Food systems have enormous potential to support healthy diets and nutrition while also advancing prosperity and protecting the planet. However, this potential is often left largely unexploited. Existing food systems, shaped in large part by an array of piecemeal and even contradictory policies, result in widespread hunger, malnutrition, poverty, and environmental degradation. By taking a food systems approach to policymaking, governments could harness the power of food systems to benefit people and the planet.

A high-performing, resilient, and competitive processing sector can create remunerative employment opportunities, link producers to growing and lucrative urban markets, and help to ensure that consumers have access to sufficient and healthy food.

There are increasingly strong reasons to move away from industrial animal agriculture for the good of the environment, animals, our personal health, and public health. Plant-based animal product alternatives (PB-APAs) represent a highly feasible way to reduce animal product consumption, since they address the core consumer decision drivers of taste, price, and convenience.

The Core Guidance to enable healthier diets among low-income households in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), while bringing co-benefits and reducing trade-offs for economic development and climate change, involves nine activities across the food system.

Changes in diet and lifestyle can be caused by many factors and can, in turn, cause changes in health. This building block explains what the nutrition transition is and its implications for health and environmental sustainability.

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Together with the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (RTD), supported by the Directorate-General for Structural Reform Support (REFORM), the Joint Research Centre has recently published a Commission Staff Working Document (SWD) on “Supporting and connecting policymaking in the Member States with scientific research”.

The agricultural and cereal price indices remained stable over the past two weeks and are currently 1 point higher. Domestic food price inflation remains high around the world, with high inflation continuing in almost all low-and middle-income countries, and high-income countries.

The war in Ukraine and aftershocks from the COVID-19 pandemic present Emerging Market and Developing Economies (EMDEs) with an extremely challenging external environment shaped by sharply higher food, fertilizer, and energy prices, rising interest rates and spreads, and stagflation risk in advanced economies. These shockwaves have hit when many countries are still struggling with the health and COVID-19 pandemic’s economic fallout, including stresses on fiscal and monetary policy.

This fourth knowledge review of Knowledge Centre for Global Food and Nutrition Security analyses, synthetises and organises the information from 54 papers published between 1st August and 30th September.

Africa’s pulse report of October 2022 discusses short-term measures combined with medium- to long-term policy actions that can strengthen African countries' capacity to build resilience and seize opportunities to unlock productivity-enhancing growth while reducing food insecurity.

The world faces a food crisis as major price shocks exacerbate food insecurity. A multitude of factors have contributed to growing food insecurity since 2018, including conflict, climate shocks, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. These combined in impact to drive up food prices and negatively affect food production and distribution.

Contrary to early expectations, the COVID-19 pandemic kept its grip on the world economy well into 2021, further exacerbating an already alarming situation in terms of hunger and food insecurity.

The HLPE-FSN Steering Committee noticed that several of the critical concerns have been persistent or recurrent issues for FSN, such as climate change, natural disasters and conflicts. To express this reality, the Steering Committee added the term “enduring” to the title of the note.

The Knowledge Review aims to inform policymakers and practitioners about the capacity of digital technologies and digital hubs to transform agricultural and food value chains to achieve sustainable food systems (SFS). The primary focus is on smallholder farmers, fisherfolk and pastoralists in food-insecure and low- and middle-income countries. To highlight the opportunities for and barriers to digitalisation in the agricultural sector, the review shares opportunities, key challenges and lessons learned, and recommendations gleaned from a synthesis of 34 publications.

ETC Group’s 2022 update of corporate concentration offers a snapshot of the world’s Food Barons – the biggest players up and down the industrial food and agriculture chain. We examine the leading corporations that control each of 11 key industrial “agrifood” sectors: seeds, agrochemicals, livestock genetics, synthetic fertilizers, farm machinery, animal pharmaceuticals, commodity traders, food processors, Big Meat, grocery retail and food delivery. Rankings are based on 2020 sales figures.

This paper combines per capita gross domestic product growth from national accounts with data from High-Frequency Phone Surveys for several countries to estimate the net impact of the pandemic on poverty.

The JRC has published three discussion papers that describe the science-for-policy ecosystems in France, Greece and Portugal, identifying the main stakeholders in these countries and providing recommendations for improvement. You may now download these reports in English and in their local languages (French, Greek, and Portuguese).

Cette crise est consécutive à la conjugaison de plusieurs facteurs de risques, notamment la sécheresse enregistrée au cours de la campagne agropastorale 2021 entraînant la baisse importante de production céréalière et fourragère en particulier dans les pays de la bande sahélienne. Cela a fortement contribué au maintien de la tendance haussière des prix des denrées alimentaires dépassant dans certains cas plus de 100%.

International wheat prices continued to ease in August, influenced by increased availability from ongoing harvests and the resumption of exports from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports. By contrast, maize prices firmed mostly on strong demand for supplies from Argentina and Brazil amidst a tighter global supply outlook and pressure from energy markets. World rice prices held steady in August, as slight declines in quotations of the most widely traded “Indica” varieties compensated for the mild price gains in other rice market segments.