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Transforming food systems

© IFAD/Roger Anis

In almost every part of the world, existing food systems are unable to provide sufficient nutritious food to all. About 735 million people worldwide are facing hunger.

A third of rural adults are food insecure, a higher proportion than their urban counterparts. Many of those who grow the world’s food cannot themselves afford a diverse diet.  

The ways we produce and process food today also have negative impacts on nature and the climate. Agriculture is responsible for up to one third of greenhouse gas emissions and up to 80 per cent of biodiversity loss. 

Transforming our food systems to become more sustainable, resilient, equitable and healthy is essential to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, meeting global climate commitments, and creating a world without hunger. 

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Food systems are made up of all the activities that feed people, from growing and processing, to packaging and marketing food. They include diets, cultural practices, prices and other factors that shape the demand for and consumption of food. 
Food systems encompass all the elements that underlie how food gets from the field to our plates: people, processes, infrastructures, institutions, and the natural environment.
Transforming on a global scale

In 2021, the United Nations Secretary-General convened the Food Systems Summit in collaboration with the Rome-based UN agencies (FAO, IFAD, WFP), the UN Food Systems Coordination Hub and the wider UN system. This brought together key players in every sector to develop solutions for more sustainable, equitable, healthy and inclusive food systems. The 2023 Stocktake was an opportunity to review commitments and assess progress since the summit. 

As part of this global movement, we are:  

  • Shaping the financing agenda with the World Bank through Financial Flows to Food Systems (3FS), which provides data to mobilize governments, donors and the private sector to invest in transforming food systems. 

  • Driving progress on food systems transformation through the UN Food Systems Coordination Hub at which decision-makers, experts and stakeholders discuss the most pressing food systems issues. 

  • Leading the public development bank coalition to step up green and inclusive investments in food systems.  

  • Ensuring that all food systems workers earn equitable livelihoods and have enough nutritious food by co-leading the coalition on decent work.  

  • Supporting countries to transform national food systems, with 100 per cent of our loans and grants directed towards developing inclusive and resilient food systems. 

Shaping a sustainable transformation

As the only international financial institution with a mandate to invest in rural people, IFAD plays a unique role in food systems transformation.  

We are committed to assembling the finance needed to transform food systems. We bring together governments, development partners and the private sector and rural people deliver greater, more sustainable impacts for small-scale farmers and others doing crucial work in our food systems. 

Our investments target rural people in low-income and lower-middle-income countries, and we have fully mainstreamed climate change across our portfolio.  

We engage in partnerships that strengthen food systems. These include working closely with the other Rome-based agencies, coalitions on School Meals and Decent Work for Equitable Food Systems, and a platform for public development banks under the Finance In Common initiative. 

With our support, rural people – including women, youth, persons with disabilities and Indigenous Peoples – engage actively in project design and implementation, transforming food systems and driving their own development. 

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