By Juliane Miller
Posted on Food saving apps like “Karma” and “Too Good to Go” promise to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while providing affordable take-out meals – but what does the commodification of food saving ...
By Cynthia Embido Bejeno
Posted on The enduring COVID-19 pandemic has led to a sharp spike in hunger among Filipinos resulting from an extended lockdown in this Southeast Asian country. This is driven in part by ...
By Julia Quaedvlieg and Merel Jansen
Posted on 
The global food system is dominated by a limited number of actors and mainly focusses on the production of only a handful of relatively innutritious foods. The system in its current shape threatens livelihoods of small-scale farmers, does not meet the nutritional needs of the majority of the global population, and is causing severe environmental impacts such as deforestation and biodiversity loss. A recent study shows that the elevation of small-scale tree-sourced food systems can help contribute to a transformation of the global food system that would lead to improved environmental and human well-being.
The global food system in its current form is dysfunctional and destructive. Not only does the production of a select few agricultural products that dominate the global food market require vast swaths of land, it is also leading to environmentally destructive agricultural production practices and the erosion of traditional ways of rural life and small-scale farmers’ livelihoods. Despite an emphasis having been placed on sustainable food systems within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with SDG 2 that aims to ensure food security and adequate nutrition through sustainable food systems, hunger and malnutrition compounded by climate change-related challenges are threatening the wellbeing of populations across the world. Especially the most vulnerable are feeling the effects of this intersection of global challenges that to date have been inadequately addressed.
To reverse these trends, we need to understand what’s wrong with the current global food system and which foods have the potential to simultaneously provide environmental, nutritional and livelihood benefits at local and global levels that can drive a global food system transformation. Trees may hold the key.
What’s wrong with the global food system?
The global food system is unsustainable in so many ways. First of all, food systems occupy enormous amounts of land. This is likely to increase even further in the future: food production is one of the main drivers of deforestation, especially in the tropics. Consequences of these large-scale changes in the use of land include the loss of biodiversity that is happening more and more rapidly, substantial carbon dioxide emissions, and an increasing risk of droughts and wildfires.
At the same time, the global food system is not producing enough fruits and vegetables to meet human nutritional requirements, partly because the current system is mainly based on just a few energy-dense and nutrient-poor crops such as wheat, rice, sugar and maize. This extraordinarily low diversity within our global food system is causing long-term health problems affecting especially the poorest populations in the Global South who have limited access to micronutrient-rich diets, education about nutrition and basic health services.
In addition, dominant food and agricultural development approaches focus on industrialisation and international trade, leading to the creation of a few global food corporations that dominate the global food market. These transnational food corporations in many cases exercise their power to undermine the rights of food workers and smallholder farmers in order to produce a limited number of crops at the lowest possible price. Food producers get only a fraction of the total amount paid for food products ranging from tea and coffee to other crops produced in the Global South and North alike.
These developments have led to the massive transformation of small-scale and multispecies tree-based agrarian production systems (often traditional) into large-scale annual crop production. Yet these tree-based systems are vital: a recent perspective article argues that tree-based foods could play a critical role in the transformation of food systems such that it becomes more sustainable, provides more nutritious foods, and provides better livelihood opportunities for smallholder farmers.
Making space for trees…
There are many clear opportunities to incorporate food-producing trees into landscapes. The majority of global cropland does not contain trees, but has a high potential for doing so. Especially in the tropics, where large-scale forest areas are still being cleared for agriculture and then abandoned once soils are exhausted, restoration efforts could include the establishment of sustainable, locally-managed agroforestry systems. Such agroforestry systems have been shown to provide multiple environmental benefits, including carbon sequestration, biodiversity conservation and the provision of several other ecosystem services, especially when they are based on diverse, multi-species systems.
This could also mean that the hundreds of millions of smallholder farmers across the world could have a more prominent role in improving local diets through the production of tree-sourced foods. With the right incentives, investments and involvement, smallholder farmers could scale up agroforestry systems to produce more and healthier food, while simultaneously diversifying their income sources and consumption.
