11 January 2024, US: In the latest episode of the Devex Climate + podcast, CGIAR Executive Managing Director Ismahane Elouafi talks about our broken food systems and what can be done to fix them.
“Our food systems are broken because we are not able to nourish ourselves,” she said. She describes how, working with indigenous communities, she learned that “if somebody doesn’t find food the whole community fails.” She adds: “Today we are failing 780 million times per day. We have 780 million people that go to bed hungry and 3.1 billion people that cannot afford a healthy diet.”
“Food systems are broken because we haven’t been able to use agriculture to uplift people from poverty.”
One solution she highlights is in the establishment of methodologies to quantify the carbon sequestration potential in agrifood systems. By doing so, she suggests, that compensation systems for farmers can be formulated. However, she underscores the importance of aligning these efforts with the concurrent development of more sustainable and resilient practices.
