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Vulnerabilities of the Food System

Session 1 of the workshop, moderated by Matt Liebman, Iowa State University, focused on the vulnerabilities of the food system, including biophysical challenges and social and economic shortcomings and vulnerabilities, and how an agroecological framework can be used for improvement.

PLANETARY BOUNDARIES AND GLOBAL CHANGE

The first speaker in Session 1, Cynthia Rosenzweig, National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University Earth Institute, spoke about the food system’s planetary boundaries and global change, with emphasis on the effect of climate change.

Interactions Between the Food System and Other Systems

Rosenzweig opened by stating that much of the work to address climate change globally has focused on crop agriculture, with less attention paid to livestock and fisheries. However, she observed, other components of the food system, such as food processing, supply chains, shipping, demand and consumption, and food loss and waste, also impact climate change. She presented a diagram (see Figure 3-1) illustrating the interactions between the food system and the climate system, global ecosystems, the socioeconomic system, and food insecurity. Rosenzweig defined the socioeconomic system as comprising such human dynamics as demographics, economics, behavior,

culture, policy, and institutions. She pointed out that COVID-19 has highlighted the cascading impact of global systemic risks on the food system. The pandemic has led to disruptions in production, supply, and demand in the food system, she stated, a system that is already stressed by weather and climate events.

Further describing Figure 3-1, Rosenzweig noted that the four pillars of food security—availability, access, utilization, and stability—link to both human health and planetary health. She explained some of the successes and failures of the food system in addressing food security. She gave as an example that the food system successfully feeds the majority of the world’s population and supports the livelihoods of more than 1 billion people. However, she observed, it falls short in that 690 million people globally are undernourished, and 2 billion have overweight or obesity. She added that the food system also contributes significant greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The Food System and Planetary Boundaries

Rosenzweig stated that similar challenges exist in achieving planetary health, noting that the food system is already crossing the four planetary boundaries of biosphere integrity, land use change, freshwater use, and nitrogen flow. She defined planetary boundaries as thresholds in the planetary system that when crossed negatively impact other global systems and compromise the resilience of earth systems. Turning to biosphere integrity, she defined it as the preservation of biodiversity and reduction of threatened species. Land use change, she continued, involves preservation of tropical and temperate forests. She also explained that freshwater use entails reducing agricultural withdrawals so that they do not impact environmental flow requirements, pointing out that nitrogen flow requires reducing fertilizer use where excess nitrogen leaching occurs.

Rosenzweig next described a simulation modeling the impact of the food system not crossing the planetary boundaries. It found that production would be significantly reduced, she reported, allowing the world’s food system to feed only 3.4 billion of its projected future 10 billion inhabitants. Simulating instead a technological and cultural “U-turn” toward increasing global food supply within the four planetary boundaries, the researchers found that expanding irrigation, fertilizer, and cropland; managing water, nutrients, and land within those planetary boundaries; reducing food loss; and making dietary changes that involved evening out calorie intake across the world could allow the global food system to feed more than 10 billion people (Gerten et al., 2020). In response to a question following her presentation, Rosenzweig clarified that change on a global scale will require simultaneous local-level changes in many locations around the world.

Rosenzweig then turned to some of the challenges involved in achieving this goal. With respect to water, for example, she pointed to competition between the ecosystem and food production. She noted that half of irrigated cropland around the world faces a production loss of more than 10 percent if ecosystem water requirements are respected. She added that 20 percent of global food production depends on the ecological flow requirements in “hot spot” regions (Jägermeyr et al., 2017), which include parts of the central and southern United States. Rosenzweig noted that challenges in transforming the food system are exacerbated by climate change, including temperature increases across the globe and changes in precipitation that cause droughts, floods, and heat waves. She pointed out that the lower latitudes, which disproportionately include developing countries, are the most vulnerable to the impact of climate change. As she described, multiple global models show that such circumstances increase the risk for hunger.

