder farms. It will be important for governments and their development partners to find ways to support and enhance smallholder production and diets in ways that promote their health as well contributing more to emissions reduction, optimising natural resources use, and even carbon sequestration through enhanced agroforestry practices.
- Refocus on how things are grown: the sustainable intensification of agriculture. Three steps are involved in achieving this:
- Step 1: Improving efficiency. New agricultural technologies will continue to be important for food security, poverty reduction and efficiency gains in the use of scarce natural resources. But new directions in the types of technologies will be required.
- Step 2: Substitution. This goes beyond doing more with less. Rather, it involves substituting less environmentally harmful practices for more environmentally beneficial practices.
- Step 3: Redesigning the production system. While efficiency gains and substitution are typically additive and create marginal changes within current production systems, a realignment of food systems towards sustainable, healthy diets would entail the most transformative changes across systems.
- Refocus food policy agendas from a focus on agricultural output to increasing the efficiency of entire food systems. Food systems remain inefficient from many perspectives.
Three major policy shifts are needed. Each has potential to distribute huge economic benefits.
- Rebalance subsidies to enhance local and global supplies of nutrient-rich foods. Most subsidies today keep supply and relative prices out of balance with the food patterns needed to support sustainable, healthy diets. Even a relatively modest shift in subsidies (e.g. 25%) could have a major effect.
- Rebalance agricultural research and development (R&D) from a commodity focus to a food system focus. Increase funding overall, but especially for actions that increase the supply of nutrient- rich foods through sustainable and resilient farming systems.
- Rebalance production incentives to deliver sustainable, healthy diets. Investing in different approaches, goals, metrics of success and reward systems relating to food production would represent a very substantial shift in investment patterns, market agendas, policy priorities and on-the-ground activities across the world. This includes a significant renewed focus on sustainable intensification, reforestation for carbon sequestration, and promotion of efficiency gains over a single narrow focus on productivity gains. The potential exists to generate massive rural as well as urban employment opportunities in low- and middle- income countries (LMICs) in particular (for which agriculture and related sectors and services still represent a significant share of economic activity).

Part I of this report argued that food systems are failing in two ways. They are not supporting healthy diets for everyone across the world, and the way that food systems currently function means that they will not be able to sustain healthy diets in the future. The sustainability of food systems is itself threatened by climate change impacts and the degradation of natural resources.
Part II focuses on actions required across food systems to allow for an effective transition to a different, transformed future. This chapter starts by focusing on how food is produced today. It then sets out why there needs to be a major shift towards more nutrient-rich foods and fewer energy-dense crops used as ingredients for ultra-processed products, livestock feed or fuel. In addition, food production must refocus on becoming efficiently sustainable rather than just profitably productive. These steps are essential to ensure that sustainable high-quality diets are available for all.
The discussions in Part I made the case for change, while guiding policymakers on the actions needed in a transition process. As Chapter 3 emphasised, unless all countries commit to giving the sustainable production of food much greater priority, environmental degradation and climate change will drive the vicious circles which make it ever harder to deliver what is needed.
Building on the conceptual pillars of food security, this chapter looks at how to deliver sufficient availability of food (with its root being the production of food from agriculture), while subsequent chapters look at other pillars: accessibility and affordability. This chapter begins by taking a backwards look at the drivers which have led to the current food systems, before looking ahead to define what transformed food systems may look like. It then lays out principles for action which are essential both globally and in LMICs to achieve the goals of a sufficient supply of food that is both nutrient-rich and sustainably produced.
The goal of this chapter is to identify the priority actions for agriculture needed to ensure availability of the right foods – and the right mix of foods – to deliver sustainable, healthy diets for the future. 1
4.1 Trends in agriculture
Agriculture and food systems have been shaped by a diverse range of cultural, political, and economic influences. In particular, agriculture is increasingly seen as an important vehicle for producing goods to drive economic growth, including the production of commodities for export.). In many countries, agricultural and trade policies are somewhat distanced from policies related to nutrition, health, and environmental quality.
Looking back, perhaps the focus has been too much on increasing yields rather than ensuring a sustainable supply of food to deliver health through nutrition (see Box 4.1).

4.1.1 What is agriculture incentivised to produce today?
Food systems are driven by agriculture and trade policies (which influence producer costs and incentives) as well as by commercial and consumer demand, typically mediated through farm gate prices (see Box 4.2). The benefits that some types of crops and commodities experience relative to others is determined by various factors, including government subsidies, trade promotion and restrictions, technological developments, increasing scale and intensity of agriculture, population and income growth, changing dietary preferences and lifestyles, and more.
Food companies have been developing new processed foods using ever-larger quantities of staple cereals, sugar, and vegetable oil as ingredients.
Unsurprisingly, some of the largest land area expansion in past decades has been dedicated to starchy grains (such as wheat and maize) and oil crops (such as soybean, sunflower, palm oil, rape, and mustard) for use as food and livestock feed. The commodities that saw the largest relative and absolute abundance in national food supplies (on a per capita basis) were the world’s major cereals: rice, wheat and maize. 2 3 Thus, the global expansion of land area for farming was largely for commodities associated with diets that were calorically rich but relatively poor in micronutrients.
Box 4.1: Limitations in how we typically interpret the functions of agriculture
The success of agriculture is usually evaluated according to narrow criteria focused on productivity (particularly yield per unit area of land). 4 5 That approach has driven substantial increases in calorie supply globally since the 1960s.
As discussed in Chapter 3, it has also been accompanied by an insufficient supply of nutrient-rich foods (in relation to need), degraded natural resources, and a significant contribution to climate-threatening emissions. Yield increases
in recent decades have allowed growing demand to be met without increasing the conversion of natural habitats into agricultural land, and the potential GHG emissions and biodiversity loss associated with that. 6 7 However, the increasing intensification of production contributes to other environmental problems: for example, the over-application of synthetic inputs, degradation of soils, and homogenisation of landscapes leaving little space for nature.
Box 4.2: Food and agricultural policies affect what foods are available
Globally, 70% of the total food energy consumed comes from only three food groups – starchy staples, sugar, and oils and fats – which are all cheap sources of calories. To some extent, this narrow focus on a few calorically rich commodities is driven by food and agricultural policies that both HICs and LMICs have implemented during the last 50-70 years. 8
Historically, food security policies were mainly concerned with improving poor people’s access to affordable calories. These policies took different forms. Public agricultural research concentrated on productivity increases in a few staple grains, such as wheat, rice and maize. 9 10 11 In many developing countries, staple grain production was further incentivised through market procurement programmes, infrastructure support, irrigation, credit, and input subsidies tied to these crops. 12
Many LMICs also provided consumer subsidies for staple grains. For example, India has a large public distribution system for subsidised rice and wheat. Egypt had a subsidy programme for wheat bread and other staple foods. 156 To avoid disincentives to production, some countries implemented price support schemes for grain-producinfarmers. In China, national self-sufficiency in rice is still
an important food security goal and is fostered through a minimum support price policy for rice. The Philippines has also implemented market price support systems for producers. 13
In high income regions – such as North America and Europe – most farm price support schemes that had existed for several decades shifted in the 1990s from subsidies to direct income transfers to farmers, decoupled from specific commodities. 14 However, the policy focus on a few grains, sugar, and oilseeds in these regions over decades (from the 1950s to the 1990s) contributed to a relatively narrow production base and low levels of agricultural diversity.
These policies helped to increase grain output, which also supported rising livestock production and improved the availability of calories. However, the same policies may also have slowed the process of dietary diversification to include more nutrient-rich foods, especially in LMICs. The focus on cheap calories also distorted the relative prices of foods so that the consumer price of staple grains fell relative to the prices of fruits, vegetables, and other nutrient-rich foods. Fostering more diverse food production and consumption patterns will require changes in the focus of agricultural and food policies.

Figure 4.1 illustrates changes in the relative shares of crops in the five decades from 1960, in terms of total energy (calories).
This shows that some crops which declined in abundance relative to the total supply were nutrient-rich whole grains like millets, oats, and sorghum, as well as fruits and vegetables (including sweet potatoes, bananas, pulses, dates, grapes, and coconuts).
