Unless food systems transformation is put at the center of climate action, commitments governments have already made, and could make at COP26, will be jeopardized.

Today’s industrialized food system — which includes the growing, harvesting, processing, packaging, transporting, marketing, consumption, and disposal of food and food-related items — makes us ill, doesn’t meet the needs of the global population, and has adverse effects on climate change.

Almost a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions come from food systems. The industrialized practices — from chemical pesticide use to mono-culture crops — at the heart of the dominant global food system have also destroyed 66% of biodiversity, 61% of commercial fish stocks, and 33% of soils.

Then there’s food wastage which equates to 1.3 billion tonnes a per year and produces enough GHG emissions that, should it be a country, it would be the third-largest source of GHG emissions.

We know that waste and loss occur throughout the food supply-chain and mostly involve the waste of edible food by consumers in medium- and high-income countries and loss during harvest, storage, and transport in lower-income countries.