Rosenzweig cited findings that high carbon dioxide levels also adversely impact nutrient quality. Using rice as an example, she explained that when

carbon dioxide increases, the protein, iron, and zinc in the crop decline. Livestock diseases are also affected by global temperature increases, she noted.

Proposed Solutions to the Impact of Climate Change on Food Production

Rosenzweig outlined multiple proposed solutions for addressing the impact of climate change on food production. One option, she stated, is mitigation, or the reduction of GHG emissions, through dietary change. She pointed to research indicating that a reduction in meat consumption, for example, reduces GHG emissions through reductions in livestock and the ability to sequester carbon on land not used to grow livestock feed. At the same time, she observed, solutions are needed to adapt the food system to changing climate conditions. She offered examples of adaptation strategies, such as providing farmers with packages of heat- and drought-tolerant plant species, which have been shown through research in West Africa to raise smallholder farmers’ incomes. She acknowledged, however, that such strategies may not fully compensate for crop yield losses (Adiku et al., 2015).

Rosenzweig closed by considering the parallel global systemic threats of COVID-19 and climate change, noting that while the former came on quickly and the latter slowly, they both affect poor and minority populations disproportionately and impact the food system and food security around the world. She explained that COVID-19 has impacted food production through challenges with farm labor, supply chain shortages, and food access, directly affecting food security for millions of people around the world. Looking to the future, Rosenzweig stressed the importance of integrating the responses to COVID-19 and climate change.

ACCESS TO HEALTH AND FOOD

The second presentation of the session was made by Ricardo Salvador, Union of Concerned Scientists, who spoke about access to health and food.

Food System Dimensions and Domains

Salvador began by referencing the framework from the 2015 Institute of Medicine and National Research Council report shown in Figure 2-2 in Chapter 2 and highlighting a table in that report illustrating how the four dimensions of quantity, quality, distribution, and resilience within the food system manifest in the health, environmental, and socioeconomic domains (IOM and NRC, 2015) (see Figure 3-2).

With respect to quantity, within the health domain, Salvador noted the importance of ensuring that the food system produces sufficient calories.

Turning to the environmental domain, he cited trade-offs between productivity and conservation of land and water. Regarding the socioeconomic domain, he mentioned the goal of increasing disposable income to cover the costs of food.

In the dimension of quality, Salvador highlighted occupational, health, food safety, and nutrition guidelines as examples in the health domain. In the environmental domain, he noted the importance of maintaining biological and ecosystem integrity. In the socioeconomic domain, he pointed to the need for diverse foods to be available to people across income levels, emphasizing the importance of equitable access.

Moving on to the distribution dimension, Salvador explained that the health domain includes access to a variety of foods for all. In the environmental domain, he highlighted the importance of agricultural chemical runoffs not being redistributed outside the farm. In the socioeconomic domain,

he called out economic access to a variety of foods for all. Salvador also pointed out the consistency across dimensions within the socioeconomic domain, noting that affordability of food is as important as physical access.

Salvador focused particular attention on the dimension of resilience. He gave as an example of resilience within the health domain trust in recovery of the supply chain after a contamination, such as from E. coli O157. An example in the environmental domain is the time to return to active production after a drought or flood, events that he noted are increasing in frequency as a result of climate change. Using a Jenga™ tower as a metaphor, Salvador described economic resilience as a system in which the loss of one piece (a major employer) does not threaten the viability of the entire tower (the community).

Salvador emphasized the dynamic nature of the food system. He gave as an example a hog production facility, where inputs are combined with farming knowledge and management to generate outputs, which then generate consumption. Natural resource and human systems affect each other, he observed, and he stressed that a measure of resilience is how the system responds when challenged. In response to a disaster such as a flood, Salvador pointed out, the impact on such outcomes as air and water quality and erosion stem from human decisions about the production model in addition to the natural event. He noted that socioeconomic outputs can be assessed in the areas of health, market efficiency, public resources and policies, and public well-being.

