The International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) brings together expert voices representing different disciplines and different types of knowledge, to inform the policy debate on how to reform food systems across the world. The Panel looks at issues like under-nutrition, obesity, rural livelihood insecurity and environmental degradation through an integrated food systems lens, bringing to light the interconnections, power imbalances, political lock-ins and potential levers for change at the systems level.
Recently the panel published a comprehensive and inspiring thematic report on the much needed paradigm shift from university to diversity and from industrial agriculture to diversified agro-ecological systems. Input-intensive crop monocultures and industrial-scale feedlots must be consigned to the past in order to put global food systems onto sustainable footing, according to the world’s foremost experts on food security, agro-ecosystems and nutrition. The experts argue: “The solution is to diversify agriculture and reorient it around ecological practices, whether the starting point is highly-industrialized agriculture or subsistence farming in the world’s poorest countries.
