20262026 Countdown Report
Read the latest Food Systems Countdown report and explore updated analysis on food systems transformation.
Food Systems Countdown Initiative
Food systems are central to human and planetary well-being, but they also drive major health, equity and environmental challenges. The Food Systems Countdown Initiative tracks food systems transformation across countries and functions.
About the Countdown
Monitoring food systems transformation through relevant data
The Food Systems Countdown Initiative (“the Countdown”) aims to enable this understanding by monitoring the state of food systems transformation through relevant data. The Countdown is an interdisciplinary collaboration of scientists that emerged from the 2021 United Nations Food Systems Summit. It seeks to provide food system actors and stakeholders (e.g., civil society, governments, and international organisations) with actionable evidence to make decisions that can bring about food system transformation.
Over a two-year process, the Countdown collaborators developed a framework to monitor food systems across five themes:
- Diets, nutrition, and health
- Environment, natural resources, and production
- Livelihoods, poverty, and equity
- Governance
- Resilience
The Countdown then used a rigorous, multistakeholder process to arrive at indicators to monitor change across these five themes. The first annual Countdown paper and report, showcasing these indicators, were released in December 2023. They depict the current state of national food systems, providing a baseline that can be used to guide priorities for investment, research, and policymaking and assess future progress.
Countdown reports and publications
Explore the latest 2026 Countdown report, alongside the 2024 and 2023 Countdown publications.
2026
20242024 Countdown Publications
View the 2024 Food Systems Countdown Initiative publications and related resources.
20232023 Countdown Publications
Explore the first annual Countdown paper and report, which introduced the baseline for monitoring food systems transformation.
Potential uses
The Countdown data and framework have several potential uses:
Global monitoring of food systems
The baseline data provide a starting point for global monitoring of food systems and serve as inputs for considering what changes in indicator values are achievable, along which time frames.
Tracking of UNFSS commitments
The five Countdown themes map closely to the national food system transformation pathways from the UNFSS process, so they can facilitate harmonized monitoring of these pathways across countries, supporting priority setting and tracking of UNFSS commitments.
Development of national monitoring systems
While this indicator framework is intended for global monitoring of food systems transformation, it offers a menu of indicators relevant to the design of policies and actions at the country level. It can thus be used as a point of reference for developing national monitoring systems adapted to country needs.
Going forward, the Countdown will provide annual analysis to inform priorities and actions in the policy sphere, for the private sector, and for the development community. In this way, it supports the transformation of food systems, so they become equitable, sustainable, and resilient and positively contribute to achieving the 2030 SDGs and other global goals.
Top reports
Stella Nordhagen
Research Lead, Food Environments and Supply Chains