Food systems are fundamental for the survival of our human society. They are the key to meet our food and nutritional needs, sustain our economies, alleviate poverty, and shield our societies from the potential crisis of famine and hunger. Further, they are crucial for the realization of sustainable development goals (SDGs) by 2030. However, the current food systems of the world, including India are highly inefficient and inequitable in terms of production, distribution, and consumption. It is quite evident that they also play a major role in environmental degradation, operational health hazards and perpetuation of lifestyle and non-communicable diseases. The Novel Coronavirus pandemic and its devastating impacts have brought these vulnerabilities into sharp focus and compelled the world to contemplate our food systems. In the wake of the pandemic, there is a consensus among the nations of the world that transformation of the way the world produces, distributes, consumes, and thinks about food is the need of the hour.

A broad understanding of our food systems are a key factor in an environmental emergency: they contribute massively to malnutrition, global warming, biodiversity loss, land-use change and soil nutrient loss. This makes it vital to transform the way the world produces, consumes, and thinks about food. Jharkhand being the state of fairly untouched traditional wisdom and hub of nature-friendly practices of food production and consumption is an important example of sustainable practices involved in food systems. However, the voices of many crucial food system actors, have so far been underrepresented in the academic and policy discourse around food systems.

In pursuit of this goal, Caritas India along with Welthungerhilfe and Revitalising Rainfed Agriculture, organised the United Nations Food system dialogue in Jharkhand with a diverse group of stakeholder including smallholders, community leaders, network leaders, CSOs, academicians, researchers and representatives from the government to discuss, guide individual to take collective action towards a future of food that is sustainable, equitable and secure.

Giving emphasis on the same, Father Paul the Executive Director of Caritas India stated that, we need to certainly start from the last mile, the farmer himself. Caritas India has in placed national strategy wherein it speaks very stridently about the smallholder farmers who are contributing to the food system of our nation with good food. The food system is related to Food Safety, Security and Sovereignty as well. Considering the nation’s food requirements and smallholder’s contributions, the factors of food sovereignty needs to be looked into, the smallholders should be put on the centre stage and this will be going to give us the larger solution in future.

The United Nations Food Systems summit 2021 is being convened as part of the decade of action to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 guided by five (5) action tracks i.e.

1. 1. Ensure access to safe and nutritious food for all (to end hunger and all forms of malnutrition and reduce the incidence of non-communicable disease, enabling all people to be nourished and healthy),
2. Shift to sustainable consumption patterns (to build consumer demand for sustainably produced food, strengthen local value chains, improve nutrition, and promote the reuse and recycling of food resources.)
3. Boost nature-positive production (to optimize environmental resource use in food production, processing, and distribution, thereby reducing biodiversity loss, pollution, water use and soil degradation).
4. Advance equitable livelihoods (contribute to the elimination of poverty by promoting productive employment and decent work for all actors in the food value chain, reducing risks for the worlds’ poorest, enabling entrepreneurship and addressing inequitable access to resources and distribution of value.)
5. Build resilience to vulnerabilities, shocks, and stress (to ensure that all people within a food system are empowered to prepare for, withstand, and recover from instability.)

Caritas India had privileged to moderate two actions tracks (i.e. action track 4 &5), where almost forty (40) delegates from regional research stations, Birsa Agriculture University, Network leaders, NGO partners, Academicians, Smallholders, Representatives of farmers producer companies and community leaders participated to share their learnings, challenges and opportunities lies with appropriate solutions to make the policy more effective for smallholders who contributed 41% of the nation’s food requirements.

In 2021, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will convene a Food Systems Summit as part of the Decade of Action to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, each of which relies to some degree on healthier, more sustainable, and equitable food systems. The Summit will awaken the world to the fact that we all must work together to transform the way the world produces, consumes, and thinks about food. Guided by five Action Tracks, the Summit will draw on the expertise of actors from across the world’s food systems, and offer stakeholders from a wide range of backgrounds a space to share and learn, with a view to fostering new actions and partnerships and amplifying existing initiatives. Key players from the worlds of science, business, policy, healthcare and academia, as well as farmers, indigenous people, youth organizations, consumer groups, environmental activists, and other stakeholders, will come together to bring about tangible, positive changes to the world’s food systems.