Amidst the rising urgency of climate mitigation, strategies remain heavily dominated by the energy, forestry, and transport sectors as the primary sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, food systems—which account for more than a quarter of Indonesia's emissions—remain on the periphery of climate policy. This critical gap was the focus of the 6th Bincang Pangan Sehat Lestari (BPSL) series held on 11 December 2025. The event brought together experts, policymakers, and practitioners from both government and NGOs to bridge this divide.
When we think about improving nutrition, our minds often jump to the dinner plate: the colourful vegetables, the lean proteins, the whole grains. We focus on consumer choices, dietary guidelines, and the individual responsibility to eat healthily. But what if the most critical decisions shaping our nutrition have already been made long before the food reaches our plate? What if the very food environments where we buy our food are the true starting point for a healthy diet?
Good Nature Agro (GNA), a Zambia-based enterprise with presence in Malawi and South Africa, produces high-quality groundnut and bean seeds and commodities, distributed across Southern and Central Africa, including Zambia, Malawi, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Namibia. Founded in 2014, GNA has supported over 20,000 smallholder farmers this season with seeds, training and market access to improve incomes and livelihoods.
From its early years, GNA set a target of 40% female farmer representation and invested in key programs to improve female farmers’ experience. Initiatives included co-farmer registration for digital payments, family financial literacy training, pre-harvest payments and loans, asset financing, and gender training for all field staff. These efforts created measurable impacts on productivity and strengthened women’s engagement in high-value markets. Recent surveys confirmed that female farmers continue to experience increased production efficiency and have a positive experience with GNA, reflected in a 60 Decibels net promoter score of 57 (the likelihood of farmers recommending GNA to others, on a scale from -100 to +100).
Food choices play a dual role in shaping both human health and environmental sustainability. At the individual level, diets that lack diversity, fall short of essential nutrients, contain excessive amounts of foods high in sugar, unhealthy fats, and salt, or fail to meet food safety standards, and can have serious negative consequences for health (Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, 2025; World Health Organization, n.d.). At the same time, the ways food is produced and consumed affect the environment, —contributing to land degradation, freshwater depletion, climate change, and biodiversity loss (Crippa et al., 2021; Tilman et al., 2017). These environmental impacts, in turn, influence which foods are available, accessible, and affordable, and can alter the nutrient density of crops (Beach et al., 2019; Smith & Myers, 2018), reinforcing this close connection between our food choices and the environment.
Billions of people worldwide are malnourished. Despite our best efforts, the cost of a healthy diet and food insecurity continue heading in the wrong direction. Without significant intervention, this crisis will persist—but we believe artificial intelligence (AI) represents a powerful new tool to help change that trajectory.
Investing in nutrition isn’t just possible, it’s smart. That’s the key message that sticks with us a few weeks after the GIIN Impact Forum 2025, where we organised a session, “Nutrition Lens Investing: A Framework for Action”.
Moderated by Roberta Bove (GAIN), the discussion brought together a diverse mix of development financiers, fund managers, and impact practitioners to explore how investors can move beyond broad food security goals to intentionally target nutrition impact, focusing on the quality, not just the quantity, of food reaching consumers.
Smallholder farmers are the backbone of our food systems. Through small-scale agriculture, they contribute to economic development, provide jobs and livelihoods, and ensure food security for millions. Yet, despite producing 70–80% of the world’s food, many smallholder farmers remain impoverished and food insecure.
Each year, agricultural productivity declines as climate change intensifies. Smallholder farmers are among the most vulnerable groups to climate change because they rely heavily on rain-fed agriculture, cultivate marginal lands, and often lack access to the technical and financial support that could help them invest in better agricultural practices.
Many governments and organisations are addressing this crisis through climate-smart agriculture training, funding drought-resistant crops, early warning systems, resilient technologies and financial services. However, one crucial aspect remains overlooked: the nutrition and well-being of the farmers themselves.
Organisations working closely with smallholder farmers, whether through direct employment or value-chain partnerships, often focus on productivity interventions such as inputs, finance, and market access. However, the nutrition and well-being of the farmers who make these systems thrive are mostly neglected.
Local and traditional food retail markets are inherent in a city’s social fabric and the urban food environment. Millions of residents connect daily through food at local and traditional markets; and for many low income urban residents, this is their primary source of food.
Thousands of tons of fresh, dried and on ice produce flow into these retail and wholesale-retail hybrid markets, bought by consumers directly and/or by food-outlets, restaurants, and last mile vendors.
‘Ultra-processed food’ (UPF) has been the nutrition buzzword of the past few years, making its way from scientific research into headlines and policy debates. These foods, commonly defined as industrial food formulations made with ingredients rarely used in home cooking, make up a shockingly large share of diets and have been associated with various negative health effects – but their role remains complicated and contested. At the recent Stockholm Food Forum, I joined this debate, participating on a panel discussion on the topic.
In mid-September, 2025, stakeholders from across Kenya’s food, health, trade, and development sectors gathered at Sawela Lodges in Naivasha to review and revise the Draft National Food and Nutrition Security Policy (NFNSP).
The meeting, convened by the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development with the support of the Food and Land Use Coalition (FOLU), the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) and the World Resources Institute (WRI), saw participation from experts in agriculture, livestock, health, education, trade, arid and semi-arid lands, fisheries, and gender. This multi-sectoral gathering contributed to the ongoing comprehensive review of Kenya’s food and nutrition security policy.
