Food Systems

The food system approach in brief

• A food system is the sum of all factors that are important for guaranteeing food security.
• WUR has its own food system approach with a focus on four domains:
  1) Sufficient food for everyone,
  2) Ensuring a healthy diet,
  3) Equitable distribution of costs and revenues,
  4) Sustainability: climate change, sustainable use of soil, water and other resources and biodiversity.
• Biodiversity now has priority. The world currently depends too much on nine dominant crops.

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We face the enormous challenge of feeding people around the world in a healthy and sustainable way. With the 'Food System Approach' we are working on healthy and sustainable food systems that are future-proof.

Resilient food systems

The food system is constantly having to adapt, as we have seen with the COVID-19 pandemic, the food price rises of 2008 and various climate-related impacts. Whenever a crisis occurs, its effects are felt most strongly by vulnerable people and by our ecosystem. We want to use a Food Systems approach to reduce those vulnerabilities and increase the resilience.

4 aspects of the “Food Systems approach”

There is no single solution when it comes to tackling food problems. If you solve one problem – by increasing food production, for example – you risk creating another, such as pollution or loss of biodiversity. By taking a “Food Systems approach”, Wageningen University & Research is looking at all aspects of the food system, with a focus on 4 “domains”:

1. Food security: sufficient food for everyone

More than 800 million people around the world are hungry, and that number is rising every day. At the same time, 1/3 of all the food we produce is lost through waste along the supply chain and by consumers. How can we organise the food system in such a way that enough food is produced safely for everyone in a growing global population?

2. Ensuring a healthy diet

A healthy diet is made up of a balance of nutrients such as proteins, fats, minerals and fibre. At present, unbalanced diets are the cause of illness in more than 3 billion people, either through undernutrition or overnutrition (obesity). How do we ensure that our food, nutrition and lifestyle habits lead to good health outcomes?

3. Fair distribution of costs and revenues

Costs and revenues are not equitably distributed along the food supply chain. There are also differences in the accessibility, price and allocation of food. This raises questions about what is an appropriate price for food (both for producers and consumers) and about dependence on local or international food systems. How can the food system contribute to a level playing field for everyone, and a fair deal for producers and consumers?

4. Sustainability: climate change, sustainable use of soil, water and other resources and biodiversity

The only way to future-proof our food system is to make sure it is adapted to climate change, that it uses resources in a sustainable and circular way, that it takes our health into account, and that it contributes to biodiversity. How can we organise the food system in a sustainable and resilient way?

A food system is the sum of a range of factors related to food security

Ensuring global food security requires an approach that takes into account all the main influences involved. By focusing on the food system as a whole, problems can be addressed more efficiently.

An approach based on the food system looks at the effects on people, planet and economy

Finding the solution to a problem using a food system approach involves considering the entire chain, taking into account the production, processing, distributionand consumption of food as well as sustainability, climate change and the recovery of biodiversity. Moreover, the goal is an equitable distribution of costs and revenues in the food chain and ensuring access to nutritious food.

An integrated approach to food systems results in more sustainable solutions for people, planet and economy. Increasing food production during a food crisis, for example, is pointless if it reduces the nutritional value of a crop or results in farmers receiving less for their crops. In these cases, it may be more useful to have farmers grow different crops that are more nutritious and profitable.

An example of a food system approach: Vietnamese rice

A good example of an integrated approach is rice cultivation in Vietnam. The country faced a famine after the war and responded by focusing on the large-scale cultivation of staple food to combat hunger.

This resulted in a huge increase in rice production. The problem, however, is that rice alone does not constitute a versatile diet. Although there was a reduction in hunger, a new food problem was caused by the lack of micronutrients.

Salt makes rice unsuitable for export

Moreover, the soil on which farmers grew their rice in Vietnam contained too much salt, making the rice unsuitable for export. As a result, farmers had lower incomes from this form of agriculture than was potentially possible.

The solution was for various farmers to also start growing different crops such as fruit. They also began cultivating shrimp, further helping to support a more balanced diet. In addition, some of the products could be sold on the international market to enhance the farmer’s financial position.

WUR provides knowledge of and research into food systems

WUR applies the Food Systems Approach to carry out research into healthy and sustainable food systems that are future-proof. This includes projects in Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Egypt with NGOs and industry to develop new solutions which are in line with this holistic and integrated vision.

WUR and other research institutes supply knowledge and carry out research while farmers, businesses, NGOs and government bodies apply these insights. Because, ultimately, it’s by working together that partners can generate genuine change in the system.

Food systems on the agenda: the UN Food Systems Summit 2021

The UN Food Systems Summit took place in September 2021. This special meeting of the United Nations decided that every country will take steps toward healthy, sustainable and fair food systems. An evaluation will take place in 2023.

It was also important that the summit placed the food system approach to food problems firmly on the global agenda. This ensures, among other things, that food systems will also be discussed in the framework of the climate summit in late 2022. The Summit made it clear that climate and food problems cannot be seen as separate issues.

Priority for biodiversity

The preservation of biodiversity is currently high on the agenda as there is an imminent risk of imbalance. According to the FAO nine crops are responsible for 66% of our food worldwide (measured by weight):

1. Sugar cane
2. Corn
3. Rice
4. Wheat
5. Potato
6. Soy bean
7. Oil palm fruit
8. Sugar beet
9. Cassava

A global food crisis would be unavoidable if a disease destroyed one of these crops. This is why we should always have alternatives available to quickly enable farmers to switch to new crops. And the rest of the food system (distribution, production) should be sufficiently flexible to quickly adapt to a crisis. While the enormous demand for these popular crops makes it less rewarding to invest in other crops, there is an urgent need for biodiversity.

WUR provides knowledge of and research into food systems

WUR applies the Food Systems Approach to carry out research into healthy and sustainable food systems that are future-proof. This includes projects in Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Egypt with NGOs and industry to develop new solutions which are in line with this holistic and integrated vision.

WUR and other research institutes supply knowledge and carry out research while farmers, businesses, NGOs and government bodies apply these insights. Because, ultimately, it’s by working together that partners can generate genuine change in the system.

Integrated view on feeding the world

Looking for solutions following the ‘Food system approach’ requires us to consider all of the different elements that make up the system and influence each other. These include agricultural production, biodiversity, water availability and the risks associated with climate change.

Of course, people are an important part of the system. Farmers, consumers, middlemen, policymakers, technology developers, dieticians and activists all have a part to play. By focusing on various aspects of the food system, and ensuring our research results are solid and applicable, we are contributing to the ongoing improvement of food systems.

We do this in collaboration with our partners: governments, businesses, civil society organisations and other research institutes. And we do it at various levels: regional, national, international and global.