What is wrong with the global food system?
The Good Enough to Eat Index highlights some of the areas of critical concern for many countries when it comes to making sure that people can eat well, and indicates some important failings of the global food system that must be addressed. Source: Oxfam Novib. The relationships between food and the people it must feed for their survival is clearly under pressure and action is urgently needed before the system is stretched further.
In the UK, a record 500,000 people are turning to food banks because they are finding it too hard to afford the food they need. More must be done to address some of the underlying challenges that people are increasingly facing such as unemployment, low wages and rising food and fuel prices. The government must conduct an urgent inquiry into the relationship between welfare changes and cuts, and the growth of food poverty.
Global action is also needed to fix the broken food system so that people are better able meet their food and nutrition needs. This includes:
- Investing in small-holder agriculture and infrastructure in developing countries to raise production levels and diversity of crops, and give farmers access to markets and the means to store food to prevent waste.
- Tackling climate change by reducing global carbon emissions to prevent ever-worse climate impacts on food production, investing in resilient agriculture production that can adapt to a changing climate, and raising climate finance so that farmers can adopt better practices and technologies to respond to climate change.
- Scrapping biofuels targets like those in the EU which divert food from mouths to fuel tanks.
- Improving land rights so that vulnerable communities are at less risk of losing the land they rely on to grow food taken away from them.
- Action from governments and the food industry to curb the rise in overweight and obesity levels, which represents a critical health issue in developing and emerging economies.
- Better regulating food speculation to help prevent high and volatile food prices
Overall number one in this global study is the Netherlands. Check out http://www.oxfam.org.uk/what-we-do/good-enough-to-eat.