Meatpacking Plant Workers

Salvador used the example of the meatpacking plant workers during the COVID-19 pandemic to further illustrate the points he had made. He began by commenting that these workers, the majority of whom are racial minorities, suffered from high COVID-19 infection and mortality rates. Referencing remarks made by former Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack during a recent webinar¹ hosted by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources, Salvador suggested that the industry needs to make changes to reduce the scale and concentration of its plants and adapt to the need for social distancing caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. He asserted that the meatpacking workers were exploited when they were compelled to continue to work, even in hazardous conditions, because they were designated “essential workers” and were financially dependent on their wages. He stressed that workers “do not have the political power to compel the government to

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¹ Available at https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/06-19-2020/covid-19-and-the-food-and-agricultural-system (accessed September 16, 2020).

look after their safety and occupational well-being.” By contrast, he stated, the largest meatpacking plants have significant political clout, as evidenced by their success in placing full-page advertisements in major newspapers requesting that their workers be designated as essential, thus compelling them to work and without the companies having to assume liability for the consequences.

According to Salvador, he presented this example as evidence that the business model in the food system leads to the exploitation and even death of vulnerable workers, and he pointed to racism as a potential contributing factor to these outcomes. He concluded his presentation with a call to action for science-based organizations to recognize the data, apply the food system framework, and advocate for policies that can improve socioeconomic outcomes and resilience.

AN AGROECOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK FOR THE FOOD SYSTEM

The final speaker of the session, Paula Daniels, Center for Good Food Purchasing, spoke about the need for an agroecological framework for the food system.

About the Center for Good Food Purchasing

Daniels began by briefly describing her background and the work of the Center for Good Food Purchasing. She explained that the center uses “the power of procurement to create a transparent and equitable food system that prioritizes the health and well-being of people, animals, and the environment,” adding that it works to achieve this goal through adoption and implementation of the Good Food Purchasing Program by major institutions. Daniels provided a brief history of the good food purchasing movement, stating that it began in the 1970s with “solo voices” that have since become “a chorus.” She noted that in prior positions as a food policy advisor and public works commissioner for the City of Los Angeles, she learned about the connection between agriculture and food consumption patterns and the opportunity to leverage the power of the city government to make change. In response, the City of Los Angeles created a Food Policy Council and several food programs, including the Good Food Purchasing Program.

Daniels noted that the Center for Good Food Purchasing has a certification program designed to disrupt the food system’s economic model of relying heavily on global exports and advance the move toward a more regional food economy. She pointed out that most regions in the United States—even such agricultural states as California, Hawaii, and Iowa—consume only about 5–15 percent local food. She explained that the center’s certification program uses the purchasing power of large institutions

that send significant market signals to the regional food economy to start making shifts, describing it as a lever for creating change in five aspects of the food system: (1) health and nutrition, (2) environmental sustainability, (3) valued workforce, (4) local economies, and (5) animal welfare. Purchasers commit to transparency in their purchasing, she reported, and the center uses a rubric to evaluate and provide feedback on those decisions based on established benchmarks. Daniels stated that this process has led to transformative shifts.

For example, Daniels developed the certification initiative through a 2-year process involving multiple stakeholders, including farmers; supply chain businesses; food processors; food distributors; government entities; and community-based organizations focused on issues of environmental sustainability, labor, health, and food access. The Los Angeles School District, the second largest school food service district in the country, with a $150 million annual food budget, adopted the program in 2012. Daniels reported that the school district went from purchasing 10 percent local to 60 percent local within 1 year, injecting $12 million into the local food economy and creating 150 new jobs.

Highlighting the potential impact of the certification program, Daniels noted that overall, the U.S. institutional food service market is worth $120 billion, including at least $13 billion attributable to the National School Lunch Program. The Good Food Purchasing Program accounts for about $1 billion of the market, serving a total of nearly 3 million students in at least 50 institutions in 20 cities, including Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, DC. Daniels stated that the program has received international recognition from the World Food Council as one of eight top food policies to support agroecology.