While some other fruits and vegetables increased in abundance, they did so at lower rates than the major calorically rich commodities. Figure 4.1 therefore paints a mixed picture.
The crops that have been increasingly incentivised to be produced are typically calorie-rich, whereas many nutrient-rich crops conducive to healthy diets have declined in relative importance.
Today, if everyone were to try to access all the foods needed for high quality, nutrient-rich, diets – including fruits and vegetables, or fish, nuts, or pulses – they would not be able to do so.
The world does not produce enough to meet that notional demand (set in this case using one example of a reference diet proposed by Harvard University focused solely on enhancing human health (see Figure 4.2).
The implication could not be clearer: existing agriculture and related food policies, including those that influence food markets, are not supporting healthy diets at the most basic level i.e. production.
4.1.2 Not enough nutrient-rich foods are available worldwide
Existing policies and financial incentives in agriculture and food are not supporting the production of enough of the foods needed for healthy diets globally (see figure 4.2). Using this as evidence, many refer to ‘broken food systems’. 17 18 However, food systems are in fact currently delivering what they were designed to deliver: plentiful food (calories) in the form of mainly staple grains, which are produced and sold at prices affordable to most (albeit not all) consumers, and underpinned by global markets. One of the results, indeed the goals, of traditional food policies has been to lower the price of staple foods (primarily cereal grains) and much of the policy environment, from agricultural R&D, to agricultural support to trade policies has been designed to facilitate this rather than to deliver more diversity of nutrient-rich safe foods through sustainable, resilient food systems (see Box 4.2).
Support for this approach was based on recognition of the imperative to eradicate famines of the past and to feed increasing numbers of city-based consumers who did not grow their own food. The period since the 1950s has been defined by these policy goals, resulting in a set of remarkable trends:
- historically high global output of food (mainly cereals), resulting in:
- a downward trend in the real price of calories in most parts of the world, leading to:
- many more people meeting minimum energy needs than ever before.
This highly successful outcome has been achieved by productivity gains (triggered in the 1960s through public agricultural research), through land expansion, and by government price supports of various kinds. 19
This success does not, of course, mean that all people have benefitted, since in 2019 there were still around 690 million individuals classified as chronically undernourished. In early 2020, there were 44 countries, of which 32 were in Africa, deemed to be “in need of external assistance for food” – that is, requiring loans, financial aid, or in-kind food assistance. Such contexts are particularly fragile in the face of climate or other hazards such as pest outbreaks, droughts, or pandemics. By necessity, these countries are especially reliant on external assistance. 20 In wealthy and poor countries alike, income inequality, together with inadequate national programmes to support minimally adequate diets (in nutrient terms) for vulnerable individuals, means that there are too many suffering the consequences of inadequate diets even in the context of plenty.
The world’s food supply continues to grow. 21 On average, most countries’ food supply has increased over the past 50 years in terms of energy, protein, fat, and food weight. Oils as a food group had the most substantial increase (see Figure 4.3). 22
However, the composition of countries’ food availability (defined as the number and relative abundances of crops and animal products that contribute to energy, protein, fat and food weight) have converged, with variation between food supplies in different countries decreasing on average by 69%. This is because throughout the world, food systems are focused on a diminishing number of crops. 23 Global dependence on a relatively small set of crops equates to a large dependence on monocropping systems. As discussed in Chapter 3, such farming systems are associated with substantial externalised costs on the environment. And while steps are being made toward sustainable intensification (see Section 4.4), the overall sustainability of single crop monocultures remains limited.
Intensive production systems are by design highly productive per unit area, increasing the affordability of these foods worldwide, despite their impacts on the environment. The ensuing plentiful supply of macronutrients, at relatively low cost, has led to a growing number of countries experiencing an overall excess of calories consumed (see Chapter 2). 27 28
Policymakers today are at the end of a decades-long era of agricultural development, and agricultural markets which have been incentivised to drive up the yields of a relatively small number of calorie-rich crops. However, the growing evidence for ill-health of populations worldwide, underpinned by poor access to high-quality, nutrient-rich diets, suggests that policymakers must now pay special attention to the supply of nutrients beyond calories. This need is exemplified in Figure 4.4, which summarises regional trends in national food supplies from 1961 to 2011. Across the world, energy availability per person has increased rapidly (see Figure 4.4A) but the levels of micronutrients in food (estimated by the micronutrient density index in Figure 4.4B) have remained much more static over the decades. For sub-Saharan Africa, these have actually declined since 1961.
East Asian countries are the outliers, showing a sharp increase in nutrient-rich food content as well as energy supply per capita. However, LMICs are a considerable distance from such gains. Figure 4.5 shows the supply of vegetables per capita as a percentage of a 300g recommendation. Only six of 16 regions supply vegetables above this level. In particular, sub-Saharan Africa, South-East Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean do not have sufficient vegetable supplies to meet a 300g recommended intake. A fundamental change will be needed so that the imbalance between what is actually produced and what is needed for healthy and sustainable nutrition can be rectified. The subsequent sections in this chapter focus on how this can be done.
4.2 Looking ahead: a transformed food system
Before the question of how food production and food systems can be transformed, the question of what is meant by ‘transformed food systems’ needs to be considered. While the answer to that important question will vary by region, culture, and ideology, it is important for stakeholders in every country to discuss alternative visions of a future in which food systems are sustainably supporting healthy diets. While the details will vary, essential elements will be largely common (see Box 4.3).
Box 4.3: Core elements of transformed food systems
The goal of transformed food systems is for everyone to be able to access healthy, balanced, and sustainable diets. Meeting this means:
- High-quality diets are affordable for everyone. As described in Chapter 6, across the world, sustainable, healthy diets could be less costly than today’s diets for some, although substantial effort is likely to be needed to ensure they are affordable to many of the poor. Price distortions towards calorically rich commodities need to be abolished and the cultivation of more nutrient-rich crops must be promoted. More diverse production patterns will lead to more diverse and healthy consumption patterns.
- All foods are produced in ways that are sustainable in terms of planetary boundaries. In terms of the total impact of global agriculture, it is consistent with meeting Paris climate goals, leaving space for nature, farming in a way that has low impact on land, fresh water, air, or biodiversity.
- Shifts in dietary patterns are achieved. The goal would not be for a single universal diet, but rather a marked shift towards a range of enhanced, culturally relevant choices that favour nutrient-rich foods produced sustainably.
The benefits of long-term food system transformation will include:
- Fewer diet-related diseases. This means significantly less healthcare expenditure, less preventable premature mortality, fewer days of productive work lost to sickness, and greater productivity at work.
- Less hunger. This means significantly fewer people living on the margins, from hand-to-mouth, posing a moral and resource challenge to policymakers the world over.
- Fewer climate-induced shocks to the food system. This means significantly less humanitarian aid, and fewer disruptions to food supply chains.
- Better nutrition and health across the world. This means significantly more human capital, learning, educational attainment, and social well-being.
- Better equity in incomes, dietary access, and nutrition, supporting significantly more wealth creation and healthier societies.
- Better husbandry of the world’s productive resources. This means a reduction in degradation, pollution, and the depletion of natural resources, with improved ecosystem services leading to benefits to food production (recovered biodiversity, pollinator resurgence, etc.)
- More employment across the food system, from farming through to marketing, processing, and retail.
- More positive contributions of the food system to addressing the climate crisis (carbon sequestration, tree planting, etc.)
A pre-requisite for universal access to healthy diets is that there be sufficient amounts of nutrient-rich foods for everyone.
At the outset, policymakers need to be clear what these terms mean in their own contexts. Supplying the right amount may help promote healthy eating and greater sustainability (see Box 4.3). Meeting demand might lead to people eating unhealthily if societies have a preference for eating energy-rich foods. Supplying an excess may lead to resilience in the face of interruptions but otherwise lead to wasted food, with its high environmental costs.
How much food is needed to fulfil the nutritional needs of people, while protecting the planet? At the moment, the world does not grow sufficient food for diets containing sufficient nutrient-rich foods (see Figure 4.2), but demand will further increase as the world’s population increases, and economic growth raises disposable incomes, allowing people to access better diets. As the world’s population approaches a possible 9.5 billion by mid-century, there will be a need for both more food – to feed more mouths – and for different foods to support healthier diets.