Yet doing so would be challenging in several ways. To make increased tree-based food production a more integral part of food systems, several challenges have to be addressed. An increased demand for certain tree-sourced products like cacao and palm oil have led to large-scale deforestation for the establishment of industrial monoculture plantations, which provide very few environmental benefits, harming biodiversity and increasing carbon dioxide emissions in the process. Thus, monoculture plantations are not the way forward – we need to combine different types of trees in one area to ensure multiple ecosystem services.
In addition, severe negative social impacts are associated with such large-scale commodity production, such as people working under abusive labour conditions. Land grabbing has also become a serious problem as the profitability of certain tree species is becoming recognized and the sector commercialised. Furthermore, for smallholders, dependency on a single commodity for their income increases their vulnerability due to risks of crop failure caused by plant diseases and sudden prices crashes. Diversified production systems play therefore an important role in securing income sources, but also in diversifying diets, especially local diets.
…and making space for smallholders
So how can we address these challenges? Strategic actions and interventions for local market development can create a context that incorporates biodiversity in food systems as examples show in Brazil. Besides, focussing on diversifying local consumption provides opportunities for production directly linked to regional skills, preferences and needs and could increase the resilience of local food systems, which has been proved important in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, production for consumption in high-income countries could in some cases provide additional income streams as in many of those countries, the willingness to pay for sustainably-produced food is higher.
Other steps to be taken to facilitate the incorporation of sustainable tree-sourced food systems into the global food system are:
The time is ripe
Although the scale of these mentioned challenges seems to be too complex, in the face of increased shocks from events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, transforming global food systems is not just a desirable outcome, it is urgently required to ensure greater resilience both locally and globally.
Opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the ISS or members of the Bliss team.
About the authors:
Julia Quaedvlieg is a PhD candidate at the International Institute of Social Studies, where she researches tropical deforestation policies and the impact of interventions on smallholders’ livelihoods. Her research interests lie in natural resource management, rural development policies, and rural communities, with special focus on Latin American countries.
Merel Jansen is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Institute for Environmental Sciences at the University of Koblenz-Landau. Her research focusses on the sustainable use and restoration of tropical forest resources, in particular non-timber forest products. Currently, she is working on a project in which she aims to evaluate the potential of agroforests to mitigate deforestation related drought in southwest Amazonia.
Are you looking for more content about Global Development and Social Justice? Subscribe to Bliss, the official blog of the International Institute of Social Studies, and stay updated about interesting topics our researchers are working on.
By Dorothea Hilhorst
Posted on COVID-19 is a hazard, but does not produce the risks that we now see unfolding throughout the world, says ISS researcher Dorothea Hilhorst, who recently participated in a webinar organized ...
By Dorothea Hilhorst
Posted on One of the pleasures of summertime is that I get to read some of the books that have piled up over the years and this is how I came to ...
By Admin
Posted on 
While the consequences of globalisation over health and nutrition can be contradictory, trade openness can be a relevant policy for reducing food insecurity. This relatively inexpensive action, when compared to technology or research-based programmes, can increase the availability of nutritional foods, increase higher nutritional variety in diets, and can stabilise the food supply, reducing food shortages.
“One of the biggest ideas to hit the political world in recent years is that politics is increasingly defined by the division between open and closed, rather than left and right” (The Economist, March 24, 2018)
The recent trend of pushing against globalisation is based on different sources of information that varies from science-based evidence to ideas that trade and global agreements form part of a mastermind plan of invisible benefactors of the globalisation system. This phenomenon of deglobalisation has occurred before, but a major difference can be seen between the current and previous manifestations: in the 1930s, deglobalisation was pushed by governments, while the current expression of deglobalisation is pushed by the general public through social media.
