Five Ways to Revive the Global Food Economy | Article


Covid-19 has shown how detrimental poor health can be to the economy. But it also showed how measures that benefit health (lockdowns) can be seen as bad economic prosperity. A similar paradox is at the heart of promoting better nutrition.

Poor diet is the world’s leading cause of ill health. Malnutrition – from undernutrition to obesity – affects at least a third of the world’s population. It is also a question of inequality: food-related challenges disproportionately affect the poorest people, making the economic challenge even greater.

Poor nutrition also costs companies dearly. A recent report by the Chatham House research institute estimates that businesses around the world are losing up to $38bn (£29bn) a year to undernutrition and obesity among their workforces. However, when governments try to take unhealthy foods out of the spotlight and put more nutritious foods center stage, they usually come up against economic arguments that any regulation will hurt business.

Covid-19 has shown it’s time for a change. Obesity, diabetes and other chronic conditions associated with an unhealthy diet increase the risk of complications from the virus (a point not lost on British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has had his own battle with the virus) .

The pandemic is also predicted to lead to an undernutrition crisis. As discussions about how to renew the global economy – and rethink the economic system – intensify, food must be part of our thinking.

This five-point plan could reset the food economy in the short term, allowing it to both thrive and feed itself in the long term.

1. Funding for healthy eating

Healthier food costs more. Investments are needed along the food value chain to make healthy food more affordable for the three billion people in the world who cannot afford it.

Public spending in agriculture – such as subsidies for fertilizers, direct payments to farmers and plant breeding programs, as well as policies aimed at attracting private sector investment – ​​tend to favor crops like maize , palm oil, rice and soy.

These cultures dominate the unhealthy food industry and leave children in low-income countries undernourished. This investment could be reallocated to diversifying and building supply chains for more nutritious foods like fruits, vegetables, beans and whole grains.

Investments are also needed in local food supply chains, connecting smaller, more sustainable producers of nutritious food to consumers who need it most. E-commerce initiatives are on the rise in the wake of Covid-19 in many low-income countries and could be scaled up.

Food hubs that move food from producers to commercial customers or directly to consumers are also growing. This would support local food economies in rich and poor countries.

Innovative financing is an essential part of the picture. For example, the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, an organization that works to improve consumption of nutritious foods, has a program that encourages investment in nutritious food companies in low- and low-income countries. intermediate. These are small and medium-sized enterprises that play an important role in job creation and the revitalization of regional economies.

In London, the Good Food Fund is a new £1.8m business accelerator and venture capital fund designed to support SMEs and start-ups to produce healthier snacks for children.

2. Make junk food less appealing

It’s relatively easy to make money selling cheap snacks to kids and adults alike. Everywhere, companies are competing to seduce consumers, from Dakar to Dublin. A small amount of regulation would encourage healthy rather than unhealthy competition.

The fact that during lockdown some big companies have been vying for a bigger market share for their cookies, pizzas and burgers shows that as long as companies have an incentive to promote unhealthy products, they will continue to do so.

In Chile, for example, the government has introduced strict and comprehensive regulations requiring food manufacturers to clearly label and market their products indicating how healthy (or unhealthy) they are. This has allowed innovators to compete with the junk food industry and appeal to health conscious people. Similarly, taxes on sugary drinks in many countries have prompted industry to produce healthier products.

3. Profit with a purpose

Another way to incentivize food companies to sell healthier products is through corporate governance mechanisms. Instead of focusing on shareholder profits, food companies could make diet-related health their primary focus.

Here, there is ample opportunity to join the growing ranks of “B corporations”. These are companies that emphasize “social and environmental performance” in addition to shareholder value. This could easily include health as an indicator for food companies.

4. Redefine Success

A whole new set of metrics is needed to define what success looks like for food businesses large and small. The Access to Nutrition Index, for example, rates global food companies on their ability to tackle obesity and diet-related diseases. In the UK, the Food Foundation has proposed measures for investors to assess how well companies are managing the risks and opportunities in the transition to healthier diets.

5. The public sector leads the way

Dozens of cities around the world already have public procurement standards that ensure the millions of meals they serve daily in schools, nurseries, hospitals and prisons are safe, while providing stable markets to support vulnerable parts of the economy.

In ‘local school feeding’ and ‘farm to school’ programmes, for example, public budgets are used to buy healthy food from small family farmers while ensuring that children are well nourished. Evidence from Nepal and the United States shows that when designed well, these programs work.

Implementing this five-point plan will have its challenges. But every element has already been tried and tested. Everything is doable. The task now is to implement them as a whole to ensure that the various elements are in place to reorient the food economy – and indeed reform the global economy – towards better and healthier food.

The coronavirus has highlighted that the public is eager to see courageous leadership. Now is the time to act and ensure that our economy is both nourishing and flourishing.

This article was originally published onThe Conversation logo

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