4.3 Principles for actions to transform the food system
Actions to transform food systems will need to be tailored to the context of a particular place, culture, climate, or society. However, a number of guiding principles can be discerned that are broadly applicable across contexts. These include focusing on what is grown, how it is grown and by whom, rather than just considering its yield. Another principle is the recognition that agriculture is part of broader food systems, with agricultural production not being the end itself. These principles will guide fundamental shifts in policy goals and approaches.
4.3.1 Policy needs to rebalance what is produced to ensure sufficiency of nutrient-rich foods
Ensuring healthy diets for all will require a change in policy priorities, in which the focus shifts from quantity to quality. The quantity of foods produced will continue to be very important, not least in view of the increasing global population, but also to address current high levels of hunger and undernutrition in parts of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
But in the future, any food supply agenda must be coupled with an equivalent food quality agenda so that the world has more food than at present and more nutrient-rich foods produced in sustainable ways. Of course, what is produced is not only determined by supply-side influences such as agroecology, prices, and local policies. It is also determined by what commercial enterprises wish to use in developing and selling food products, and what consumers expressly want to purchase. These are dealt with in later chapters of this report.
From a supply perspective, ensuring greater availability of nutrient-rich foods will require:
- Responding to rising future demand for nutrient-rich foods of many kinds,
- A gradual decline in per capita consumption of cereals, but ensuring adequate calorie consumption by the 690 million or so individuals who today remain chronically undernourished, and
- Ensuring that food systems can deliver necessary foods on a continuing basis.
Providing sufficient but not excess food for all to lead a healthy life, and to do this sustainably, explicitly requires agriculture to produce many different crops and livestock, in different ways. This will require innovations in many areas. 29
In terms of rebalancing production, the world’s food systems need to produce a great deal more of the kinds of foods that all people should eat to become and remain healthy and well- nourished. National food-based dietary guidelines and WHO recommendations promote greater consumption of fruits, vegetables, pulses, and nuts. Hence:
Systematic public policy targeting the constraints to producing and consuming fruits, vegetables, pulses, and nuts will be needed.
Similarly, there is a serious disconnect between recommended fish intake and projected outputs globally from both wild catch and aquaculture by 2030,31 while for dairy there would also be a gap between what people should be able to eat and what is available for them to eat. 32 In other words, few if any countries in the world produce or import the range of foods that would be required if all their citizens were to eat healthy diets.
This is, therefore, a fundamental challenge that needs to be faced by policymakers and the food industry. In short, it implies the need for a substantial systemic change to support a markedly different and healthier profile of consumer demand in the next decade and beyond.
However, there are two important qualifications that need to be made. 33 First, on trade. Few if any countries will ever be able to ensure domestic production of all the foods needed to support healthy diets, so the distribution of food is as important as its production, and the ability for people to work their land. The ultimate goal is to ensure that everyone can eat a range of nutrient-rich products to complement (be eaten with) an appropriate range of staple foods (cereal grains or tubers).
Despite constraints imposed on food trade by national policy responses to global emergencies, such as the global food price spikes of 2007/8, 2010/11, and the 2020 pandemic, the importance of supporting a flow of foods across borders is key to allowing for optimal use of land and other factor
Per capita consumption of fruits and vegetables in developing countries is expected to surpass that of developed countries by 2050
inputs; that is, using the natural comparative advantage of growing the crops and livestock best suited to the locality. Resilience in food systems is not synonymous with a country being self-sufficient.
Secondly, the rebalancing of production necessary to support healthier diets is not to suggest that staple foods will cease to be important in the future. While more nutrient-dense foods need to be available, there will still be a continuing need to ensure an adequate supply of staple foods in the decades ahead. Past gains in productivity cannot be allowed to degrade in the future, but much more effort is needed to increase the productivity of nutrient-dense food like pulses, vegetables, and fruit.
4.3.2 Refocus on who produces: enhancing the role of smallholder farms
Much has been made in the past about the need for farm consolidation to optimise economies of scale in production. 35 That recommendation was typically based on profitability parameters, and an awareness of the large risks borne by smallholder producers in most semi-arid environments of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. It was also based on the understanding that throughout history, while agriculture has been a critically important engine of macroeconomic growth, the number of people mainly engaged in agriculture (for most of their income) declines as economies become larger and the contribution of the sector to GDP becomes much smaller relative to industry, services, tourism and more. 36
Recent assessments suggest that smallholder farmers will have an important role to play in the future as:
- specialised producers of nutrient-rich foods, particularly through horticulture (for which huge scale-economies matter relatively less),
- employers, particularly of youth in sub-Saharan Africa, where rural areas will still be home to a majority of people into the second half of this century,
- a source of own-grown diet quality (as measured by diversity) (see Box 4.4). 37
Therefore, it will be important for governments and their development partners to find ways to support and enhance smallholder production and diets in ways that promote health as well as contributing more to emissions reduction, optimising natural resources use, and even carbon sequestration through enhanced agroforestry practices.
Box 4.4: Farm production diversity and dietary diversity among smallholders
As many people suffering from nutritional deficiencies are smallholder farmers, diversifying production on these farms is often considered a good strategy to improve diets and nutrition. But is this really the case? Recent studies with data from many LMICs suggest that farm production diversity is positively associated with dietary diversity in some situations, but not in others 38 39 41 42
A meta-analysis 43 showed that on average, farms would have to produce 16 additional crop or livestock species to increase dietary diversity by one single food group. Hence, there is little evidence that increasing farm production diversity is an effective strategy to improve smallholder diets in most or all situations.
Increasing farm production diversity may sometimes even have negative nutrition effects – for example when production diversity is already high. Producing too many species on a very small farm can lead to income losses through
forgone gains from specialisation. Smaller farms focused on the consumption of own production often produce more than 10 different species on their plots. 44 Pushing these farms towards even higher diversity may perpetuate subsistence and reduce market and development opportunities. Improving market access and market functioning are generally more promising development strategies. 45 46 Even subsistence-oriented households typically obtain a larger share of their dietary diversity from the market than from their own farm. 47 48 49
Of course, affordable access to diverse foods from the market requires that farmers produce these foods. But diversity at the food systems level does not mean that every farmer has to be extremely diverse. If efficient local, regional and global markets for a wide range of nutrient-rich foods exist, food systems will become more diverse without every farmer having to maximise diversity.
In 2016 there were 570 million smallholders globally. 51 Recent data from FAO showed that smallholder activities in agriculture still contribute an important share of food production in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in countries such as China (roughly 80%) and India (over 45%), and low-income countries as a whole (over 40%) (see Figure 4.6).
This means that policymakers in LMICs need to reconnect with the contributions of smallholder farmers. Initiatives aimed at shifting relative product prices, supporting technological innovations, investing in market infrastructure to reduce transactions costs, facilitating access to information and credit, and promoting access to new seed systems must all take the needs and constraints of smallholders into account.
4.3.3 Refocus on how things are grown: the sustainable intensification of agriculture
As highlighted in Chapter 3, the agricultural intensification seen in previous decades has created significant negative environmental impacts. Given the environmental costs, and pending environmental breakdown, it is crucial that any further productivity growth (increases in outputs per unit area) occurs without the environmental harm that has been typical to date. This is the notion of ‘sustainable intensification’ (SI). Conceptually, SI broadly overlaps with the notion of ‘climate-smart agriculture’. This encompasses agricultural practices that avoid driving climate change and build resilience to future climate impacts (e.g. building soil carbon stocks to mitigate climate change and build fertility).
The intensification of agriculture can come about through many routes, not simply through the intensification of capital- rich technologies and inputs. Examples include new inputs of knowledge, innovations in labour, enhancing natural processes to deliver yield improvements (agroecological intensification), evidence-based integrated pest management systems, and others. 52
The sustainable intensification of agriculture must be a priority policy objective. 53 It should be aimed at maintaining and enhancing yields while reducing environmental impacts, and it involves three closely interconnected stages: 54
- Efficiency improvements mean that inefficiencies in the use of scarce resources are reduced. This is particularly true for land, water, agrochemicals, and other external inputs. The right amount of nutrients should be applied at the right time, in the right place. (see Section 4.3.4).
