2021 Global Food Policy Report: Foreword

Transforming Food Systems after COVID-19

This is a crucial moment for the world’s food systems. Hunger has been on the rise since 2015, and 3 billion people cannot afford healthy diets. At the same time, food systems are placing unsustainable demands on the world’s water and energy resources and contributing a hefty share of greenhouse gas emissions. All these trends were well underway long before COVID-19.

2020, which brought the pandemic, was a year of crisis. And the terrible loss and disruption experienced worldwide will continue in many places through this year and even beyond. Increased poverty, food insecurity, malnutrition, and unemployment have pushed the Sustainable Development Goals further out of reach for many countries, and shone a harsh light on the disparities in our food systems. From these crises, however, have emerged many lessons. Foremost among them is that transforming our food systems is a matter of utmost urgency.

2021 is a year of urgency but also of hope. Vaccines are being distributed, and the health and economic shocks of the pandemic have stimulated creativity and reforms in the private and public sectors. The experience has sparked a willingness to think beyond traditional perspectives — economic, technological, and political. 2021 is also the year of global summits on food systems, climate, and nutrition. Together, this creates an unusual opportunity for the world to choose radical change.

IFPRI is contributing evidence-based inputs for these critical global policy discussions and decisions, drawn from its large set of analytical tools, data, and regional coverage. This year’s Global Food Policy Report examines what we have learned about the deficiencies in current food systems, the changes that are needed for system transformation, and what COVID-19 has taught us. It offers lessons that can help put the world on the path to food system transformation for greater resilience, inclusion, efficiency, sustainability, and nutrition. IFPRI’s analytical work during the pandemic — conducted through both new initiatives and reconfigured ongoing research — illuminates the impacts of the crisis in numerous countries and considers how policy can best address such shocks while also helping to transform food systems for the future.

We hope that this report will support transformation by contributing to the discussions at upcoming global events, and to the many national and local policy discussions and reforms that will be essential to purposeful transformation. We look forward to working together to address the fundamental changes needed for a better future.

Johan Swinnen
Director General