Urgent fixes needed for global food systems

In this article, Stuart Gillespie, senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute, writes that the coronavirus disease pandemic presents a huge challenge for food systems, as well as exposing the inequitable way in which these systems operate.

- Stuart Gillespie

Food system shocks, such as is being experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, will hit the poorest households hardest, due to higher food prices and less purchasing power, for example.

Malnutrition is by far the biggest driver of ill-health and premature mortality in every region of the world. A slowburn attritional problem, it does enormous damage.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic that is sweeping the world, meanwhile, brings a series of massive short-wave shocks.

Both the pandemic and malnutrition will generate longwave impacts for years to come. They are also likely to interact with each other, resulting in even worse outcomes.

‘MALNUTRITION IS COMMON IN URBAN POPULATIONS’

This will be particularly true in countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Many of these countries’ governments, health and food systems, communities and households have limited capacity to respond to nutritional challenges or to an epidemic. This means that the potential exists for malnutrition to exacerbate the health consequences of COVID-19, and vice versa.

A year before the coronavirus appeared on the world stage, a pioneering Lancet Commission called for “a radical rethink of business models, food systems, civil society involvement, and national and international governance” to address the interlinked crises of obesity, undernutrition and climate change. Now COVID-19 can be added to that list.