Agroecological and other innovative approaches for sustainable agriculture and food systems – HLP report

Food systems are at a crossroads. Profound transformation is needed to address Agenda 2030 and to achieve food security and nutrition (FSN) in its four dimensions of availability, access, utilization and stability, and to face multidimensional and complex challenges, including a growing world population, urbanization and climate change, which drive increased pressure on natural resources, impacting land, water and biodiversity. This need has been illustrated from various perspectives in previous High Level Panel of Experts for Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE) reports and is now widely recognized. This transformation will profoundly affect what people eat, as well as how food is produced, processed, transported and sold.

In this report, the HLPE explores the nature and potential contributions of agroecological and other innovative approaches to formulating transitions towards sustainable food systems (SFSs) that enhance FSN. The HLPE adopts a dynamic, multiscale perspective, focusing on the concepts of transition and transformation. Many transitions need to occur in particular production systems and across the food value chain to achieve major transformation of whole food systems. Both incremental transitions at small scales and structural changes to institutions and norms at larger scales need to take place in a coordinated and integrated way in order to achieve the desired transformation of the global food system.

This report starts from the recognition of human rights as the basis for ensuring sustainable food systems. It considers that the seven PANTHER principles of Participation, Accountability, Non-discrimination, Transparency, Human dignity, Empowerment and the Rule of law should guide individual and collective actions to address the four dimensions of FSN at different scales. Also, this report and its recommendations aim at helping decision-makers, in governments and international organizations, research institutions, the private sector and civil society organizations, design and implement concrete transition pathways towards more SFSs at different scales, from local (farm, community, landscape) to national, regional and global levels.

The HLPE

The High Level Panel of Experts for Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE) is the science–policy interface of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) that is, at the global level, the foremost inclusive and evidence-based international and intergovernmental platform for food security and nutrition (FSN).

The HLPE reports serve as a common, evidence-based starting point for the multi-stakeholder process of policy convergence in the CFS. The HLPE strives to provide in its reports a comprehensive overview of the topics selected by the CFS, based on the best available scientific evidence and considering different forms of knowledge. It strives to clarify contradictory information and knowledge, to elicit the backgrounds and rationales of controversies and to identify emerging issues. The HLPE reports are the result of an inclusive and continuous dialogue between the HLPE experts (Steering Committee, Project Team, external peer reviewers) and a wide range of knowledge-holders across the world, building bridges across regions and countries, across scientific disciplines and professional experiences.

Agroecological and other innovative approaches for sustainable agriculture and food systems that enhance food security and nutrition

• Executive Summary: English
• Summary and Recommendations: English│Français│Español
• More inormation: www.fao.org/cfs/cfs-hlpe/en/