- Substitution means that existing ways of production and handling can (and often should) be replaced by new practices and technologies which foster sustainability whilst maintaining or improving yields. For example, replacing synthetic pesticides through host-plant resistance and using the ecology of pests’ natural enemies.
- System redesign involves systemic change in farming (and food systems) to deliver sustainable, healthy diets. For example, adoption of circular agriculture, or agroecology, agrobiodiversity, or diversified farming systems.
4.3.3.1 SI step 1: Improving efficiency
Productivity growth in agriculture through technologies such as improved seeds, water control and inorganic fertilisers has effectively supported the reduction of extreme poverty (see Figure 4.7). 55
New agricultural technologies will continue to be important for food security, poverty reduction and efficiency gains in the use of scarce natural resources. But new directions in the types of technologies will be required.
Many agricultural systems are inherently inefficient, allowing the degradation of natural capital and high leakage of nutrients and pollutants into the air and water courses due to input misuse. Matching inputs to land productivity (or taking marginal land into other uses) is one way of improving overall efficiency. This is the realm of ‘precision agriculture’. By avoiding excess inputs where they are not needed and removing marginal land from production, environmental impacts are reduced, and the land allowed to ‘do more with less’.
In addition to digital technologies associated with precision agriculture, new breeding and gene-editing technologies offer considerable potential to increase crop yields and climate resilience while reducing the use of chemical inputs (see Box 4.5). However, efficiency gains do not always require more capital inputs. They can also come through intensification of knowledge in terms of improved agronomy and capacity building.
Importantly, large-scale operations may not necessarily be better in the pursuit of efficiency gains. Recent evidence highlighted by the World Bank and others suggests that despite many decades of discussion about the need for sub-Saharan Africa to consolidate farms to achieve scale efficiencies, “there is no economically optimal agrarian structure”. 56 While farming operations of many sizes can face disadvantages according to their country’s level of economic development and market circumstances, technology innovations and efficiency gains from optimising input use can enhance productivity even for smallholders.
It is therefore critical to recognise that greater efficiency can be achieved in both small- and large-scale enterprises. This is important, for example, in small-scale livestock operations in sub-Saharan Africa, where livestock often plays an important role in supporting rural livelihoods. Large and small ruminants, camelids and poultry are kept not simply to produce meat, milk, or eggs. They are also used for transport, traction (ploughing), capital accumulation (savings), assets to support resilience via sales during times of economic stress, fertilisers (via manure and urine), fibre and leather for clothing and equipment, and cultural rituals. 58 59
Continued deforestation and inefficiencies in large-scale commercial production in higher- and middle-income countries must be urgently tackled to reduce significant negative natural resource and climate impacts. At the same time, greater investments are needed in resource-poor environments to support efficiency gains in livestock husbandry via enhanced animal health, fodder and feed quality, and integration of crop and animal production systems. In other words, efficiency gains are both feasible and essential among smallholder livestock producers to ensure continued livelihoods, access to animal- sourced foods where needed in the diet, and reduced climate emissions and natural resource degradation.
4.3.3.2 SI step 2: Substitution
The second step in sustainable intensification goes beyond doing more with less, and involves substituting less environmentally harmful practices for more environmentally beneficial practices. There are many examples of such substitutions in the literature. 60 They include substituting organic fertiliser for inorganic fertiliser (which improves soil carbon, structure and water retention); managing beneficial pest-control insects in order to avoid pesticide usage; using direct drilling rather than tillage; and enhancing yield and resilience through more diversity in production, including more complex crop rotations.
4.3.3.3 SI step 3: Redesigning the production system
While efficiency gains and substitution are typically additive and create marginal changes within current production systems, a realignment of food systems towards sustainable, healthy diets would entail the most transformative changes across systems.
Redesign means transforming systems to produce valuable outputs whilst minimising the environmental impacts. It harnesses basic agroecological processes including predation, parasitism, pollination services, natural pest or weed suppression, herbivory, and nitrogen fixation to enhance the delivery of beneficial services for the production of crops and livestock. Examples include developing diverse, integrated, and circular farming systems, incorporating livestock and arable systems with agroforestry to complement nutrient flows, and enhancing soils and productivity.
However, redesign is not just an agricultural challenge; it is also a social challenge. There are important feedback loops across the food system, meaning that what is grown is not only determined by supply-side policies and producer prices, but also by expressed demand from the consumer side as well as
commercial retail and product development strategies. Thus, redesign entails actions across the food system that build capacity to adapt and innovate, as well as the use of social and political capital to create large-scale change to improve outcomes for biodiversity, water quantity and quality, air quality, pest management, and soil health. As part of the redesign process, enhancing the nutritional quality of human diets is key: more diversified, mixed farming systems will deliver greater availability of diverse and nutrient-rich foods.
A redesign of production systems will be needed to sustainably support improved diets, especially in view of the rapid pace of changes being experienced around the world – whether ecological, economic, social, or political. For example, as the climate changes and the world faces new pandemic threats, the challenge of new pests, pathogens, and weeds has been amplified. New pests and diseases can emerge quickly in a range of different ways, as the rapid spread of the coronavirus pandemic has shown. Food systems are already subject to the development of resistance to pesticides, pest outbreaks due to pesticide overuse and the ecological disruption of natural enemies of pests, and an increased geographical range of pests and diseases (e.g. through trade or through accidental transport by travellers). Equally, as the climate changes, so will patterns of weather, including its extremes. Redesign is therefore an important route to building farming systems which are inherently more resilient to the shocks and uncertainties ahead.
Policymakers and development partners in all countries, but particularly in low-income food-deficit countries, must pay careful attention to investments which can protect the steps taken during the transition. Actions must be carefully calibrated and sequenced in ways that do no harm to the livelihoods, incomes and diets of the poor, and investments in preparedness are essential to mitigate negative impacts of multiple kinds of shocks on progress already made. 61 There are important lessons to be learned from the years of structural adjustment policies when global financial institutions required significant policy shifts over short periods of time, which often led to unintended negative consequences, including rising income inequality over the medium term. 62
4.3.4 Refocus food policy agendas from a focus on agricultural output to food systems
The principles above – focusing on what is grown, who grows it and how it is grown – necessarily are concerned with agriculture. However, agriculture is simply the initial production step in food systems. Eventually, it is important to look at the entirety of food systems, which from many perspectives are also highly inefficient.
As discussed throughout this report, conventional agricultural production systems need to be updated to enable them to support sustainable, healthy diets. Sustainable intensification of production will be vitally important, but continuing to grow what is currently grown will not be sufficient. A sole focus on ‘increasing productivity’ to underpin cheaper and more available food through conventional agricultural systems can paradoxically reduce the efficiency of a food system because it incentivises a focus on growing more of a few crops, externalising costs onto the environment to increase yields, reducing the price of calories and increasing their availability, undermining nutritional outcomes, and making wasting calories economically rational. 63
Box 4.5 New technologies to support sustainable food production
Agricultural inputs and practices including improved seeds, fertilisers, irrigation, crop protection, and mechanisation have led to unprecedented productivity growth and contributed enormously to hunger reduction and food security. 64 However, the yield increases associated with the Green Revolution and related technological developments were typically associated with the intensive use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides, and focused on a few major grain crops – namely wheat, rice, and maize. Novel agricultural technologies must be used to ensure that agricultural productivity growth becomes more compatible with both environmental and nutrition goals, including advanced water management (hydroponics), gene-editing, and micro-applications of tailored fertilisers based on known soil and plant needs (rather than generic field-wide dressings). Depending on local conditions these may include technologies and evidence-based practices, such as integrated pest management, agroforestry, agroecology, and conservation agriculture.
