2021 Articles

Make this food moment meaningful: A call to the scientific Community

Fanzo, Jessica C.

What a year. In 2021, there were some critical global moments where food systems were discussed and debated -- the United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS), the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), and the Nutrition for Growth Summit (N4G). The international development community can argue whether these events successfully shifted the food policy agenda towards more action and positive transformation, but it was a moment (Canfield et al., 2021; Nisbett et al., 2021). Let us not make this moment meaningless. Now is the time to accelerate, advocate, and act on improving food systems for human health and the planet while respecting and supporting those who work, day-in and day-out, to feed us.

To do that, we need to hold governments and private sector actors involved in food systems to account. The Editors of the Global Food Security Journal called for more accountability following the UNFSS and outlined six ways to take account (Covic et al., 2021). One of these ways is by generating robust data and evidence of how food systems are performing and what actions (or inactions) are impacting food systems, in what directions, and towards what outcomes (Marshall et al., 2021). The Global Food Security Journal is proud to publish four volumes each year that bring together perspectives and reviews across various subjects, controversies, and summaries of food systems.