Abstract
Even prior to COVID, there was a considerable push for food system transformation to achieve better nutrition and health as well as environmental and climate change outcomes. Recent years have seen a large number of high visibility and influential publications on food system transformation. Literature is emerging questioning the utility and scope of these analyses, particularly in terms of trade-offs among multiple objectives. We build on these critiques of emerging food system transformation approaches in our review of four recent and influential publications from the EAT-Lancet Commission, the IPCC, the World Resources Institute and the Food and Land Use Coalition. We argue that a major problem is the lack of explicit inclusion of the livelihoods of poor rural people in their modeling approaches and insufficient measures to ensure that the nature and scale of the envisioned changes will improve these livelihoods. Unless livelihoods and socioeconomic inclusion more broadly are brought to the center of such approaches, we very much risk transforming food systems to reach environmental and nutritional objectives on the backs of the rural poor.
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Acknowledgements
This article was written as a background paper for the International Fund for Agricultural Development Rural Development Report 2021 [full reference]. We would like to thank the editors, the peer reviewers and other participants in the Rural Development Report, as well as colleagues from the Food and Agriculture Organization, who provided comments on earlier drafts of this paper. We would also like to thank Isabella Clemente for editorial assistance. We are solely responsible for any errors.
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This article belongs to the Topical Collection: Food System Transformations for Healthier Diets, Inclusive Livelihoods and Sustainable Environment
Guest Editors: Romina E Cavatassi, Leslie Lipper, Ruerd Ruben, Eric Smaling, Paul Winters
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Davis, B., Lipper, L. & Winters, P. Do not transform food systems on the backs of the rural poor. Food Sec. 14, 729–740 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-021-01214-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-021-01214-3