Webinar

The Food Systems Countdown Initiative Webinar

Assessing Performance, Driving Change

📅 25 September 2026 🕘 9:30–10:30 ET

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2026 Food Systems Countdown Initiative Webinar

Assessing Performance, Driving Change

How do we know whether the world's food systems are actually improving — and fast enough to matter? This webinar presents findings from the Food Systems Countdown Initiative’s 2026 paper, Food Systems Performance Evaluated Against Targets and Benchmarks Reveals Urgent Gaps and a Path to 2050, recently published in Nature Food, and the corresponding policy report.

This analysis offers a methodology for tracking food systems progress across diverse country contexts. The session will highlight where countries and regions are making meaningful gains, where critical gaps persist, and what the evidence tells us about the most promising levers for change.

The webinar is designed for policymakers, development practitioners, and advocates working at the intersection of food systems, climate, and nutrition

0 Hour webinar

0 Webinar objectives

0 Agenda segments

Food Systems Dashboard Country performance showcase

The Food Systems Countdown Initiative

The Countdown is a global research initiative bringing together experts from all major world regions, diverse disciplines, and varied institutions, including UN agencies, academia, and civil society (a full list of team members is available on the Countdown website. It aims to monitor a set of food systems indicators and to provide annual publications that support evidence-based policymaking and accountability to achieve food system transformation. The independent initiative seeks to complement other monitoring efforts, such as those for the SDGs.

The Countdown initially developed a monitoring framework focusing on five themes: 1) diets, nutrition, and health; (2) environment, natural resources, and production; (3) livelihoods, poverty, and equity; (4) governance; and (5) resilience. The Countdown collaborators then went through an iterative, highly consultative process to identify actionable, widely available, and high-quality indicators that map onto these themes. The result was a set of 50 indicators; 4 of these have sub-indicators (e.g., yields are examined for 5 different foods), making a total of 59 indicators, including all indicators and sub-indicators. The resulting comprehensive yet concise data snapshot of food systems, when tracked over time, can help assess whether food systems goals are being achieved, commitments are being realized, and policies are having an impact.

The third Countdown analysis assesses how food systems are performing. It identifies a comprehensive set of targets and benchmarks for the Countdown indicators and uses these to examine current performance relative to these targets and benchmarks and analyze past and projected future progress to see if it is sufficient to reach the targets and benchmarks in the short or long term.

Objectives

01 Introduce the Food Systems Countdown Initiative
02 Present key findings from the 2026 paper
03 Present reflections on how the Countdown can help guide action
04 Showcase the Countdown performance analysis on the Food Systems Dashboard

The Food Systems Countdown Initiative: Assessing Performance, Driving Change

Agenda

5 min

Welcome and framing

Dr. Mario Herrero, Professor and Countdown Co-Chair, Cornell University

15 min

Key findings: Where are food systems improving, where are the gaps, and what drives change?

Dr. Bianca Carducci, Lead Author

20 min

Country perspectives: What does this mean for interventions, policy, and investment?

Brazil
Secretary Lilian dos Santos Rahal, National Secretary for Food and Nutrition Security, Ministry of Development and Social Assistance, Family and the Fight against Hunger

Switzerland
Mr. Alwin Kopse, Head of International Affairs, Federal Office for Agriculture
Facilitated by Dr. Lawrence Haddad, Executive Director and Countdown Co-Chair, GAIN

5 min

Showcasing country performance profiles

Dr. Rebecca McLaren, Research Advisor, GAIN

10 min

Audience Q&A

Facilitated by Dr. José Rosero Moncayo, Chief Statistician and Director, Statistics Division, and Countdown Co-Chair, FAO

5 min

Closing remarks and call to action

Dr. Jessica Fanzo, Professor and Countdown Co-Chair, Johns Hopkins University

Food Systems Countdown Initiative Webinar

Participants

Participants will contribute to the webinar by sharing key findings, facilitating the discussion on country perspectives, and showcasing country performance profiles.