To sustain life, we must have food! And to ensure the availability of food, we must make deliberate and efficient efforts to access whatever we need for nourishment!
The food system is a complex web of activities involving production, processing, transport, and consumption. Food is not always consumed where it is produced or in the form of its natural state.
Issues concerning the food system include the governance and economics of food production, its sustainability, the degree to which we waste food, how food production affects the natural environment, and the impact of food on individual and population health.
Inclusive agribusiness improves the livelihoods of poor farmers by integrating them into commercial value chains and thus gaining access to markets, inputs and services like finance and training, in commercially viable ways. KENAFF seeks to enlighten the farmer on these realities.
The food system, therefore, includes not only the basic elements of how we get our food from farm to fork but also all of the processes and infrastructure involved in feeding a population. Systems can also exist within systems, for example, farming systems, agricultural ecosystems, economic systems, and social systems, and within those are further subsets of water systems, energy systems, financing systems, marketing systems, policy systems, culinary systems, and so on. Our farmers need to be aware of all these, and how to position themselves to be relevant.
It is becoming clear that a more holistic framework is needed to address these complex issues. As a result, a food systems approach is being widely adopted to identify, analyze and assess the impact and feedback of the systems’ different actors, activities, and outcomes to help identify intervention points for enhancing food security.
It is becoming clear that a more holistic framework is needed to address these complex issues. As a result, a food systems approach is being widely adopted to identify, analyze and assess the impact and feedback of the systems’ different actors, activities, and outcomes to help identify intervention points for enhancing food security.
Food systems lie squarely at the intersection of several overarching goals of the UN and member states, as embodied in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The need for a radical transformation of current food systems is inescapable if the world is to achieve one, let alone all, of these goals since food is essentially the driver of all the others!
Meeting this challenge will inevitably be disruptive to current food systems, carry costs, and be politically onerous. Establishing a functional food system is thus a serious undertaking that cannot happen by chance. But the projected benefits far outweigh the difficulties. Six critical domains are identified that must be addressed for the successful transformation of food systems:
- Re-invent agriculture;
- Transform food environment for healthy diets;
- Mitigate climate change;
- Productively engage the private sector;
- Influence public policy priorities, and
- Establish true cost accounting of food.
These are tenets along which KENAFF is strategically aligned, even as outlined in the 2022 – 2026 strategic plan.
A research-driven strategy, emphasizing a collaborative process, is inescapable. Bold, new, but technically and politically feasible actions are needed to effectively transform current food systems. These will of necessity include:
- Inclusive agribusiness that can contribute to sustainable food systems transitions.
- overcoming inclusion biases, trade-offs, and scaling dilemmas.
- Mainstreaming scholarship and policy discourse to appreciate the risks.
- A progressive understanding of business inclusivity.
- Emphasis on partnership development and cross-thematic coordination.
IABs are considered instrumental in achieving sustainable and equitable development for small farmers. As businesses that productively integrate small farmers into commercial agri-food chains, IABs could help resolve some of the coordination, market, and input access problems confronting many rural economies.
IAB promotion is increasingly featured in sustainable development and food system agendas. Effectiveness studies on common IAB ‘models’ such as contract farming (CF) and producer cooperatives continue to show they can certainly be welfare-enhancing. The ability of IABs to contribute to systemic change is undermined by socio-ecological trade-offs, inclusion biases, and perverse outcomes. Neither impact without scale, nor scale without impact, is transformative. This scaling dilemma poses a major challenge to the growing number of development stakeholders working to upscale more inclusive business solutions.
Despite countries being involved in cooperative development, in many low-income countries, producer cooperatives remain integral to rural and agricultural development policies. Through inter alia fiscal incentives, subsidies, and input provisioning, many states now focus on developing enabling environments for cooperative development. With many states no longer actively involved in cooperative formation, farmers are generally encouraged to self-organize, typically around the purely commercial object.