When it comes to health and nutrition, the matter of globalisation and its impacts can be somewhat contradictory, and as with most economic matters, the perception of globalisation will depend on the viewer’s position: if you are in the LDCs where malnutrition is a leading cause of mortality, hinders development and entails national losses of around 6% of GDP[1], you might see globalisation as a beacon that could signal the introduction of greater nutritional diversity to local diets. If, on the other hand, you live in countries such as Chile or Mexico where undernourishment is no longer the main issue and the country now faces a transitional economic phase wherein obesity becomes a cause of concern, the increased inflow of foods from countries such as the United States might be viewed in a more negative light—as an influx of unhealthy types of food that contribute to obesity (Giuntella 2017).
From a descriptive perspective, during the last 30 years, and particularly after the Marrakech negotiations that led to the formation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its agreements, there has been an increase in trade openness and a reduction in the prevalence of stunting (PAHO 2017), even though hunger is still the leading cause of death and primary contributor to disease worldwide (Pongou et al. 2006).
We can assess the impact of trade openness using the Depth of the Food Deficit (DFD), an outcome indicator that measures inadequate access to food (Reddy et al. 2016, Santeramo 2015) by determining the amount of calories needed to lift the undernourished out of this position, ceteris paribus (Reddy et al. 2016, World Bank Group. 2017, Dithmer and Abdulai 2017).
Table 1 shows the effect of Export and Import Value Indexes, included in logarithmic form, over the DFD. There is overall a strong and significant relation between both values and the indicator: an increase of one percentage point of the Import Value Indexes reduces the Depth of the Food Deficit in a range of 21 to 37 kilocalories, such change being consistent to the inclusion of all controls. Hence, a reduction of the DFD responding to an increase in both exported and imported values speaks of narrowing gaps between current nutritional status and the average dietary energy requirements of the population, and can contribute to SDG2—Zero Hunger.
The same regression can be run for the Latin American countries, including a variable constructed by the author measuring the number of food security programmes per country per year. The impact of trade openness over DFD is still strong and relevant in magnitude, and there is a linear albeit insignificant relation where programmes reduce the prevalence of undernutrition. When the quadratic variable is applied it hints—the coefficients are not significant—that such an effect only goes so far, and that, after a breaking point, these programmes show detrimental results.
Considering all of the above, the evidence shows that trade openness is in fact a relevant policy when it comes to reducing food insecurity, increasing social wellbeing and leading to socioeconomic progress. Furthermore, it would seem that trade openness is a more effective tool than the implementation of specific programmes that attempt to target food insecurity that many times end up doing more harm than good. This could be explained by the fact that there is a trend towards the indiscriminate adoption of programmes, both local and foreign. Additionally, more programmes usually signal the lack of effective stakeholder coordination, the lack of continuity in governmental strategies, and the inefficient expenditure of available resources.
When it comes to obesity, our research shows inconclusive results: there is a significant albeit small effect of trade openness—both export and import values—on the prevalence of obesity, but this effect fades when controls are included in the models. This can be due to the fact that obesity is a more recent phenomenon and besides integration of economies into global markets responds to many factors, such as economic growth, urbanisation trends, and the rise of the middle class (PAHO 2017).
Conclusion
While the consequences of globalisation over health and nutrition can be contradictory, it is an effective tool for the reduction of hunger, currently the leading cause of death in the world. This relatively inexpensive action, when compared to technology or research-based programmes, can increase the availability of nutritional foods, increase higher nutritional variety in diets, and can stabilise the food supply, reducing shortages in times of dearth. Overall, opening up to trade, at least from the health and nutrition perspective, seems to be a policy worth trying, but there is only so much that trade can do without a strong institutional background.
[1] Which is the case for Central America and the Dominican Republic according to the CEPAL (as cited by Jara Navarro (2008: 9)
[2] According to the WHO, stunting is defined as the impaired growth and development that children experience from poor nutrition, repeated infection, and inadequate psychosocial stimulation. Children are defined as stunted if their height-for-age ratio is more than two standard deviations below the WHO Child Growth Standards median.
About the author:
Ana Cristina Canales Gómez is a veterinarian at the Universidad de Chile who holds a Masters degree in Public Policy from the same institution and a Masters degree in Development Studies from the ISS. Currently, she works as a consultant for Food & Foodstuffs Trade and Nutrition Policies in the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).