The food crisis must speed up the shift towards sustainable food production

As the price of food is increasing significantly due to the war in Ukraine, governments of Europe must speed up the shift to a more sustainable global food system.

Just as the energy-crisis inherently holds a potential to speed up the green shift towards a more sustainable energy production in Europe, the ongoing food crisis in the wake of the war in Ukraine holds a similar potential. In order to save the planet (and our health), we need a dramatic change in both the way we eat and the way we produce our food.

When the Oslo-based EAT-foundation´s EAT-Lancet report appeared in 2019, it generated more than 5800 media articles worldwide just in a year. The nineteen commissioners and eighteen co-writers from sixteen countries from various fields of expertise, such as human health, agriculture, political science and environmental sustainability for the first time in history made a holistic report on how to make the global food system sustainable, not only to the planet, but also to human health.

The report´s conclusion was sobering: «Without action, the world risks failing to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement, and today´s children will inherit a planet that has been severely degraded and where much of the population will increasingly suffer from malnutrition and preventable disease.» In clear terms: our current way of producing food is one of the major ways we kill our planet. The way we eat, kills way too many of us.

The report listed five strategies to achieve the shift, and deserves to be held up as a lighthouse to our decision-makers again and again: 1) International and national commitment to shift towards healthy diets. 2) Reorient agricultural priorities from producing high quantities of food to producing healthy food. 3) Sustainably intensify food production to increase high-quality output 4) Strong and coordinated governance of land and oceans and 5) Food losses and waste must be halved, in line with UN Sustainable Development Goals.

In short, what does this mean for you and me as consumers? We basically have to contribute by significantly cutting our consumption of meat and animal produce. However, in order to reach the goals, set out by the report (measurable, along a number of variables), it will take much more, namely determination and hard work by our politicians.

As food prices continue to rise, not only in the Middle East and Africa but also across Europe and the Western World, dire consequences will increasingly appear. According to the World Food Program, «In just two years, the number of severely food insecure people has increased by more than 200 million from 135 million (in 53 countries before the COVID-19 pandemic) to 345 million in 82 countries.»  In a recent tweet, the WFP also conveyed the message that for every one percent increase of hunger-struck people, we will see a two-percent growth in migration. As the food crisis increase in magnitude, we are likely to see new waves of refugees knocking on Europe´s doors.

The short-term answer to this, is obviously for Western countries to contribute more to immediate aid to those countries hardest hit by the lack of grain from Ukraine and Russia (mostly in the Middle East, East and West Africa).

In the long term however, we all need a drastic shift. Every crisis creates suffering and pain. We must fight hard to alleviate it. However, every crisis also holds an ample opportunity for long-lasting change for good – in this case, for us all to speed up the process of creating a sustainable food-system, both for the planet and ourselves. May we find the will and strength to implement the change needed – with haste.