Expert group calls for global action on food crisis
A group of experts has warned that the world faces a new food crisis and issued an urgent call for decisive and systemic measures to avoid mass starvation and societal instability.
The statement highlights a chain of shocks over the past five years, including the Covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, disruption to the Strait of Hormuz and the ongoing climate crisis, that have exposed the fragility of global food supply chains. Taken together, say the signatories, these shocks “constitute a systemic crisis that cannot be understood, let alone addressed, by looking at any factor in isolation.”
The appeal urges municipal, state and national legislatures, together with the UN General Assembly, to convene specifically on the looming food crisis, and calls for:
- Dedicated international action to end the wars driving the crisis, including the conflict in Sudan, where 14 million people now face starvation, and a renewed commitment to peace as a precondition for food security
- Greater diversity and decentralisation of food production, with stronger tenure rights and political participation for smallholders, particularly women in low- and middle-income countries
- Diversification of the world’s calorie sources to more of the 7,000 food sources already identified, given that just four crops — wheat, rice, corn and soy — supply 80% of global food calories
- Stronger local and South-South trade to reduce dependence on volatile world markets
- A transition of food systems away from fossil fuel dependency, given that renewable energy is now cheaper almost everywhere
- A shift from extractive to regenerative food production that rebuilds natural capital rather than depleting it.
The statement argues that regenerative, agroecological farming offers a proven alternative already practised by many small-scale farmers. However low commodity prices leave farmers little incentive to invest in the soil health, crop diversity and resilience that would protect them, and the world, from future shocks. Signatories urge courage and investment to implement such solutions, while challenging the agro-industry subsidies worth more than a million dollars a minute that continue to entrench the status quo.
Hunter Lovins, member of the Club of Rome and president of Natural Capitalism Solutions, said: “This is not a warning about some distant future. It is a warning about next year’s harvest. We know what works: regenerative agriculture rebuilds the soil, the water and the communities that industrial farming has depleted, and it does so profitably. What we lack is not solutions, but the political will to invest in them before the crisis, rather than after. The window of opportunity is still open, but we must act now.”
Signatories stress that the crisis is most acute in low- and middle-income countries but will ultimately affect everyone who depends on the global food system. “We can transform food systems now through modest, targeted investments,” the statement concludes, “or we can wait, and be struck by the hammer of our own making.”
The full text of the letter and list of signatories can be found here.
