Socio-Technical Innovation Bundles for Agri-Food Systems Transformation
The International Expert Panel on Innovations to Build Sustainable, Equitable, Inclusive Food Value Chains, commissioned by the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability by Nature Sustainability, releases publications detailing ways to transition to a healthier, more equitable, resilient, and sustainable future.
September 2020 marked five years since the United Nations adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, implemented through the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Created through a multi-stakeholder approach, all states, including Switzerland, are called upon to implement the Goals by working together. “Yet,” remarks United Nations Special Envoy Anges Kalibata, “with 10 years to go, progress towards these goals has faltered, with the Covid-19 pandemic representing a further setback." An estimated 2 billion people, 26% of the world, did not have regular access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food in 2019.
In this context, the journals Nature Sustainability and Nature Food commissioned the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability to create an external pageexpert panel on the topic of Innovations to Build Sustainable, Equitable, Inclusive Food Value Chains. The panel brought together experts from across the globe and spanning diverse disciplines and organizations, including Prof. Alexander Mathys, professor of Sustainable Food Processing at ETH Zurich.
The panel met throughout 2019-2020 with the aim to both assess the current state of agricultural-food (agri-food) systems, those relating to the commercial production of food by farming, and identify emergent technologies capable to address the urgent need to transition to more sustainable, equitable, and inclusive agri-food systems. Prof. Mathys supplied expertise on innovations in the areas of alternative proteins, emerging and more sustainable food processing, and multi-indicator sustainability assessment.
The final report, published 10 December, and its accompanying comment in Nature Sustainability, highlight that technological innovations leading to more sustainable agri-food systems cannot be implemented without enabling market, regulatory, and sociocultural environments. The panel stresses that bundled social and technological innovations, customized to specific agri-food system contexts, are essential to achieve a healthier, more equitable, resilient, and sustainable future.
The final report further outlines seven essential actions to guide agri-food system transformations: develop socio-technical innovation bundles, reduce the land and water footprint of food, commit to co-creation with shared and verifiable responsibility, deconcentrate power, mainstream systemic risk management, develop novel financing mechanisms, and reconfigure public support for agri-food systems.
Alexander Mathys comments, ”More sustainable food systems are the heart of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and essential for our future society. Our interdisciplinary Expert Panel on Innovations to Build Sustainable, Equitable, Inclusive Food Value Chains outlines actionable recommendations to achieve the significant transformation needed to meet the challenge of SDGs in the environmental, economic and social contexts.
Switzerland, with its unique and world-class food innovation ecosystem containing leading universities, applied R&D centers, startups, SMEs and multinationals, can take a leading role in this process of transformation. By implementing the expert panel recommendations, we could become a forerunner in innovation and share our solutions globally, supporting the accomplishment of the SDGs.”
Read more about the Expert Panel and it’s Final Report “Socio-Technical Innovation Bundles for Agri-Food Systems Transformation” from external pageCornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability
Food underpins all 17 Sustainable Development Goals. From ending poverty and hunger to taking action on climate change and sustaining natural resources, food and agriculture lies at the heart of the 2030 Agenda. The expert panel’s report uses a framework developed by Professor Mario Herrero of CSIRO and colleagues, recently published in a personal view in the Lancet Planetary Health. The personal view explores the impact of technology on attaining the Sustainable Development Goals and stresses that single technological innovations seldom achieve sustainable results across multiple dimensions.
The personal view is a companion paper to a perspective published in May 2020 in Nature Food which identified 75 highly promising technologies or innovation and establishes what is needed to unleash the potential of these to transform food systems. In these two papers, the authors contend solutions, instead, need to be embedded as part of systemic changes.
The Lancet Planetary Health personal view highlights that only such holistic solutions can deliver the Sustainable Development Goals, which were framed with explicit interdependence. The authors identified the potential impacts and interactions of food system innovations in direct relation to the Sustainable Development Goals, which is useful information for guiding investment, policy formulation, and coordinating action throughout the food system. They conclude with an appeal, “As Sophocles reminds us, change and innovation come with trade-offs, but we now have methods, the science, the targets and the socio-economic mechanisms in place to ensure that the trade-offs of our actions do not become unsurmountable. Now is the time to put our arsenal of socio-technical innovation and immense human ingenuity to use, to secure the future of our planet and the next generations.”
Read more about the personal view in Lancet Planetary Health and the perspective in Nature Food from external pageCSIRO.
Read the entire Nature Sustainability comment “external pageBundling innovations to make agri-food systems healthy, equitable, resilient and sustainable (HERS)” by Barrett et al.
Read the entire Lancet Planetary Health personal view “external pageArticulating the impact of food systems innovation on the Sustainable Development Goals” by Herrero, M. et al.
Read the entire Nature Food perspective “external pageInnovation can accelerate the transition towards a sustainable food system” by Herrero, M. et al.
Prof. Alexander Mathys was invited to join the Nature Sustainability Expert Panel on Innovations to Build Sustainable, Equitable, Inclusive Food Value Chains. He is co-author of the expert panel final report, comment in Nature Sustainability and Lancet Planetary Health personal view. His expertise in food processing innovations stems from experience in industry and academia. Prof. Mathys is also part of the Swiss National Research Programme "external pageSustainable Economy: resource-friendly, future-oriented, innovative" (NRP 73), focusing on external pagethe impacts of Swiss food consumption and trade.