Let the Change Be the Challenge

11 Apr 2011 – Elvira Thissen

400 scientists from 34 countries worked for two years on the Global Food and Farming Futures report commissioned from the UK government’s think tank Foresight, and gathered an impressive amount of evidence on the state of our food system and the challenges that need to be tackled in the years ahead. Conclusion: to ensure food security in a sustainable way, nothing less than a redesign of the whole food system is required, and the change is needed now.

Although I have a hard time calling this a bold statement in a world that is currently failing the nutritional needs of roughly one third of its population, fact is that for a government report, it is quite radical and that should be welcomed. What should also be applauded is the authors’ awareness of the usual life cycle of commissioned research and, following from this, their clear determination to not let this become yet another government report gathering dust on many a Westminster bookshelf.

This commitment to doing something with the findings has triggered somewhat of a Foresight roadshow which passed by the European institutions in Brussels among other sites, and led to a follow-up meeting at the Westminster Food & Nutrition Forum on 31 March to discuss next steps. The subtitle of the report reads ‘Challenges and Choices for Global Sustainability’. Yet the meeting convened to push ahead hardly moved beyond outlining the challenges (again). It touched somewhat on the available choices, but despite the stated aim to establish ‘next steps’ stopped short of considering who is going to do the choosing, and who is going to actuate the decisions.

Despite policymakers being the key audience for the report, there is wide acknowledgment that the complexity and interconnectedness of the challenges at hand require all stakeholders to come on board to realize the change needed. For the private sector, the report states ‘there is a very considerable scope for the food industry to play a significant role in facilitating greater sustainability’. Yet the recommendations on actions the industry could undertake to advance solutions to food insecurity and resource scarcity in agriculture are extremely general and limited. Spreading best practice in the food supply chain and influencing consumer demand is hardly an ambitious change agenda for the private sector and does not show the industry is taken into account as a key to the solution.

The synergy (or rather the lack thereof) works both ways though. When interviewing food experts as part of SustainAbility’s forthcoming Appetite for Change report, few mentioned government policy as featuring high up on their list of changes needed until prompted, after which most admitted seeing it as a linchpin for change, yet expecting few improvements to happen before major disruptions occur.

So, it looks like we have a situation where arguably the two most powerful actors in the global food system (at least in terms of having high-level decision-making power, as opposed to civil society or consumers) acknowledge change will not occur without the other party, yet both seem to be waiting for the other to facilitate more meaningful steps. I could not help leaving the event asking myself where the redesign of the food system, now, was going to come from.

Perhaps the authors should consider coming up with a more concrete work plan, and encourage stakeholders who are able to contribute to achieving it, to sign up for the task. Would a more outcome-driven approach defy the logjam and spur change?

What we really need are not bold statements about what is needed, but bold statements about how it is going to be achieved. And this requires leadership, in government and in business. Because where there are leaders, there are followers, and where there are followers, there is movement. And this is why we made inspiring transformative leadership on the sustainability agenda our core business. It is also why for Appetite for Change, we chose to not go into great detail on the challenges – which we consider well-known – but dive straight into where change is happening in the food industry by leaders great and small. We hope this will inform debate, but even more so, action.