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Recent News » New publication - Food and Agriculture: The Future of Sustainability

New and now available online: Food and Agriculture: The future of sustainability report just released by the U.N. Division for Sustainable Development as a strategic input to the "Sustainable Development in the 21st Century Report" to be launched at the Rio+20 Summit.

On our current trajectory, severe disruptions to national and regional food systems are highly likely to happen - the main question is when. Exposing unforeseen areas of consensus - with contributions from more than 70 global agri-food leaders in the business, policy, green, and social arenas - the report lays out concrete steps for sustainable and resilient food and agriculture systems. By opening the silos of partisan thinking to invite reasoned discussion, it also exposes areas of disagreement and advances a key set of specific "high impact" areas where smart decisions will make the most difference. The report highlights nine key areas of consensus have emerged as the key paths of action:

1. Organized small and medium farmers, fully including women farmers, should be a primary focus of investment – recognizing that private enterprise will play a significant role in many solutions

2. Define the goal in terms of human nutrition rather than simply “more production”

3. Pursue high yields within a healthy ecology – they are not mutually exclusive and policy and research must reflect that

4. Impel innovation and the availability of diverse technologies suitable in different socioeconomic and ecological contexts

5. Significantly reduce waste along the entire food chain

6. Avoid diverting food crops and productive land for biofuels, but explore decentralized biofuel systems to promote energy and livelihood security that also diversify and restore rural landscapes

7. Insist on intelligent and transparent measurement of results – we cannot manage what we cannot measure

8. Develop and adapt public and private institutions that can effectively respond to these new goals

9. Motivate and reward investments and business systems that result in measurable impacts to the “public good”