New digital technologies in agriculture are driven by the relatively lower cost of collecting data on soil conditions, crop growth, pest infestation, weather and animal health through sensors, drones, and satellites.65 Coupled with precision farming, they could help to produce more food on less land, with fewer inputs, and a smaller environmental footprint. Complex digital technologies are not yet widely used, as they are typically tied to costly machinery and equipment and require digital literacy and training. Further R&D will be needed to make digital technologies useful and affordable for smallholder farmers in LMICs. 66
New breeding technologies include genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and gene-edited crops or livestock breeds. While public debate often focuses on possible environmental and health risks, many years of research show that new breeding technologies are no more risky than conventional breeding.67 68 GMOs and gene editing can also contribute to sustainable agricultural development more broadly. They can help to increase yields, while reducing many of the shortcomings of Green Revolution technologies. For instance, increased nutrient use efficiency in crop plants and inbuilt resistance to pests and diseases could help to produce high yields with low amounts of chemical fertilisers and pesticides.
Crops can also be made more resilient to drought, heat, floods, and other climate shocks. 69 70 So far only a few GMO traits have been commercialised, mostly by multinational companies in soybean, maize, and cotton. Many more crop-trait combinations have not yet been released, largely due to the limited public acceptance of GMOs and high regulatory costs. 71
Gene editing allows targeted genetic changes in crops or animals without having to introduce foreign genes. It could help to overcome many of the public acceptance and regulatory issues that GMOs have faced in the past. 72 Cheap and relatively easy to do, it can be applied to a wide variety of crops. Gene editing has been used already to develop various desirable traits in vegetables, fruits, pulses, roots and tubers, and major cereal crops.
Technological innovations for sustainable fruit and vegetable production are needed because of high pest and disease pressures in intensive horticultural systems, which may worsen with global environmental change. Fruits and vegetables are often sprayed with significant amounts of chemical pesticides. For more sustainable production, resistant varieties, improved agronomy, and possibly also production in indoor vertical farming units will be required.
Fully harnessing the potential of new agricultural technologies for sustainable development requires favourable innovation systems and policies, with well-defined R&D objectives (focused less on staple commodities and more on food system support that generates nutrient-rich foods), public-private sector partnerships in agriculture research as well as in promoting adoption of new technologies, and competitive markets in which inputs, information and markets are accessible to all, including smallholder farmers in resource-constrained settings. 73 Favourable innovation systems also require better science communication to address public concerns and prejudices against new farming technologies. 74 New technologies will be crucial in making farming more productive, environmentally sound and nutrition-focused. But they should not be seen as a substitute for other changes also required to make food systems more sustainable, such as reducing post-harvest losses and waste, as well as dietary shifts. 75
Instead, we need to refocus on the efficiency of food systems. A productive food system is one that feeds people while minimising traditional inputs (such as land, labour, and capital).
It also minimises the inputs from natural capital (e.g. those arising from the externalisation of costs onto the environment through degraded soil, run-off and so on), and it minimises the costs levied onto society from the poor health resulting from people eating food that does not provide dietary health.
Anything that improves the outputs (people fed) whilst reducing the inputs (including environmental impacts and the social costs of poor diets) improves food system efficiency. An efficient food system needs to optimise good nutritional outcomes and yields of nutrient-rich foods, whilst minimising inputs that include natural resources (and the social costs of poor diets). In other words, an efficient food system maximises the number of people nourished healthily and sustainably per unit of input. Focusing on maximising productivity alone is counter-productive when food system efficiency is required to ensure sustainability.
Rather than assuming productive agriculture creates an efficient food system, specifically identifying food system efficiency captures many of the elements discussed above – what is grown and how – but also widens the frame of reference to how the products of agriculture turn into food, how it is sold, prepared and consumed. It creates explicit acknowledgement that achieving the goal of providing every person with the diets they need will require integrated actions across food systems, at national and international policy levels, as well as among business entities.
In particular, there is a need to:
- produce more of a much wider range of products to enhance nutrition;
- protect food and nutrient losses as they travel through the food system to the plate and beyond, and
- incentivise changes in people’s demand for food so that it better matches what people need to eat for a healthy life and what can be sustainably produced (see Figure 4.8) – rather than producing too little or too much, contributing to waste. 77
Intervening on the ‘demand side’ rather than the traditional focus on the ‘supply side’ inevitably means policymakers will have to make a range of unfamiliar trade-offs. 78 They will need to consider not just how to influence shifts in consumer demand (across categories of foods – see Chapter 7), but also actions that are closely linked to supply-side drivers, including:
- Avoiding the further expansion of agriculture, particularly into carbon- and biodiversity-rich biomes, as this adds to climate change and undermines the resilience and productivity of agriculture across the planet;
- Avoiding the loss of agricultural land, through unsustainable land management;
- Reducing the use of foodstuffs, e.g. cereal grains, as biofuels, and instead using non-land-intensive sources of renewable energy;
- Avoiding a large increase in cereals used for livestock feed (already in 2016, roughly 36% of cereals produced globally was fed to animals). 79 In the future, there will be a need to both moderate demand, and increase use of alternative protein sources, such as meat-substitutes, algae, insect meal, legume crop by-products, etc.;
- Drastically improving livestock management efficiency, thereby improving input-to-output ratios; 80 81
- Supporting increased production of fruits, vegetables, and pulses through a range of incentives such as developing sustainable cold chains and processing, changing subsidies, and developing more market incentives (including through education and other mechanisms such as public procurement);
- Recognising that an abundance of calories, produced unsustainably, and sold cheaply, creates an ever-growing environmental and social burden that is literally unsustainable
The refocus on food systems rather than agriculture is a widening of the framing beyond the traditional view of agricultural economic growth. There is, however, much that can be done with a range of policies which can stimulate demand for healthier diets, and associated new jobs in delivering them(see Box 4.6). The next section focuses on three key policy shifts.

Box 4.6: How feasible is it to invest beyond farm and trade policies to achieve healthy diets?
In the past, agricultural growth has been strongly associated with significant reductions in rural poverty and undernutrition. 82 83 It was estimated that in 2011, “two-thirds of the 740 million people living in extreme poverty (less than US$1.90 a day purchasing power parity) were agricultural workers and their dependents”. 84 In the coming decade, policymakers will have to focus even more on rural non- farm employment by investing in technological innovation, infrastructure, education, and credit access, none of which is new, but essential nonetheless. It is estimated that around 730
million new jobs must be created in sub-Saharan Africa by 2050 to keep up with demand linked to rapid population growth. 85
This is possible for LMICs where “investments to increase agricultural productivity can offset the adverse impacts of climate change and help reduce the share of people at risk of hunger in 2030”. 86 But agricultural productivity growth has been low over many decades in the parts of the world which have the greatest challenges in raising the efficiency of food system functions (see Figure 4.9).
To turn things around, a possible strategy would be to:
- Significantly increase funding for public agricultural research and development (R&D), for both essential staples and for a greater diversity of nutrient-rich foods, but also for research that goes beyond commodity traits to include policy and programming impacts on food system functioning, cost-effectiveness analyses, enhanced climate-smart and resilient systems, and approaches to scaling up best practices where win-win opportunities have been empirically documented as success stories;
- In partnership with commercial interests, facilitate larger investment in public goods that reduce inputs, and the costs of food transportation and marketing;
- Expand energy and water access, and productivity- enhancing technologies, ensuring their use is to reflect environmental externalities;
- Facilitate income growth that supports demand-creation via enhanced rural employment within and beyond agriculture (linked to higher value food commodity supply chains), labour productivity gains, and efficient social protection programmes;
Box 4.6: Continued
- Promote wide use of promising technologies, including smartphones for information push, digital platforms for accessing new markets, 3D printing, agricultural drones, ‘intelligent’ materials, vertical agriculture, grey water recycling and more. 89
This strategy represents an important challenge for parts of sub-Saharan Africa which have struggled to fund public
agricultural investments (see Figure 4.10). 90 But it also presents an opportunity for rapid change, using government investments and a major refocusing of support from development agency partners. Enhancing incomes derived from gains in agriculture and downstream across the food system represents massive potential for pro-poor poverty reduction, particularly in Africa and South Asia in the next two decades.
4.4 Three key policy shifts are needed
A food system transition requires many sorts of policy interventions. There is no silver bullet. 92 93 For example, the IPCC’s Special Report on Food, Land and Climate, lists 24 policy areas (Table 5.6, p509) from both the demand and supply side that will help shift the system towards increasing sustainability.
