Fixing our food system
an imperative for achieving sustainable development
Abstract
In 2015 the United Nations adopted a set of goals to be achieved by 2030 with the aim of ending poverty, protecting the planet, and ensuring prosperity for all as part of a new sustainable development agenda (UN 2015). One of the seventeen SDGs is directly related to food and nutrition, namely SDG 2 which is to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture. While some progress has been made to reduce hunger and malnutrition, it is not enough to meet the goal.Failure to achieve SDG2 will also make other SDGs difficult to achieve, since the pervasive negative influence of our current food system endangers many others. The purpose of this article is to lay out the evidence for the damage our food system does to global health and the environment, and describe why changing our food system must become the backbone of efforts to achieve sustainable development by 2030.
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