Externalities of the Food System

Daniels next described the externalities of the food system, which she noted are not included in the cost of cheap food items such as hamburgers or candy bars. As she explained, the food system was designed in the mid-20th century, and she asserted that it needs to be redesigned. In the mid-1940s, she elaborated, many people worked in fields or factories, but by the 1980s, there were significantly fewer small farms in the United States as a result of corporate consolidation and industrialization in agriculture. Greater output was produced by fewer farms, she added. In the second half of the 20th century, she continued, packaged, processed foods were developed and mass marketed, and diabesity² rates skyrocketed in tandem.

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² “Diabesity” is defined as “diabetes occurring in the context of obesity” (Farag and Gaballa, 2011).

Daniels shared a diagram of the eight “key lock-ins” of industrial agriculture, centered around concentration of power; they include an export orientation, an expectation of cheap food, and a feed-the-world narrative. She expressed disagreement with the need for industrial agriculture to feed the world, noting that current production levels are already above the caloric needs of the average person. However, she stressed, the food that is produced is not aligned with current dietary patterns, nor is it equitably produced or distributed. Daniels argued that the United States should move away from producing and exporting cheap, processed foods, noting that certain foods are cheap because the government subsidizes them.

Daniels recommended reframing conversations about the food system from a narrow focus on production to a broader consideration of social and cultural factors, healthfulness, and availability. Sharing an agroecological framework from the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems and experts with Tasting the Future and the Global Alliance for the Future of Food,³ she compared the existing and new ways of thinking about the food system: while the existing thinking is that “we,” meaning primarily the Global North, feed the world, the new thinking is that the world feeds itself, and people are empowered to grow their own food. Daniels suggested further that food be valued as a public good instead of a commodity, with value rather than profits being maximized. She explained that the new thinking about the food system she had described is aligned with an agroecological framework, a multidisciplinary perspective that takes a holistic view of the system encompassing sociology, economics, history, and other disciplines. She recommended in particular the TEEBAgriFood (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity for Agriculture and Food programme) Evaluation Framework, which allows for inclusive accounting of these values (TEEB, 2018).

Daniels pointed out that the United States ranks in the bottom half of 67 countries on a food sustainability index (The Economist Intelligence Unit and Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition, 2018). She suggested that the nation needs to do more to catch up to other countries and embrace the 10 elements of agroecology described by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO, 2018).

Final Remarks

Daniels closed her presentation by again emphasizing the importance of purchasing power through public procurement as a key lever for government

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³ See the Global Alliance for the Future of Food’s Reframing How We Think About Food and Health, available at https://medium.com/global-alliance-for-the-future-of-food/reframing-how-we-think-about-food-and-health-6fab171ad4b1 (accessed September 16, 2020).

in changing the food system. She proposed a new narrative of a food system that is resilient and supportive of local food economies, the workforce, humane treatment of animals, sustainability, and nutrition. She suggested that this vision could be achieved with a shift from primary dependence on an export model to investment in a diverse renewable and regionally sustainable system, following the model of the shift toward renewable energy.

PANEL DISCUSSION

Following the three presentations summarized above, Liebman led a panel discussion with Rosenzweig, Salvador, and Daniels.

Food System Vulnerabilities

In response to a question asking that they identify the major vulnerability in the food and agriculture system, Rosenzweig pointed to increasing climate events, while Salvador posited that socioeconomic disparities are even more important because those with greater socioeconomic standing can better withstand such challenges as climate change. Daniels highlighted corporate consolidation and vertical integration, as evidenced by the meatpacking plant example provided by Salvador, and suggested increasing emphasis on regional food systems, including regional food processing, ownership, distribution, and resilience, as a potential solution.

To increase attention to food safety, Daniels and Salvador suggested using technology to improve transparency and traceability from farm to fork, which could allow contamination to be quickly identified and mitigated. Salvador added that preventing contamination from occurring in the first place should also be a goal for the food system, while Rosenzweig noted that climate change could act to increase microbial contamination.

