Transition to Sustainable Food Systems
Although enough food is produced to feed 10 billion people, today an estimated 828 million people suffer from hunger worldwide, which is 71 times the population of Belgium, reports the United Nations. More than 3 billion people on Earth cannot afford a healthy diet [1]. This number has increased by 350 million since Covid-19, reaching almost 30% of the world’s population. Hunger rates are again on the rise since 2015 and we are anything but on track to achieve the sustainable development goal of zero hunger, despite the commitment of 193 countries, including Belgium, to eliminate hunger from the world by 2030 (SDG2).
Our current agricultural and food system, based heavily on industrial agriculture and a few powerful megacorporations controlling every link in the system, fails to realize the right to food for all. A third of greenhouse gas emissions are attributable to the current agricultural food system and its negative impact goes much further : loss of biodiversity, depletion and pollution of soils and freshwater resources, etc. There is scientific consensus on this. At the same time, agriculture is already greatly suffering from the effects of the climate crisis and environmental degradation, especially in lower-income countries. Faced with social challenges and the limits to the ecological sustainability of our planet, scientists and civil society organizations are calling for a profound transformation of our food systems. A sustainable food system guarantees "food security and healthy nutrition for all without jeopardizing the economic, social and environmental foundations necessary for the food security and healthy nutrition of future generations” [2]. Belgian and European policies should support this transformation and address the root causes of hunger (poverty,
inequality, unfair trade, countries’ lack of economic resilience, ongoing conflicts, and the climate crisis with pressure on natural resources) with coherent policies.
The Coalition Against Hunger asks :
- To Belgium : meet the commitment to spend 15% of the international cooperation budget on the realization of SDG2 (’zero hunger’) and thus support the agroecological transformation of food systems ;
- To Europe, Belgium, and its regions : work on policy coherence in favor of sustainable development and putting human rights, particularly the right to food, into practice.
Memorandum for the 2024 Elections - Transition to Sustainable Food Systems
[1] UN, 2022, UN Report : Global hunger numbers rose to as many as 828 million in 2021, Rome/New York : UN.
[2] FAO, 2018, Sustainable food systems : Concept and framework.