- 15/10/2025
Hear from a professional at the start of her career in food systems transformation, and one near the end with decades of experience
Key Messages
• We choose to work in food systems because food is, at its core, a way to drive a fairer and
safer future for the world. Food is not just fuel. It carries our culture, our traditions, our
dignity, and our sense of belonging. To fix food is to unlock society’s potential. Over 3 billion
people globally can’t afford to eat healthily right now. This widens inequities and keeps the
vulnerable trapped in cycles of poor health.
• Food systems transformation touches every aspect of our lives and cannot be achieved in
isolation. It spans agriculture, health, trade, finance, education, environment, and social
protection, and it relies on people all along the supply chain, from farmers and traders to
processors, retailers, policymakers, and consumers. Few other areas of work demand such
breadth. That is why transforming food systems requires collaboration across sectors
directly and indirectly linked to food, and why it offers opportunities for people with
different skills, perspectives, and passions to contribute.
• The 2025 World Food Day theme calls for greater collaboration across sectors and silos to
transform agrifood systems for people and planet. This is a huge part of the work that
must be done, and we remain hopeful that solidarity and compassion will win over more
selfish politics. At GAIN we work hard to bring disparate voices across the food system
together, for real transformation.
Global food systems generate a wide range of health, environmental, and socio-economic externalities that vary across regions, demographic groups, value chains, and production contexts. These include positive effects such as improved food and nutrition security, better air and water quality, job creation and community development, but also negative outcomes such as malnutrition and diet-related diseases, climate change and land degradation, unfair labour practices and rights violations. Yet, these costs and benefits are rarely reflected in the market price of food. To design future food systems that promote health, environmental sustainability, social equity/justice, and resilience, we must make these hidden impacts visible and act upon them.
- 29/09/2025
The world is currently facing two interconnected and severe crises: widespread malnutrition and environmental degradation. Food systems are central to both issues, as they are responsible for a significant portion of greenhouse gas emissions, natural resource depletion, and environmental damage, while simultaneously feeding billions of people. Diets are a crucial link between human and planetary health and have been identified as a key lever to address both the climate and malnutrition crises. However, there are inherent trade-offs between nutritional and environmental goals, making it difficult to find solutions that simultaneously improve both outcomes. This paper introduces nutritional Life Cycle Assessment (nLCA) as an evidence-based tool to guide policy, programmatic, and industry decision-making, and demonstrates how nLCA can provide actionable, context-specific insights that help reconcile (often competing) nutritional and environmental priorities.
- 09/09/2025
I-CAN presents a new playbook offering step-by-step guidance to embedding nutrition-sensitive ambition and action into nationally determined contributions (NDCs). Drawing on I-CAN experience support climate-nutrition integration in different countries, it highlights practical entry points, resources, and provides policy examples to create nutrition–climate win-wins across food systems, health, agriculture, and social protection. By aligning nutrition with climate goals, countries can strengthen food and health systems, advance progress on the SDGs, and pursue the Paris Agreement 1.5 °C target.
- 28/08/2025
The Countdown then undertook a consultative process to select a set of 50 indicators across these themes, which constitutes the global indicator framework. The Countdown publishes annual monitoring updates and additional analysis to support the transformation of food systems so they become equitable, sustainable, and resilient and positively contribute to achieving the 2030 SDGs and other global goals.
- 26/08/2025
We know in our bones that youth must be part of the solution to the key crises facing
our planet – but why and how exactly? Here we provide government policymakers,
business people, civil society members and development partners in the food systems
space with some ways to advance meaningful youth engagement.
- 20/08/2025
The global burden of malnutrition, poor mental health, depression, and noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) continues to grow, contributing significantly to mortality
and poor health, reduced productivity, and economic stagnation. With over 60% of the
population engaged in the workforce and spending more than half of their adult lives at
work, the workplace offers a strategic platform to address these challenges. One
important aspect of worker wellbeing is nutrition, which fuels the body, improves
cognitive and immune function, and reduces sick days and NCD risk.
- 19/08/2025
The global burden of malnutrition, poor mental health, depression, and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) continues to grow, contributing significantly to mortality and poor health, reduced productivity, and economic stagnation. With over 60% of the population engaged in the workforce and spending more than half of their adult lives at work, the workplace offers a strategic platform to address these challenges. One important aspect of worker wellbeing is nutrition, which fuels the body, improves cognitive and immune function, and reduces sick days and NCD risk.
- 12/08/2025
Clear measures of progress on food system transformation can provide decision-makers with the visibility to course-correct to realise desired impacts and can help ensure accountability. To this end, there is a need to develop, test, and validate novel methods and metrics for assessing food systems transformation. To ensure that such work is grounded in local food system stakeholders’ needs, GAIN consulted national stakeholders across four Asian countries (Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, and Pakistan) to identify priority indicator gaps for monitoring food systems transformation. These consultations drew from an analysis of each country’s food system transformation pathway, existing indicators, and the results from similar stakeholder workshops in Africa. National stakeholder workshops were held with diverse participants in three of the countries, while stakeholder interviews were used in India.
Across all countries, some similar themes emerged, such as sustainable and climate-smart agriculture, small and medium-sized enterprises, food safety and quality, consumption behaviour, policy alignment, and food system governance. There was a strong focus on policy actions, sustainability, and resilience as crosscutting themes. Women and youth were mentioned as groups requiring particular attention in metrics development, including the wage disparities between men and women, inclusion of women and youth in decision-making process, and youth access to finance and agri-business. The results from the workshops will be used to inform GAIN’s future work in developing metrics and methods to understand and help countries track their food systems transformation.
- 25/07/2025
Since the lead-up to the UNFSS, we have been supporting countries to draw up pathways to better food systems, and to begin walking the talk. But many constraints still hinder progress, and reforms are sorely needed.
That’s why we have worked with governments to develop and implement a series of practical tools to strengthen policy decision making processes and capacities. These are tools created to give users a hand over major, common barriers. They are also designed to align with or to support ongoing national processes, such as monitoring plans, or indeed continental and transnational ambitions, including the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), and the seven aspirations of Agenda 2063 which call for a more prosperous, integrated, democratic, peaceful, pan- African, people-driven, and influential Africa by 2033.
The tools collected here can be instrumental: in diagnosing food systems to identify critical gaps and untapped opportunities; in shaping nimble action plans in line with national priorities; in identifying much-needed policy reforms to ensure sectors act alongside each other, rather than against; and in providing new ways to effectively navigate political, financial, and technical impediments. Barriers have stood in the path of meaningful progress for too long – we must break through them.