This chapter focuses on the supply or availability of food. Three important routes for decision makers to enable change are: using public support to agriculture and food (subsidies) in new ways; refocusing agricultural research and development funding; and refocusing the incentives applied to food production towards systems that deliver better outcomes for people and the planet. Each of these is discussed in detail below.
4.4.1 Rebalance supply-side subsidies to better support nutrient-rich foods as well as grains
The first area for a policy re-focus is public support for commodity production. Currently, more than US$620 billion is spent globally each year on agricultural subsidies (commodity support, services, etc.). 94 These subsidies include investment in public goods (such as research and advisory services, transport infrastructure, and food safety regulations), as well as subsidies to agricultural producers. Figure 4.11 provides a breakdown of where public agricultural subsidies were targeted across 51 countries in 2015-17, while Box 4.7 offers a World Bank classification of subsidies.
In the past decade, OECD governments were on average allocating roughly 26% of their subsidy support to cereal grains, and 14% to fruits and vegetables. Interestingly, the share of sectoral support to fruits and vegetables was much higher in non-OECD countries at 37%, although the other 63% of subsidy support went to cereals, livestock, oilseeds, sugar, production of fibre (wool) and more. 95
Also, in some countries, such as Egypt, there have been large and often untargeted food subsidies. 96
There have been substantial increases in producer subsidies in recent years (see Figure 4.12). According to the World Bank, these subsidies increased from US$255 billion in 2000–02 to US$484 billion in 2015–17 in 10 non-OECD (a mix of developing and emerging) economies, largely driven by a 16-fold increase in producer support in China. 98
The remaining nine non-OECD countries included in the analysis also increased their support, from US$11 billion to US$24 billion. Unfortunately, producer subsidies often worsen rather than improve GHG emissions, and lead to overuse of fertilisers, and water pollution. In addition, subsidies are often captured by wealthier farmers, as for example in Pakistan and India. 99
Box 4.7: Forms of agricultural production subsidies
According to the World Bank, 100 subsidies for agricultural producers fall into three broad categories:
- Price supports to keep domestic prices for specific outputs higher than equivalent world market prices. These supports are given directly through public spending for the public procurement of farm outputs, or indirectly through import restrictions and other market barriers that help push producer prices higher. In the case of market barriers, no public expenditures are involved.
- Transfers to producers linked to the type of inputs used or agricultural outputs produced. These subsidies include lowered interest rates on agricultural credit or lowered prices of specific inputs (either variable or fixed capital) such as fertilisers, pesticides, seeds, water, and electricity. Producers can also receive direct payments tied to the production of specific outputs.
- Payments to farmers not tied to the outputs produced or inputs used. This is often referred to as ‘decoupled’ payments.
There is substantial potential to redirect farm support toward climate change mitigation. Redirect funding to focus on mitigation, including measures that increase efficiency
in the use of natural resources
The various forms of subsidy mentioned keep staple grain supplies and relative prices out of balance with the food patterns needed to support sustainable, healthy diets. Also, while some subsidies are aimed at farm-based actions that support ecological requirements (such as land set-aside, longer fallow, tree-planting), practically none are aimed at supporting healthy diets. For example, 25% of the European Union’s €60 billion annual agricultural subsidies are
dedicated to promoting public goods (primarily in terms of multi- use landscapes), but there are none which focus on how health or nutrition outcomes can be improved. 103
This situation suggests that the realignment of subsidies presents a major opportunity for policymakers. Even a relatively modest repurposing of subsidies (say, 25%) towards promoting the production of nutrient-rich perishable foods and the reduction of food loss and nutrient waste would amount to US$150 billion in capital to support the generating of more nutrient-rich foods. New scenario modelling commissioned by this project has demonstrated striking benefits which could result from realigning subsidies – in terms of GDP, health, and environmental impacts – although this work has also highlighted trade-offs that would need to be managed (see Box 4.8). It was recently argued by the World Bank that “because of the importance of this redirection of support for whether countries achieve climate goals, and because of the need for international cooperation to push needed innovations, global action is required”. 104
Box 4.8: Scenarios for rebalancing subsidies: preliminary insights from modelling scenarios
An analysis commissioned for this report modelled a range of scenarios pertinent to the goal of repurposing domestic agriculture sector production subsidies (US$211 billion in 2011) towards supporting more sustainable, healthy diets. 105 The scenarios include:
- removal of all agriculture sector subsidies by 2030,
- 50% redirection of those subsidies (at current levels) towards fruits and vegetables, and
- 100% redirection of subsidies to fruits and vegetables. Outcomes of interest were economic impacts, human health, and environmental impacts.
Implications for food production patterns: A 100% removal of subsidies led to lowered global output. The fall was particularly large for highly subsidised commodities in OECD countries, such as grains and oilseeds, but also for fruits and vegetables in OECD and non-OECD countries alike (see Figure 4.13). Parts of the world with no subsidies to remove increased domestic production to compensate, but their output could not make up for overall losses, resulting in a net decline in supply. This suggests that subsidies continue to play an important role in stimulating food production.
Macroeconomic impacts: Complete removal of agricultural subsidies increased economic output, measured as change in gross domestic product (GDP), by US$1.5 trillion, which suggests that not all subsidy investments have high economic returns. A 50% reallocation of subsidies towards fruits and vegetables would have a positive global GDP return of US$3.3 billion, but a 100% redirection to fruits and vegetables would result in a global net loss of US$8.7 billion, in large part because the other profitable commodities would lose out.
This underscores that careful analysis is needed to determine net outcomes when considering how subsidies are allocated.
Box 4.8 continued
According to the 2018 Global Nutrition Report: “The burden of NCDs is significant: 422 million people have diabetes and 1.1 billion people suffer from high blood pressure. NCDs were responsible for 41 million of the world’s 57 million total deaths
(71%) in 2016, of which diet was one of the four leading risk factors.” Importantly, the diet-related disease burden is highest in low- and middle-income countries (see Figure 2.3), which together account for 85% of all premature deaths from NCDs.
Food consumption patterns: Because of the net production loss associated with 100% subsidy removal, intake of all nutrient-rich foods would also fall in that scenario, with predictable health outcomes. Figure 4.14 shows the relative decline in vegetable consumption linked to 100% removal, the greatest impacts being seen in Europe and China, but felt
across the world. By contrast, a 50% or 100% reallocation of subsidies to nutrient-rich foods would see their consumption rise, highest in OECD and middle-income non-OECD countries, and much less in low-income nations which do not currently subsidise domestic production. Figure 4.15 shows that if nations were subsidising vegetable production.
Box 4.8 continued
at rates relative to the size of their population (the POP scenario), then low- and middle-income countries would see their intake of vegetables rise.
Human health: Removal of all agricultural subsidies was associated in the models with an increase of 140,000 diet- related deaths, representing an increase in mortality of 0.3% on average. Most of this was due to reduced supply and intake of vegetables and fruits, nuts and seeds and pulses. Thus, simply taking away subsidies on the grounds of economic gain would not help from a nutrition or health perspective. But repurposing half or all subsidies led to almost 600,000 fewer diet-related deaths per year. Premature mortality was reduced by up to 2.1% in the OECD, 1.6% in non-OECD countries with subsidies, and by 0.2% in countries without subsidies.
Environmental impacts: The picture here is mixed depending on whether GHG emissions, or demand on freshwater, nitrogen and phosphorous are considered. (see Figure 4.16). Removing all subsidies is associated in the models with moderate falls in GHGs and in some environmental resource demand (particularly with reduced need for nitrogen and phosphorous fertilizers) in OECD and non-OECD countries (of 1.5-2.0% and 0.1-0.8%, respectively), but with increases in regions without agricultural current subsidies (of 0.4-0.6%). Repurposing subsidies leads to similar reductions in GHG emissions when 50% or 100% is allocated to nutrition-sensitive crops. But repurposing of subsidies leads to much higher water use, mainly in non-OECD and non-subsidy countries, as well as in higher demand for other environmental resources.
More refined modelling of regional and global trade dynamics and efficiency gains (in the use of environmental
resources and GHG emission reductions) holds considerable potential to shed light on the positives and negatives associated with sets of policy choices both locally and globally. Importantly, this modelling highlights the importance of considering a) net effects across nations, food commodities, and various outcomes, but also b) how domestic food policy changes may have unintended effects globally or for other countries.