Thoughts on Research Priorities

In response to an audience member’s question about priorities for research, Daniels highlighted opportunities in aquaculture as a form of environmentally sustainable animal food production and innovations in converting food waste to aquaculture feed. She noted that as of 2012, more seafood than beef was being farmed in the United States. Rosenzweig pointed to the need for more research on strategies for responding to such complex global cascading risks as COVID-19 and climate change, on strategies for climate change mitigation and adaptation, and on the effect of the food system on health and equity issues.

Salvador pointed to the need for more research on agroecology, which in his view is superior to the current system of replacing beneficial insects

and natural equilibrium with purchased fertilizers, insecticides, or bio-engineered crops, even though that system is convenient and provides broad access to crops outside their native locations. He suggested that ecological knowledge can replace these expensive purchased inputs and return more money to farmers, noting that most of the money in the food system goes to food processors and marketers rather than farmers. Salvador observed that agroecology is more than the replacement of one technical approach with another, as it requires supportive environments, policies, markets, and educational systems. He suggested that greater public investment in agroecological systems would benefit farmers and help revitalize rural economies through improved farm production, increased environmental quality, and greater social well-being.

Leveraging the Knowledge of Indigenous Populations and People of Color

Another audience member asked how best to leverage the knowledge of Indigenous and Black farmers and other people of color in the food and agriculture system to ensure food sovereignty⁴ and agroecological health. Salvador responded that an important goal is to provide more equitably the resources needed to participate in the global cash-based economy, because people who lack these resources cannot afford to buy enough food and will go hungry if they do not produce it themselves. He pointed out that in the United States, people of color are more likely than White people to experience food insecurity as the result of a cycle of racial inequality and poverty that repeats itself over generations. He stressed that the nation’s history of appropriating land and displacing and enslaving people has made it difficult for these groups to own land; build wealth; and access the best schools, hospitals, and other institutions, even hundreds of years later. This system, he asserted, perpetuates the cycle of poverty over generations, and he suggested that building food sovereignty requires investment in the appropriate knowledge and acknowledgment of the need for structural change.

Daniels pointed to the need for more research on aquaculture, which could provide opportunities for Indigenous farmers to produce food in a sustainable way. Rosenzweig added that intergovernmental science bodies, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, are intentionally incorporating broader knowledge systems, including Indigenous and local knowledge, in their assessment processes.

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⁴ According to La Via Campesina, whose members first coined the term, food sovereignty is “the peoples’, Countries’, or State Unions’ right to define their agricultural and food policy, without any dumping vis-à-vis third countries” (La Via Campesina, 2003).

Role of Livestock in Climate Change

Responding to a question about the role of livestock in climate change, Rosenzweig suggested that any programs or policies to address climate change should consider the impact on the billion smallholder farmers around the world who depend on livestock for their food and livelihood. She stressed the need to create just transitions to sustainable agroecological systems that include livestock in ways that are more resilient and responsive to climate change challenges. As strategies for achieving this goal, she highlighted better grazing, land management, improved manure management, better-quality feed, genetic engineering, and cellular agriculture. Daniels recommended that the government set regional targets for transformation toward a more resilient food system as it has for the energy system, creating markets for more regenerative production.

Water Quality and Quantity

Liebman concluded the session by asking the panelists to address the vulnerabilities in water quality and quantity in the medium and long term. Daniels suggested the possibility of using re-treated, recycled water in agriculture. Rosenzweig and Salvador pointed out the need for greater awareness, such as through a media campaign, that water systems are shared between agriculture and other ecosystems around the world. Rosenzweig also highlighted the importance of conservation techniques through irrigation. Salvador noted the importance of utilizing production systems that are consistent with the current hydric and climate patterns, and suggested that data on future climate impacts can be used to make decisions that save lives and livelihoods.