On the recent UN Food Systems Summit
6 ideas that stuck with me from the UN Food Systems Summit 2nd Stock Taking Moment.
As a nutrition scientist focusing on food systems, I jumped at the opportunity to attend the 2-day long United Nations Food Systems Summit 2nd Stock Taking moment (UNFSS+4), which took place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in late July. It was the third global summit organized by the UN Food Systems Hub, a body tasked with transforming our global food-production systems to better support human health, the climate, and the natural world.
For the most part, the event focused on how to solve the ever-persisting problem of hunger and food insecurity in the world. While global hunger is improving, with Brazil being recently removed from the UN Hunger Map, the food systems we all depend on are still unable to adequately feed the human population. To boot, food is still being used as a weapon of war in many parts of the world, and food systems continue to damage natural habitats and accelerate climate change. The event concluded with a general call to action to transform the world’s food systems for the better.
As anticipated, most speakers raised the same points that food policy experts have been making for decades: cooperation is needed to transform food systems; smallholder farmers—as well as youth and women—need to be empowered to work in food production, and above all: more investment is necessary.
While it’s hard to disagree on these points, we’ve heard it all before, and often. And yet, we still haven’t solved the vast food inequality between the Global North and South. The recently revealed 2025 edition of the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report concludes that worldwide undernourishment has still not recovered from the pandemic, and hunger continues to climb in Africa and Western Asia. With geopolitical tensions as they are, honest cooperation does not exactly seem to be on the agenda. As for empowering farmers, a great piece by journalist Stefano Liberti outlines how local farmers are being exploited by for-profit supermarkets in Italy, which doesn’t feel like a step in the right direction. Nor am I convinced that much progress has been made on including and promoting women and youth in the food sector. As for investment, the official report itself notes that “access to finance remains a persistent challenge”.
Having said that, there were some refreshing perspectives that, to me at least, herald real progress towards a more just world. Here are my six main take-aways from UNFSS+4:
The time for climate adaptation is now
Some of the most powerful perspectives came from non-governmental experts, namely Elizabeth Nsimadala, a Ugandan agripreneur and smallholder farmer. During the plenary session “From Vision to Action,” she shared a bold statement: While climate financing is still focused on providing funds to mitigate climate change, that time has now passed. “We need to seek increased financing for adaptation,” she says. While many policymakers think of climate change as something that can still be mitigated, Nsimadala’s words were a strong reminder that for those in the field producing our food, climate change is already here and threatening our food supply.
The missing voice in policy: Smallholder farmers
Empowering farmers, especially smallholder ones, is a common talking point at such gatherings. But Nsimadala raised a key issue: we need to go beyond mentioning their importance and actually ensure they have a meaningful voice at conferences like these.
While most delegates are paid as part of their day job to be at UNFSS+4 and other such conferences, farmers would have to forgo work and profit to attend conferences. If the talking line is that farmer inputs are so valuable—which I would argue they clearly are as they literally produce the food we eat—then we must not only make a place at the table for them, but also compensate them for it. Furthermore, Nsimadala highlights that smallholder farmers receive less than 1% of climate finance.
Regenerative agriculture is the way forward
I come from a country that is—inexplicably—still pushing for the expansion of conventional agriculture despite abundant proof that it is destroying our soils and harming our health. That’s why I rejoiced in listening to several reports from African governments, like Tanzania, declaring that regenerative agriculture and agroecology are not just the only path forward for resilient food systems, but also that they’re also to produce enough food to feed their people. There’s little data on the amount of food regenerative farming can actually provide—in great part due to the lack of funding available for such research—so hearing these on-the-ground reports that this works gave me great hope.
Food quality over quantity
Finally, as a nutritionist, I was happy to see the link between agriculture and human health highlighted throughout the summit. For the first time, it was acknowledged that we need not just adequate food to feed the world, but also food that meets our nutritional needs. Until now, many policymakers have been focused on the sheer amount of food that can be produced (and to be honest, this is still a major focus, with several countries still focusing on scaling up their yield and harvests, often for export and financial gain rather than for food security among their own citizens). Shifting towards the quality of food is a step in the right direction—especially as we’re increasingly getting reports of pollutants like microplastics being abundant in food, which can harm not only the plants but also us as well.
Not just any food
Food systems leaders in all sectors also highlighted the need to ensure that everyone has the dignity to decide what food they eat, that food must be culturally appropriate and that the processes of production, distribution and access must be equitable and inclusive. This is known as the “right to adequate food,” and it’s commonly understood as a basic human right:
“The right to adequate food is realized when every man, woman and child, alone or in community with others, have physical and economic access at all times to adequate food or means for its procurement.” as defined by the United Nations.
Unfortunately, the current intentional starvation happening in Gaza was not mentioned during the summit, despite it being a clear violation of human rights, which is deeply disappointing for a global food summit happening at this time.
Coming soon
Looking forward, Bhutan - famously the world’s happiest country which is already focusing on key transformations like agroforestry —announced that it will be hosting the first International Conscious Food Systems Summit in 2026. The event is a collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme and the Conscious Food Systems Alliance, which helps build qualities like self-awareness, deep listening, empathy, creativity, and resilience among future food systems leaders. As a long-term meditator of over 15 years and a mindfulness teacher, I’m excited to see how this shapes up, as I know both intellectually and experientially that we cannot pour from an empty cup. Bringing consciousness practices to food systems transformation is still niche, but in my opinion this holds tremendous promise to shake us out of the extractive, destructive and domineering drive that is so common in food production. If anyone wants to fund me to go there and report on the ground, I eagerly await your offers!
On a last note, I want to highlight that this summit paid tribute to Sir David Nabarro, who tragically passed away days before the event. Nabarro was a powerhouse of public health advancements who dedicated himself in later life to global sustainable food systems transitions. Specifically, he spearheaded many of the efforts of the UN Food Systems Hub. As we carry his legacy forward, let’s remember his vision: to create “holistic frameworks that treat food systems as interconnected, living systems rather than segmented domains [where] food security is inseparable from nutrition, climate resilience, and long-term human wellbeing.”