Scenarios considered:
- Removal of subsidy payments (RMV): All subsidy payments are removed
- Repurpose subsidy payments (S25…S100): Different shares of the overall subsidy budget are redirected to low-emitting and nutrition-sensitive food commodities (vegetables, fruits, pulses, and nuts) in a budget neutral manner.
- Repurpose subsidy payments according to WTO provisions (WTO): Subsidies are repurposed towards nutrition-sensitive and low-emitting food commodities up to the limit allowed by the WTO’s de-minimis provisions.
- Repurpose subsidy payments and redirect them globally (GDP, POP): Scenarios 2-3 assume constant overall subsidy budgets in countries that have a subsidy scheme. However, not all countries use subsidies. Scenario 4 models a more equal distribution of subsides globally. To do this, subsidy budgets were maintained at 2011 levels, but allocated across all countries according to either their GDP or population share to support domestic production of nutrition-sensitive and low-emitting foods.
The world probably devotes only around 1.4–1.7% of agricultural GDP to agricultural R&D
In summary, to ensure a much greater sustainable supply of nutrient-rich foods, national and global subsidy flows need to be rebalanced in the following ways:
- Broaden the policy priorities and investments from the current primary focus on staple grains, livestock, and cash crop commodities (such as cotton and sugar);
- Focus on a greater diversity of nutrient-rich foods, which will be in much higher demand in coming decades;
- Focus on sustainable production, notably through efficiency gains across all forms and scales of production, reduced exploitation of natural resources (land and water in particular), reduced food loss in and around the farm,
4.4.2 Rebalance agricultural research and development to deliver better outcomes (R&D)
Beyond supply-side subsidies, the second area for a policy refocus is agricultural research and development. Agricultural R&D (public and private) has a key role to play in developing innovations although currently that potential is not being fully exploited. In LMICs, as the World Bank has pointed out, Africa’s R&D systems are “underinvested, highly fragmented, and subject to volatile funding from governments and especially donors”. 111 But the situation in higher-income settings is also less than optimal. Research from the World Bank shows that in OECD countries, as well as in several big agricultural producing middle-income countries (such as China, Brazil, and the Russian Federation), only 6% of public sector support to the agricultural sector is dedicated to research, including education and technical assistance. 112 While it may not be possible to increase funding for research, particularly in resource-constrained countries, there is considerable scope to increase both the quantity (funding levels) and quality (focus relative to need) of food-related research.
For example, as mentioned above, most public sector agriculture research investments today focus primarily on improving productivity in a small handful of staple crops. A narrow focus by donor agencies and national agriculture sectors on productivity improvement fails to tackle wider strategic issues of what should be grown, by whom and in what ways. Furthermore, it tends to lead to relatively incremental changes (gains in agricultural efficiency) rather than fundamental transformation. 113 More focus is needed in agricultural research (including reprioritisation of donor funding for relevant R&D) to deliver healthy diets grown sustainably. This will be particularly important in terms of
support for domestic R&D in LMICs. For such countries, the imbalance of public agriculture research between cereals on the one hand, and fruits and vegetables on the other, is particularly stark, whereas it is less so in high-income settings. 114
Staple grains have been, are, and will be key elements of people’s diets around the world, and will remain important for global food security. Research on staples remains important, particularly through the lens of increasing the sustainability of their production and yield stability in the face of climate change.
But all donor agencies and national research programmes relating to food systems must pursue a shift from focusing on staple commodities toward food system-wide challenges.
Three areas where agricultural R&D could be refocused are discussed below: sustainability; increasing diversity and production of nutrition-providing foods; and ensuring the gap between innovation and uptake at scale is bridged.
4.4.2.1 R&D to drive food system sustainability
To fully deliver on sustainable intensification (Section 4.3) requires going beyond the incremental gains arising from efficiency improvements (doing ‘more with less’). Substitution of one practice with one that is less damaging can be insufficient to transform the farming system to work with nature, instead of against it. 115This is because reducing the rate at which intensive agriculture may harm the environment, through increasing efficiency, does not solve the problem.
Sustainable productivity gains imply that more output is produced with a lower use of agrochemicals and scarce natural resources. This needs to be reflected in the types of technologies fostered. Natural resource management (NRM) – including longer crop rotations, conservation agriculture, agroforestry systems, integrated pest management, agroecological intensification, and other agronomic innovations – need to play an important role. 116
A key research need is for greater focus on diverse farming systems, rather than individual crops: circular agriculture to prevent waste and nutrient leakage, agroecological systems, complex rotations, mixed farming and so on. Compared to ‘conventional’ agriculture, the amount of money invested in other farming systems is very small, and often focused on a small number of approaches (e.g. organic). 117 Too little money has been invested in finding ways to maximise the outputs in diversified, small-scale, and agroecological systems which can produce a wider range of nutrient-rich foods in a more sustainable way (including supporting livelihoods) than broad- scale agricultural monocropping.
From a broader sustainability perspective, a greater focus is required on landscape-level outcomes for the delivery of ecosystem services (clean air, water, biodiversity, fuel, fibre and food; as well as preservation of culturally important landscapes and their heterogeneity). 118 119 Current applications of research funding will not deliver the knowledge and products required to support sustainable, healthy diets in coming years. The funding has to be better aligned with these new planet-wide goals.
Box 4.9: Seed systems research: a target for reform in Africa
While R&D by commercial seed companies has expanded in many parts of Eastern and Southern Africa and in Nigeria, the focus is quite narrowly on hybrid maize.This needs to change significantly if non-staple food production and marketing is to accelerate. There is a good case for many African countries to update outdated seed safety laws to encourage investment in areas beyond staples.
Seed regulators have a key role to play. Effective institutional management of the quality of seeds, young fish stock and breeding livestock is a crucial component of high-performance agricultural systems that generate high-quality food products. KEPHIS in Kenya is a good example of a strong regulatory body supporting quality in the seed system. Many others would benefit from being substantially strengthened.
4.4.2.2 Promoting the production of micronutrient- rich foods
Any move towards a healthy diet for all requires significantly more policy attention and investment in the supply of a diversity of safe foods that provide important quantities of vitamins and minerals. This requires support for enhancing outputs of nutrient- dense fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and pulses, including orphan crops 120, knowledge and extension, market investments (to reduce food loss), and education. These can all combine to increase the
supply and profitability of the production of these foods, while also raising labour demand.
Research that boosts the micronutrient content of staple grains, beans or tubers (biofortification) can also be a cost-effective strategy for helping deliver nutrients to nutritionally vulnerable individuals. 121 122Once developed and if widely disseminated, some biofortified crops can be multiplied by rural households without additional costs. Hence, biofortification can be a viable medium- term strategy to complement dietary diversification programmes and other types of micronutrient interventions. 123 However, this represents a substitution step rather than a redesign.
Investing more into research for, and production of, a wide range of micronutrient-rich foods (e.g. fruits, vegetables, pulses, fish etc.) will help to incentivise production of relevant crops and appropriate animal-sourced foods, and also help to increase their affordability. It may also have implications for seed regulatory agencies that have tended to focus on cereals (see Box 4.9).
It may also involve confronting important constituencies, such as traditional grain marketing boards and associations, which have in the past ensured that most public investment was channelled towards cereals. Indeed, powerful actors across the food system often pull in different directions, motivated by factors unrelated to health or food system sustainability. These power relations between different actors in the food system matter hugely, and negotiated policy solutions will need to identify and harness common benefits and common ground.
Box 4.10: Ethiopia: a particular success story
Government support for agriculture in Ethiopia illustrates the benefits that can flow from well-judged policies. A concerted policy of agriculture-led growth has been highly successful in raising not just yields but also the number of jobs in agriculture and its output (in terms of agricultural GDP per worker). 125
One example of promoting research diversification is the Rice Tariffication Bill adopted by the Philippines in 2019. This replaced long-standing quantity-based import quotas for rice, with flexibility for any importer to secure rice if they meet minimum quality standards. 126 Some of the government revenue from this scheme is intended to support cropping diversification among locally affected rice farmers, contributing to more diverse food systems and diets.
4.4.2.3 Bridging gaps between technology innovation and farmer adoption
Simple-to-use technologies that increase farmers’ yields and profits are often adopted rapidly. More complex approaches that may have longer-term benefits but do not necessarily increase farm profits immediately are often adopted much less rapidly without specific extension and training efforts. 127
Examples are natural resource management practices (including approaches such as conservation agriculture) tailored to location, which can improve the nutrient content of crops, but not necessarily raise crop or livestock yields in the short term, leading to low rates of uptake. Recent studies have shown that well-designed extension approaches that combine agricultural training with nutrition and health training, and market linkage support, can significantly increase the adoption of complex technologies by smallholder farmers. 129 130 More enhanced approaches to farm extension are needed, both face-to-face and using digital or cellular platforms. Other approaches include using wider ecosystem service provision to create a market that pays farmers to take up beneficial approaches: for example, hydro-companies paying farmers for better soil management to prevent sediment off-flow that can silt-up power stations. 131
4.4.3 Rebalancing the incentives supporting food production
The third area where policymakers can create a new focus that will aid the transition beyond R&D and subsidies, is to develop value-added production systems for high quality foods to realise considerable employment opportunities, as well as a cascade of other benefits.
Rebalancing in this case means increasing the focus of food production towards generating universal access to sustainable, healthy diets as the top priority, rather than just on traditional goals of producing ever-higher volumes of cheap food, or earning foreign exchange from commodity exports.
Across the world, but especially in high-income countries, the food system is the largest employment sector – as there are many employment possibilities in production, processing, manufacturing and retailing of foods, as well as services, including hospitality (see Figure 4.17). 132 The challenge for high-income economies is to align these high-employment value chains to deliver more nutrient-rich food products, produced through sustainable farming methods. In lower- income countries, the development of food and agricultural systems has the potential to contribute very substantially to employment opportunities, and the economic prosperity of individuals and countries – far beyond the dual objectives of ensuring healthy and sustainable diets.
For example, in West Africa, the food system accounts for 66% of total employment (82 million jobs as of 2017). Roughly 78% (64 million jobs) are in agriculture itself, 15% (12 million) in food marketing and 5% (four million) in food processing. 133 This constitutes an important opportunity for countries in Africa with rapidly growing populations. Estimates from the International Labour Organisation project that there will be 283 million young people aged 15-24 years in sub-Saharan Africa by 2030, an increase of approximately 100 million from 2015. 134 The overall working age population (15-64 years old) in Africa is expected to increase by 805 million between 2020 and 2050, representing 76% of the expected global increase. 135
The potential benefits are massive. By 2100, it is estimated that sub-Saharan Africa and Asia will be home to roughly nine billion people (of the world’s then total of 11 billion). 136 The World Bank has argued that Africa earns roughly 25% of its annual economic growth from agriculture but “if matched with more electricity and irrigation, smart business and trade policies and a dynamic private agribusiness sector that works side by side with government to link farmers with consumers in an increasingly urbanised Africa, […] agriculture and agribusiness together could command a US$ 1 trillion presence in Africa’s regional economy by 2030” 137 (up from US$313 billion in 2010).
Since almost all new jobs in Africa today are in agriculture and microenterprises, improving the business environment in these sectors is a high priority.
The benefits to employment incomes of successful agricultural policies will also cause a cascade of wider benefits (see an example in Box 4.10). Higher GDP growth will open a range of opportunities in diverse areas of public spending including healthcare, education, and infrastructure development.
The result would be to fuel virtuous cycles of growth and development. There are benefits to incomes and livelihoods through engagement in agriculture and food systems more generally. 139 Moreover, there is strong evidence that the income effects of appropriate investments in agricultural growth in the decades ahead will continue to be “an important driver of poverty reduction in South Asia and especially in sub-Saharan Africa” 140 (see Box 4.10).
Whilst to date, there are examples (as in Box 4.10) of successfully promoting poverty reduction through improved productivity, the need is increasingly to target the productivity growth of a range of nutrient-rich foods, produced sustainably. To secure the greatest growth in incomes and salaried employment across food systems, policymakers will need to take a broad view of where to act. It will be important to look for new opportunities right across food systems, including those which help incentivise demand growth for nutrient-rich foods rather than calorie-dense, ultra-processed foods. Tomorrow’s workforce also needs to be prepared so that it is well-placed to capitalise on new and emerging opportunities, not just in agriculture, but also in the various links along value chains all the way to retail and food services. Today, many food producers, particularly in LMICs, are also food insecure, burdened by high levels of malnutrition, and at high risk of climate-related shocks. This underlines the importance during a transition to protect and enhance the ability of these smallholders to contribute effectively to food system change. It requires an extension of appropriately designed and appropriately funded, effective social protection interventions (including the persistence and strengthening of those only brought in as a response to the coronavirus pandemic). 141
The same is true at the level of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) working in the food system, which have been severely affected during the coronavirus pandemic. 142All have a part to play, from the smallest producers to larger-scale operations which may generate high-value commodities and support for export earnings. In the latter case, for example, it will be
particularly important to facilitate access to productive credit and direct investment, and enhance market access (see Chapter 5).
For public and private sectors to work together to optimise employment opportunities across a food system which is transitioning will require specific employment policies. These will need to target potential constraints through the development of many kinds of skills, knowledge, and finance, particularly among youth and women. Most countries lack an integrated strategy which supports job opportunities and income growth across food systems, which means that they are less able to support SMEs and larger public-funded institutions with appropriate fiscal policies, entrepreneurship services, training and nurturing health and safety regulation.
Improving working conditions across food system employers, matters in the context of widespread child labour, gender and age inequalities, poor enforcement of labour laws and a lack of support for workers’ organisations. 143 In other words, addressing both the quantity and quality of jobs in the food systems will deliver valuable gains for governments and private industry, contributing hugely to economic growth, including a reduction in poverty and income inequality, with significant spill-overs for the rest of the economy and society.
In sum, food systems must be transitioned in ways so that what is grown, and how it is grown, are focused on supporting sustainable, healthy diets while enhancing the productivity and economic efficiency of all food system operations. Also, the redesign needs to be driven by realignment of subsidy supports for agriculture, and R&D investments refocused on food system challenge. These need to include how to overcome constraints to the provisioning of markets year-round with a diversity of safe nutrient-rich foods, and modernisation of value chains in ways that better link demand to supply via innovations of all kinds.

Box 4.11: Pathways to multiple ‘wins’: Great Green Wall for the Sahara and Sahel 144
This visionary project of the African Union is a continental- wide initiative to halt desertification and land degradation in a belt of land averaging 15km in width, stretching from Senegal in the West right across to Eritrea, Ethiopia and Djibouti in the East (see Figure 4.18).
It is a US$1.1 billion program funded in part by the World Bank and the Global Environment Facility, involving numerous African countries and a host of international partners including the FAO, the UN, and the European Union.
Once complete, the Great Green Wall will be the largest living structure on the planet, three times the size of the Great Barrier Reef. To do this, improved water management is needed through water harvesting, micro- irrigation and the reduction of runoff. 145
The project aims to halt further desertification, and secure food reserves – thereby addressing food insecurity. In 2017 in the Horn of Africa alone, 20 million people were declared on the verge of starvation following severe drought and food crisis. However, its benefits go much further.
It aims to improve the health and livelihoods of those communities in its vicinity, create employment, and work against the threats of conflict and outmigration.
It has been seen as a ‘game changer’ for the region. 146 Overall, it contributes to an estimated 15 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
Already approximately 15% completed, its results to date include:
- Nigeria: five million hectares of degraded land restored;
- Niger: five million hectares of degraded land restored, yielding an extra 500,000 tonnes of grain a year – enough for 2.5 million people;
- Ethiopia: 15 million hectares of degraded land restored.
Looking to 2030, the Wall aims to restore 100 million hectares of degraded land, and sequester 250 million tonnes of carbon. Importantly, it will also create 10 million much needed jobs in rural areas – the Sahel’s population of 100 million is projected to rise to 340 million by 2050.
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